Author: Gem

True story. True or false, the public airing of this dirty washing might have harmed Onassis’s reputation irretrievably had the whole affair not suddenly taken a fantastic twist….

True story. “Left Padua at twelve, and arrived at Lord Byron’s country house, La Mira, near Lusina, at two. He was but just up and in his bath; soon came down to me; first time we have met these five years; grown fat, which spoils the picturesqueness of his head….”

True story. About eight o’clock I strolled in very jauntily. In my mind I had the whole programme mapped out. I would stay at the hospital for, say, two days following the operation — or, at most, three. Then I must be up and away. I had a good deal of work to do and a number of people to see on important business, and I could not really afford to waste more than a weekend on the staff of St Germicide’s. After Monday they must look to their own devices for social entertainment. That was my idea….

True story. As the means to his end Poniatowski seemed specially suited. Williams had heard enough of Catherine to infer that she was not averse to an intrigue, and great though her devotion might be to the banished Soltykof — was it not the gossip of the ante-chambers that she had once waited for him till three in the morning at a rendezvous to which he never came? — the wily diplomatist was too much of a cynic to believe in the deathlessness of any passion. Broken hearts could always be mended, and who was more likely to patch together deftly the shattered fragments of the Grand Duchess’s than his charming young Pole?…

True story. The “Fejee Mermaid” was by many supposed to be a curiosity manufactured by myself or made to my order. This is not the fact. I certainly had much to do in bringing it before the public, and as I am now in the confessional mood, I will “make a clean breast” of the ways and means I adopted for that purpose. I must first, however, relate how it came into my possession and its alleged history.

True story. I shall never forget the first time I ever saw a pickpocket at work. It was when I was about thirteen years old. A boy of my own age, Zack, a great pal of mine, was with me. Zack and I understood one another thoroughly and well knew how to get theatre money by petty pilfering, but of real graft we were as yet ignorant, although we had heard many stories about the operations of actual, professional thieves. We used to steal rides in the cars which ran to and from the Grand Street ferries — and run off with overcoats and satchels when we had a chance. One day we were standing on the rear platform when a woman boarded the car, and immediately behind her a gentlemanly looking man with a high hat….

True story. By this time [1906] the new factory was built and new machinery had been put inside it, and one day in January, a little before my thirteenth birthday, we went to see it. Mario took us round, and as I was standing with a mass of loose curling hair almost to my knees, the wind of a steel shaft caught it. I was snatched up, revolving, with my head ground against the shaft and my feet floating horizontal. I know that it seemed a very long time: at each revolution my feet struck a wall or pillar and I wondered if my shoes were coming off….

True story. Stieglitz brought Georgia to the bright little studio apartment of his niece, Elizabeth, who was living elsewhere. When Georgia had arrived in New York, she was tired and ill. Stieglitz ordered her to stay in bed, and had his brother, a well-known doctor, examine her. Stieglitz himself visited every day, and even learned how to boil eggs for her. He returned to his apartment after his wife was asleep. Within a week he was writing to Arthur Dove of Georgia’s “uncommon beauty, spontaneity, clearness of mind and feeling, and the marvelous intensity with which she lived every moment.”

True story. When I was in high school, in Lancaster, I formed my first band, the Black-Outs. The name derives from when a few of the guys, after drinking peppermint schnapps, purchased illicitly by somebody’s older brother, blacked out. This was the only R&B band in the entire Mojave Desert at that time. Three of the guys (Johnny Franklin, Carter Franklin and Wayne Lyles) were black, the Salazar brothers were Mexican and Terry Wimberly represented the other oppressed peoples of the earth.

True story. The tree men came and chopped up his home. They took half the tree away — half his home. They weren’t good tree men. They didn’t even have a chain saw to do the job right. They used machetes. When they were through there were raw wounds and splintered stubs of branches everywhere on the tree.