GLORIA VANDERBILT, iconic New Yorker, has gone from poor little rich girl to dirty old lady.
Gloria has been famous since the word was invented. She’s slept with everyone, married the others. Now, at the ripe age of 85, Anderson Cooper’s mother has reinvented herself again — as the writer of pure, elegant, unadulterated smut.
Smelling salts, please. This gives me the vapors.
Her novel, “Obsession: An Erotic Tale,” out in June from Ecco books, has found its way into my hot, little hands, where it’s burning a hole. Packed with four-letter words I don’t think my mother knows, as well as innovative tips for employing garden vegetables, there’s not much I can print. But here goes:
“I will begin, softly at first so that you can sleep a few more minutes, the long, slow, delicious process of licking your —-, and since I must have your honey milk . . . I will struggle to stay quiet . . . Master, I whisper as you surrender to our ecstasy.”
Someone call a parent. Or an exorcist.
“Obsession” is the story of Priscilla Bingham, a “frigid” woman who, after her husband, Talbot, dies, discovers a stack of letters from his mistress. They reveal that her beloved led a secret life, filled with orgies, sadomasochistic rituals and creative product placement. It is Al Goldstein, filtered through the exclusive Miss Porter’s School.
“Dare I suggest to be placed fully dressed over our favorite ottoman . . . That done, placed over your knees, skirt lifted, begging you not to restrain yourself in giving my flesh the serious whacking I deserve. An ebony, smooth-backed hairbrush — most appropriate. The Mason-Pearson are considered the finest, and it would be no trouble, while you are in London, to pick one up of a heft that pleases you at Harrods.” Those brushes retail for upward of $150.
In the novel, Priscilla is hurt. She is angry. She is . . . strangely turned on.
Whew. Poor little rich girl. Gloria was a beauty born with a platinum spoon in her mouth. But after her father’s death, she endured a front-page 1933 trial against her unfit mother. Later, she sold Gloria Vanderbilt designer jeans, which every girl in my school tried to squeeze into. But in the ’80s, she was robbed by her psychiatrist and lawyer and forced to sell her Southampton estate and New York homes.
Gloria moved in with Anderson, her son from her fourth marriage to Wyatt Cooper.
Today, she lives in an elegant building on Beekman Place. Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.
So what does Coop think? Anderson admitted being embarrassed by his mother four years ago after reading her memoir, “It Seemed Important at the Time,” in which she admits affairs with Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra and Howard Hughes.
“Reading her description of her current boyfriend as the ‘Nijinsky of [a particular sex act]’ was kind of shocking. It’s not really a visual image I wanted to have,” Cooper wrote on CNN.com. “The truth is, I don’t know much about dance history, but I’m guessing Nijinsky was creative, or at least very limber.”
Sorry, son. Mommy has graduated to the full monty. But at 143 pages, “Obsession,” you’ll be relieved to know, is easily read with one hand.
I guess there comes a point in one’s life where a dame must say, “What the hell!”