Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [3]
Sweetheart that he was, and undaunted by germs, he dropped by the next night to see how I was feeling. We sat in the living room and kissed. He understood that was as far as I was willing to go. I told him flat-out that remaining a virgin was completely nonnegotiable. He acted like he was sensitive to this. Then, the next thing I knew, we were having sex. But I actually didn’t realize it was sex. It happened so fast, it was over before I figured out what was going on. Maybe he thought he’d make me feel better. Well, he didn’t. It was a shabby thing to do, but I decided not to throw the whole male gender away on account of one overeager high school senior. Larry was one guy, and he didn’t represent all guys. I was a bit wounded, though. I’d wanted to bring that purity into marriage, and now that dream had been tarnished.
So that was me: 1950s sexual mores transplanted to Rome, city of lovers, with an unshakable belief in true love . . . just as the era of free love was about to dawn stateside. I guess you could see I had a few things to figure out.
Back in Los Angeles, it seemed that Mr. Grant was being rather persistent. Addie called me again a couple of days later to relay that he had seen me in an episode of Malibu Run, the Baywatch of its day and my first real lead. It was a show about two California divers who made their living off sunken wrecks. Fortuitously enough, the episode’s title was “The Diana Adventure.”
But Addie was shouting into the wind. I had an ever-expanding circle of friends, and I felt free in Rome in a way I’d never felt at home. In Hollywood, there were many wonderful, open-minded people, but there were many more who lived according to their own self-created caste system, choosing and shedding friends with the weather. Rome was different, and in a way that sang to my soul. Ambassadors talked politics with busboys; contessas shared drinks with shopgirls; directors argued film theory with cabdrivers. It didn’t matter who you were; if you had something to share, and you shared it with passion and panache, you were in. You were suddenly running with the tribe to concerts and plays, film premieres, nightclubs, and to an ever-growing cluster of chairs around restaurant tables in the wee hours as the night drained away but the conversation fizzed up like champagne. In Rome, you were assessed on the basis of your inner qualities. I loved that. I thought that was exactly how it should be.
I loved the food, too, and ate like I was training for the Olympics. I didn’t gain weight, though, because just about every waking hour that wasn’t spent eating was spent walking or dancing. Bring on the pasta, the aged cheese and that razor-thin prosciutto, and please some more of that warm bread and that olive oil that swathed your tongue like liquid silk.
One evening, Charlie and I stopped at a newsstand for a gander at the outside world, but my own photograph popped out at me from the front page of one of the tabloids. That was a novelty in itself, definitely not something I was used to, but I got more of a thrill from the way they misspelled my name, with a “Y.” The caption identified me as “the American actress Dyan Cannon.” It was a magical mistake and I embraced it. Good-bye, Diane. Meet Dyan.
Unfortunately, my name change did not come with a cash prize. Dyan was just as empty-pocketed as Diane. Both were totally out of money. In one of my more impulsive moves, I called Addie. She assumed I was finally ready