Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [123]
Meanwhile, my dating life was going full strength, but I was trying to restrict my attentions to women in recovery, the theory being that they would be safer, or saner, than my previous girlfriends. I obviously still had a lot to learn. One woman in particular had a profound effect on me. She lived in New York and was quite self-possessed, enough not to be manipulated by me anyhow. This manifested itself in her views on smoking, or at least my smoking. I was not allowed to smoke in her apartment for one thing, and it made me very angry. But I liked her and thought it might be going somewhere, so at a dinner party a few months later, when I was introduced to a hypnotherapist named Charlie, I took the plunge. I had been smoking heavily ever since my twenty-first birthday party, and now I was smoking at least two packs a day, sometimes three.
I went to see Charlie on a Monday morning on my way to rehearsals and knew, deep down, that if I got to bed that night without a cigarette, then it was over. It was tough to begin with, and for the first month, from time to time, I did feel like I had taken some bad acid. Overall, however, I was beside myself with joy for having beaten such a disgusting addiction. I have spoken to hundreds of people since then about the way they gave up smoking and have been quite astonished at how many of them still miss it. For myself, stopping smoking was like giving up alcohol. I have never missed it, and not even in the darkest moments of my life have I ever felt like lighting up a cigarette, or taking a drink. Lucky fellow, you may say; but I really believe it is about spiritual application, no matter how poverty-stricken I feel my application may be.
Could it be, then, that without nicotine in my system, I was emotionally vulnerable to the next woman who came along? Without a shadow of a doubt. That, coupled with the fact that she was quite fond of drugs and booze, was very vivacious, and was totally unavailable made her probably the most dangerous woman I would ever meet. But it takes two, and I was in a very illusory period of my life. I was swollen with success and feeling very sure of myself, although just under the surface there were caverns of grief that weren’t really being dealt with at all. I was definitely heading for a fall.
The woman in question was an Italian named Francesca. She was a fine-looking girl, with dark hair and a slim but at the same time voluptuous figure, with a face slightly reminiscent of Sophia Loren. Her mother worked for Giorgio Armani. Giorgio and I had become friends over the last few years, and I was seeing quite a lot of him, going to his shows and socializing. I think he’s an amazing man and a great designer, and I felt very proud and flattered that he would want to get to know me. When, through him, I was introduced to this young girl, I had no inkling of how much she would come to mean to me. I just thought she was interesting and refreshingly bright, that’s all. Within months I was on my knees.
Our affair lasted three years, but at no time did we actually live together. I think it’s important to acknowledge this, because it should serve to illustrate how temporary and shaky the whole thing