Screengrab by Various Today in Nerve's film blog: Holiday special - 35 people, places and movies we're thankful for.
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Michael Phelps indulges Anderson Cooper in some watersports and Dexter makes a 'bitch move.' Plus: the secret of Tina Fey's scar, revealed!
Dating Advice From . . . Engineers by Steph Auteri Q. For optimal functionality, what should go into a first-date emergency kit? A. Fine wine, road flares, a snake-bite kit and Ghirardelli chocolates.
I am determined to start off the Year 2000 with a sense of youth and freshness, but all this talk of the future has made me jumpy. When I try to access an image of Leonardo DiCaprio, instead of his smooth, warm, pink penis I keep fixating on the Titanic sinking in icy seas — with all of my Internet stocks aboard.
I realize then that a girl who is changing millennia can't get off on just another pretty face. She wants a person with staying power, someone who can survive any administration, weather any storm, a man who can quell a panic with a whisper, a man she can adore like a god. She wants Alan Greenspan, 73, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank!
We start early in the evening because Alan has to wake up before dawn to control inflation and monitor foreign markets. At his New York apartment I sip some very smooth Burgundy. Its vintage reminds Alan of his jazz band days back in the '40s when he blew sax and sometimes clarinet, taking only twenty-minute breaks between sets and playing until dawn. "Past successes are not to be taken as a guarantee of future performance," he adds, charmingly. But my hopes are up.
Rather than jump right into bed the way you would with a rock star or a president, Alan and I chat about economic indicators first. Eventually, just by touching my back, he lets me know that he wants me to press my public offering against his thigh. But I don't — not yet. It is best to play it cool with the man who warned us all against "irrational exuberance."
Controlling one's exuberance while undressing the most powerful man in America is tremendously exciting, like having sex in a room next door to a parent or a lonely single girlfriend in a summer share. My heart is pounding as I push off his tasseled loafers with my toes. Slowly unbuttoning his shirt, I spot his monogram, "AG." No middle initial — it's so glaringly unpretentious I could shout. But I mustn't!
My self-regulation pays off. He touches me again, this time exactly where and how I want him to. I can feel the power of his famous tennis serve pulsing through his arm, but the way his hand tweaks the flow of my currency is so subtle, so responsive yet controlled, I never have to say, "A little to the right, Alan, higher, harder." He knows. Whatever this guy studied under Ayn Rand, it wasn't her fantasy of being overwhelmed by masculine force. Some measured pressure here, there, exactly so, and my market expands and fluctuates, open, free.
The dim light of his bedroom hides slack skin and liver spots. The numerous corrugations on his brow appear magical, like the lightning-bolt scar on Harry Potter's forehead — traces of battles he survived. And as we, in a leisurely and civilized manner, rise and fall, syncopated as the Dow, all the dragons he has slain snake sinuously through me, stirring up little orgasms with their coils. The crash of '87 and how he persuaded big investors to hang in — who could fail to respond! And the S&L scandal, how none of the mud flung at his client, Charles Keating, ever splattered him — how could it when his moves are sooo smooth? How he contained the Asian contagion when Thailand crashed — when you think you're going to explode he softens your landing! The way he bailed out that hedge fund and Mexico at taxpayer expense — spoil me like that, and I'll follow you anywhere!
And every time I think he's collapsed, tanked, and it's all over, he's up again. Warm and ready! Over and over, until we've reached a new paradigm. Our consuming desires and the power of our collective imagination are more real than goods, matter, even profits now. Marx's materialism is history; we've entered an age of pure faith; the Nasdaq has hit 4,000 and those who believe are rewarded. O glimmering bliss!
Then, pop! As my post-orgasmic bubble bursts I suddenly remember: most of his money is in blue chips and cash! The new paradigm's devotional circle does not, apparently, include Mr. A-no-middle-initial-G himself. That bet-hedging faker.
Have I just slept with the Wizard of Oz? The Antichrist, like my dad believes, or as Mom would have it, the Pied Piper? Only the new year will tell.
But for now I'm awash in shame. Because how could I, Kitty Lyons, even imagine having sex with Alan Greenspan without asking whether or not he planned to raise interest rates in February?
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
