Friday, March 25, 2016

Alberto Moravia: Italy's Most Famous Writer | Old & Young (Teen) Italian Sex


Clyde Haberman wrote in the New York Times' Obituary section that Alberto Moravia: “[...] was Italy's most widely read author in this century, his works having been translated into some 30 languages and selling in the millions around the world.” 

Haberman related that: 
“[m]any literary scholars argue that Mr. Moravia was not only his country's best-selling modern writer but also simply its best, on the strength of his starkly worded studies of emotional aridity and his blunt openness about sex.” 
“[H]e endured as a national monument and was considered almost an institution in his native Rome.” 
“The President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, issued a statement in which he praised Mr. Moravia as a 'biting but also highly sensitive narrator of Italian society in the 20th century[...]''' 
And Haberman shared that Moravia lectured at Columbia University. Frank MacShane, a writer and a professor in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, related: ''Moravia was a very daring writer. He was one of the first European authors to write honestly about sex [...]”

Let us review one of Moravia's translated novels and short stories to see what all the fuss was about. 


In The Empty Canvas [Italian: La Noia], Dino, an extremely bored painter, lived in his Via Marguttag studio that was three doors down from Balestrieri. Although, they often, yet briefly, met and spoke, Balestrieri exuded an “extreme, almost insulting coldness” which may have been due to Balestrieri perceiving Dino as a potential rival. 

Dino shared that “Balestrieri's studio was continually visited by a large number of women” which included young girls. Dino was so fascinated by 65-year-old Balestrieri's life that he spied upon him and learned that for ten years the elderly painter had approximately five different females per month, a new one about every six weeks which averaged two visitors of the opposite sex per day until Balestrieri died a sudden death. Rumor had it that he died while having anal sex with Cecilia, his mistress, who was no more than 17, but looked 15 due to the “slenderness of her figure and the childishness of her face” and “childish lips”. 

However, she had a “magnificent bosom, full, firm and brown” and “curly brown hair”. The only confirmed information about Balestrieri's death was that he “had been found half-naked on the bed, and that the girl herself had run out and called the caretaker, wearing a dressing gown with nothing underneath”.

Cecilia met the elderly painter when she was 15 at the home of Elisa, her 17-year-old friend. Balestrieri had been giving Elisa drawing lessons. Cecilia repeatedly requested that Balestrieri give her drawing lessons too, but to the nymphet's dismay, he refused her pleas for over three months until she “[...] resorted to a trick.” Cecilia, who had fallen in love with Balestrieri, invited Elisa to lunch and informed her that Balestrieri canceled her lesson. Cecilia went instead and she and Balestrieri made love. 

Dino asked Cecilia why she had fallen in love with Balestrieri, a man old enough to have been her “father's father”. Celicia replied, “There's no reason for falling in love with someone. You just fall in love and that's that.” When pressed for a reason, Cecilia shared that Balestrieri reminded her of her father whom “she had a real passion for” and, à la Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies, “dreamed about at night.” 

Until he died, Balestrieri was constantly in “need” of Cecilia. Initially, they only made love: “[...] once or twice a week, then every other day, then every day, then twice a day.”

Subsequently, to 35-five-year-old Dino's eventual dismay, he and 16-year-old Cecilia began a sexual relationship. The crux of Dino's frustration came from the illusion that since Cecilia allowed Dino to consistently make love to her, as much as he wished, every way he wished, and every time he wished, that he possessed her. But it was merely a physical possession – not mental, because the indifferent, quiet and mysterious nymphet had no qualms about having multiple sexual relationships with other men which almost drove Dino to an early death.

The Empty Canvas [La noia] (1963)

As usual, the novel is superior to the 1963 film adaption where Cecilia was played by 18-year-old Catherine Spaak.


“The Devil Can't Save the World” is a short story in Moravia's Erotic Tales [Italian: La Cosa]. In the story Gualtieri, an approximately 35-year-old famous scientist, makes a Faustian bargain. Gualtieri is described as being: “tall, thin, and elegant, with a charming face […] penetrating eyes set in the shadow of thick black eyebrows; silver hair; a large, hooked, imperious nose, and a proud, noble mouth.” And with: “the gentlest voice and the most persuasive manner imaginable.”

In an effort to get the scientist to sign over his soul, the devil decided to disguise himself as a female before approaching Gualtieri, because: “[...] it combines the temptation of success with the often irresistible temptation of desire.” The devil appeared: “as a girl studying at the university”, “as a married woman at some social gathering or club”, and as a prostitute, but Gualtieri displayed an “indifference” that was both “relaxed and effortless”.

However, after “beginning to despair”, the devil happened upon the scientist in: “[...] the public gardens. He was sitting on a bench with a book in his hand, but the book was closed. He seemed to be watching something very intently […] With an air of profound attention he was watching a group of twelve-to fifteen-year-old girls a little further on who were playing [hopscotch] […] the game they were playing lifted their skirts bit by bit  above their knees.” Consequently, the devil: “[...] had discovered not only the disguise in which to approach him but also the way to make him sign the infernal pact immediately”. 

The devil: “[...] got up from the bench, went into a thicket of trees , and transformed […] into a little girl around twelve years old with a thick head of hair, slender bust and long, muscular legs.” She joined the game, but she hitched up her dress to improve her jumping but cunningly “a great deal more than necessary.” Gualtieri immediately noticed that the nymphet was not wearing any panties. He suddenly buried himself in his book, “gripping it tight in his hands.”

The devil was certain that she had: “[...] hit the bullseye of his most intimate target [on the] first shot.” And with “a typically cheeky little girl's voice” asked, “I'm collecting signatures. Will you sign my book?”

Who would have thought that a former president of PEN International would write such salacious material? Only the naive. Lastly, for some reason, I was not surprised to learn from Boyd's Vladimir Nabokov, The American Years that Nabokov met Moravia. Boyd wrote that: “[t]he day after Lolita's English publication, the Nabokovs set off from London for Rome.” While in Rome they “dined” with Moravia.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Famous Teleiophile: Charlie Chaplin's Teen Brides


Lillita (Lita) McMurray first met Chaplin on April 15, 1914 - her 6th birthday. After Lita's mother spotted Chaplin sitting in the rear of a restaurant, she asked the owner, “Do you think it would disturb Mr. Chaplin if my daughter were introduced to him?” The owner replied, “[...] I'm sure it'll be all right. He's very flattered when the children want to meet him, but he's shy of grownups” And it was all right. Upon meeting Lita Chaplin opined, “Hasn't she lovely dark eyes and hair?”

By the time Lita was 12, the “incredibly shy” Chaplin had become one of the most famous men on the planet and arguably the most famous man in the United States which is why when 29-year-old Chaplin married 16-year-old Mildred Harris he only “drew gasps and condemnations only from a small section of the public.”

12-year-old Lillita 'Lita Grey' McMurray in The Kid (1921)

Lita met Chaplin again six years later after Chuck Riesner, Chaplin's assistant director, offered Lita a small but controversial part in The Kid. When Lita visited Chaplin's studio to the sign the contract, she was offered the opportunity to meet Chaplin. In anticipation of meeting him, the previous day Lita stood “in front of her full-length mirror, melodramatically posing and admiring [her] developing breasts.” Chaplin, in his mid-thirties, opined to 13-year-old Lita, “You're an extremely pretty child, my dear and I'm glad Mr. Riesner found you.”

After Chaplin had a company artist paint a likeness of Lita similar to the girl in Sir Joshua Reynolds' 'Age of Innocence', Lita began to “catch” Chaplin looking at her with a “rapt expression”. She wrote “It was an expression I couldn't define, but it made me feel strange.” After Chaplin showed Lita the painting he confessed, “I've been peeking at you, my dear, when you haven't been looking. I've been more and more drawn to those fascinating eyes of yours. They're so very young […] And only twelve years old! Amazing!

Using a seduction technique that Royal encouraged in The Pimp Game, one that Robert Beck shared in Iceberg Slim, The Lost Interviews and one that the Milner's discovered in Black Players, The Secret World of Black Pimps, Lita wrote that Chaplin “had a reputation for hibernating after a picture” and that after The Kid was completed she “[...] saw Chaplin rarely or not at all.” She shared “I discovered myself missing him, missing the fuss he made over me […] I had developed a twelve-year-old's crush on him and I could hardly wait to see him again.”

Chaplin and Lita

On the first day back at the studio after the New York premier of The Kid, Chaplin invited Lita, unchaperoned, to a birthday party for Mae Collins at his home; however, Lita's mother overheard the conversation, rejected the invitation and “steered” Lita home. Subsequently, Chaplin gave Lita and her mother the “cold shoulder” and at the end of the year, Lita's option on her contract was not picked up.

Lita shared that as she was nearing her 15th birthday, sex was “uppermost” in her mind “a great portion of the time”. Thus, Lita was enthralled by the stories that her good friend Merna Kennedy shared. Merna who was approximately five months younger than Lita had “brick-red hair, fair skin and blue eyes”. Lita pleaded with Merna “Gee, I'm hardly fifteen!” Merna replied, “If you're big enough, you're old enough.” Merna shared with Lita that she had lost her virginity at the age of 13 and, subsequently, had sex with “five boys and one man”.

Merna and Chaplin

By 15, Lita, although still a virgin, had become self-assured enough to pursue a role in Chaplin's The Gold Rush. After Lita got the part, she had “wishful daydreams” of Chaplin making love to her. She was certain that it would never happen since her mother was “zealously against” it. However, she was “[...] consumed by the fantasy of being held and kissed and protected by Charlie.”

Lita recalled the moment that it became “incontestably clear” that Charlie was sexually attracted to her as well. It was “at lunch in the dining car on the way to Truckee [to shoot scenes for The Gold Rush].” She wrote “Charlie was lunching with two studio workers at his table, and Mama and I were lunching at the table directly across the narrow aisle. He glanced up and saw me, and from the way he looked at me I suddenly got the feeling that he was seeing me for the first time – and that he very much approved of what he saw. All the guardedness, all his reserve was stripped away, and his distinctly intimate gaze sent erotic waves across the aisle that a shiver tore through me.”

While in Truckee, Lita was told by Henry Bergman, “Charlie wonders why you haven't dropped by to say hello.” 15-year-old Lita, with her mother bedridden with the flu, almost immediately sauntered to 35-year-old Chaplin's room. Here is a summary of what took place after some bantering:
Chaplin's hands circled Lita's waist and pulled the nymphet closer to him. Then he “roughly” pushed her onto the bed before he kissed her mouth and neck and caressed her body. Lita asked Chaplin, who was in a pair of red silk pajamas, to, “Please...stop...”, but he covered her “mouth with a deep-drawn kiss.” and clutched her breast “with almost brutal force.” Lita pleaded with Chaplin to stop, which he did, but forewarned Lita, “I'm going to make love to you. When the time and the place is right, we're going to make love.”
Despite Chaplin's aggression and Lita's (dis)pleasure with Chaplin's hour of “erotic scrutiny”, Lita decided that if she and Chaplin were alone again, she would be “[…] ready for him. Eagerly ready.”

After they arrived back in Los Angeles, Chaplin convinced Lita's mother to allow Lita to be seen with him in public as her protégée for publicity purposes. He assured her that they would not be attending “premieres and dinner parties alone” but that his fiancée, Thelma Morgan Converse, would be the third wheel. Lita's mother agreed, but even Lita knew that her mother “was making a big mistake”.

Consequently, Chaplin was able to get Lita alone at the Santa Monica Swimming Club, where he went to relax. He brushed Lita's ear and neck with his lips before he lowered Lita's bathing suit straps and palmed her “tingling breasts in his palms.” Lita “aggressively” threw her arms around Chaplin and hugged him - “bringing him closer”. Chaplin then “peeled” the bathing suit completely off of Lita and muttered to himself, “Beautiful, incredibly beautiful...” However, after Chaplin lowered himself and began “moving with small, steady increases of force”, Lita pleaded, “No. Oh, I can't, I can't!” But after Chaplin informed Lita that the pain would have quickly ceased after her hymen broke, Lita asked, “Why-didn't you keep on, then?” Charlie sympathetically replied, “Because you were so fearful.”

After dinner at Musso Frank's Restaurant, in the back seat of Chaplin's large limousine, Chaplin's “soft hand dug into the bodice” of Lita's dress, “[h]is other hand darted under” Lita's skirt and “danced” up her thigh until it found her “underpants”. Chaplin “found his way to the top of the elastic banded underpants, and wordlessly he yanked them down”; however, the pain was still too intense for Lita. Thus, once again Chaplin mercifully stopped.

But three days later Charlie announced that he had a “blistering headache”, dismissed everyone except Lita and (fully) took her virginity in the steam room of Chaplin's Cove Way mansion. Lita wrote “The pain blinded me far more than the encircling steam, but I writhed wildly, as though in ecstasy […] I was fifteen, but I felt younger than fifteen.”

In addition, Lita wrote about Chaplin's ephebophilia. She shared “It's hardly a secret that Charlie had a penchant for young girls. He approached them as projects, and indeed, cared for them. He liked to cultivate them, to gain their trust, to be their first-never their second or third lover, and to create them as scrupulously as he created a motion picture. To me he admitted his preference for the company of inexperienced girls over experienced women. '[…] The most beautiful form of human life is the very young girl just starting to bloom [...]'”

Minutes after Chaplin unsuccessfully attempted to have Lita perform fellatio, Lita “heard the doorknob squeak in turning.” Lita's mother “tottered weakly into the room” and found them in the nude “in each other's arms”.

Lita defended Chaplin by “insisting” she was the one who aggressively pursued him. She resented “being treated like a put-upon little angel who'd had no part in the seduction”.

However, Lita's mother insisted that Chaplin marry her daughter or she threatened to alert the authorities. In an effort to avoid going to the penitentiary for statutory rape, “prematurely graying” Chaplin fled to Mexico in 1924 with pregnant Lita for an impromptu wedding that would be his second marriage to a 16-year-old. Lita wrote that after the ceremony she overheard Chaplin say to a lieutenant, “Well, this is better than the penitentiary, I guess, but it won't last.” And on the train ride back to California, Chaplin matter-of-factly yet almost compassionately told his new bride, “This would be a good time for you to put an end to your misery. Why don't you jump?”

Chaplin was correct. It didn't last. Two years, two children, four affairs (Ed Purviance, Peggy Hopkins, Marion Davies and Lita's young friend Merna) and two children later, Judge Walter Guerin awarded the children a $100,000 trust fund and Lita $625,000 in the divorce settlement.

Mildred Harris

Mildred Harris, Chaplin's first nymphet wife, did not write a book; therefore, there are not many details about their marriage; but, it appears to be similar to Lita's marriage. Chaplin and Harris were married after Chaplin was under the impression that 16-year-old Harris was pregnant. However, two years, one baby, who died three days after birth, and two accusations of infidelity later, Harris was awarded a $100,000 divorce settlement.

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Famous Ephebophile: David Bowie "De-Virginized" 15-Year-old Teen Lori Maddox

David Bowie and Lori Maddox

Nikki McWatters shared in the Huffington Post article “Predatory Teenage Girls” that Lori Maddox, a famous teenage groupie from LA, is alleged to have lost her virginity to David Bowie at the age of 13. [And s]he was Jimmy Page's steady girlfriend while still underage."

In a Thrillist post titled "I Lost My Virginity to David Bowie, Confessions of a 70s Groupie" , Maddox, who related that she was actually fifteen when Bowie "de-virginized" her, described the "beautiful" event as follows:
We got to the Beverly Hilton and we all went up to Bowie’s enormous suite. I found myself more and more fascinated by him. He was beautiful and clever and poised. I was incredibly turned on [...] He focused his famously two-colored eyes on me and said, “Lori, darling, can you come with me?” Sable* [another 15-year-old nubile groupie] looked like she wanted to murder me. He walked me through his bedroom and into the bathroom, where he dropped his kimono. He got into the tub, already filled with water, and asked me to wash him. Of course I did. Then he escorted me into the bedroom, gently took off my clothes, and de-virginized me. 

Two hours later, I went to check on Sable. She was all fucked up in the living room, walking around, fogging up windows and writing, "I want to fuck David." I told him what she was doing and that I felt so bad. Bowie said, “Well, darling, bring her in.” That night I lost my virginity and had my first threesome. The next morning, there was banging on the door and it was fucking [Bowie’s wife] Angie. 
After Bowie passed away in January, Jia Tolentino wrote in a Jezebel article:
"Lady Gaga paid extended, exhaustive tribute to him at the Grammys on Monday night; in the week following his death, there was a second line for him in New Orleans, a shrine outside his apartment in Tribeca, a series of farewells from his musical echelon, a million Instagrams, a segment on SNL." 

"[However,] On Twitter, a search for “David Bowie rapist” pulls up hundreds of people expressing combinations of anger, smugness, contrarianism, righteousness, and sincere conviction that the Grammys should not be celebrating him, that Tavi Gevinson should not be writing about him, the “rapist” description is primary and exactly right."
But orthodox Muslims and Jews may argue that the twitterati are misdirected and that Bowie and the nymphets should be admonished for fornication/adultery.

Lastly, here's what Sable's Wikipedia page relates:
[Sable] Starr first attended concerts around Los Angeles with older friends who had dropped out of school in late 1968. She lost her virginity at age 12 with Spirit guitarist Randy California after a gig at Topanga, California.[3] She had a younger sister, Corel Shields (born 1959), who was involved with Iggy Pop at age 11, although he was also acquainted with Starr.[4] Iggy Pop later immortalized his own involvement with Starr, in the 1996 song "Look Away":
I slept with Sable when she was 13,
Her parents were too rich to do anything,
She rocked her way around L.A.,
'Til a New York Doll carried her away…

Thursday, March 3, 2016

THE YOUNG ONE (1960): A Racist Rapes a [Teen] Nymphet



In Luis Buñuel's The Young One (1960), after he was falsely accused of rape by a white woman, Traver, an African American musician, fled the city, via a stolen boat, to a Carolina island that was inhabited by Miller, a racist beekeeper, and Evalyn (Key Meersman), an orphaned nymphet.

Initially, Miller attempted to capture Traver and hand him over to the racist authorities; however, Miller had a change of heart after Rev. Fleetwood discovered that Miller seized Evalyn's virginity.


Surprisingly, Evalyn was portrayed as being completely unaware of her sexual allure - even after Miller repeatedly caressed and attempted to kiss her and even after Traver warned the 13-year-old about the allure of a nymphet.


Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote in his review of the film, which he titled "THE YOUNG ONE: Buñuel’s Neglected Masterpiece", that the film wasn't well received:
"The New Yorker accorded Buñuel’s film a dismissive paragraph, the big Manhattan dailies were hostile, and, according to Buñuel, “A Harlem newspaper even wrote that I should be hung upside down from a lamppost on Fifth Avenue….I made this film with love, but it never had a chance. American morality couldn’t accept it. It hardly did any better in Europe and even today, it’s hardly ever shown.”"

However, despite the film's eroticizing of a nymphet, it was (unsurprisingly) nominated for a Palme d'Or and received a Special Mention at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. 

The Young One (1960) was loosely based on Peter Matthiessen's "Travelin' Man". 

And interestingly, Meersman played the seventeen-year-old wife of a middle-aged man in Arturo's Island (1962) [Italian: L'isola di Arturo].