The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People

by David Wallechinsky

  The tastes of England were not Isabel’s tastes, and Burton’s pornographic works were a constant source of anguish to her. After The Arabian Nights, he embarked upon yet another scandalous project, which he called “the crown of my life”: the translation of The Scented Garden, a 16th-century Arabian sex manual. Burton confided to a friend, “It will be a marvellous repertory of Eastern wisdom; how Eunuchs are made, and are married; what they do in marriage; female circumcision, the Fellahs copulating with crocodiles, etc.” It was about to be completed on the day of his death.

  As executor of his estate, Isabel was in an agony of indecision about The Scented Garden. Her inner turmoil was brought to an end when Richard suddenly appeared to her in a vision and clearly instructed her to burn the book. Thus, although she had been offered 6,000 guineas for it, she burned the manuscript page by page, saying that to have accepted the offer would have been equivalent to selling her soul for 30 pieces of silver. More important than the destruction of The Scented Garden was the tossing into the fire of Burton’s diaries, which spanned 40 years. Neither her friends nor posterity could forgive her.

  QUIRKS: When Burton was living in India, he once set up house for some 40 monkeys in order to study their “language.” The “prettiest” of the apes Burton called his “wife,” adorning her with pearls and seating her by his side at the table.

  MEDICAL REPORT: Dr. F. Grenfell Baker, Burton’s private physician, reported that Burton told him that his testicles had been severely damaged in an unspecified “accident” in East Africa, and that he had been sterile thereafter.

  —W.L.

  Thank Heaven For Little Girls

  LEWIS CARROLL (Jan. 27, 1832-Jan. 14, 1898)

  HIS FAME: Writing under the name of Lewis Carroll, mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson authored the two best-known children’s stories in the world: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

  HIS PERSON: The eldest son in a family of 11 children—7 of them girls—he showed early interest in the three subjects that would dominate his career: mathematics, writing, and divinity. He entered Christ Church College at Oxford at the age of 18 and stayed there for the rest of his life, teaching mathematics and logic and serving as a deacon.

  He maintained his health and youthful appearance well into his 60s. He was a shy person who stammered, although his stammer disappeared in the presence of children. He preferred the company of little girls and greatly enjoyed taking them on outings, during which he entertained them with fantastic stories. It was on one such excursion, on July 4, 1862, that Dodgson, inspired by 10-year-old Alice Liddell, created the tale that became known as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . Published three years later, it brought its author more fame than was considered proper for an Oxford don.

  LOVES AND QUIRKS: Lewis Carroll’s sex life was one big quirk, and that quirk was little girls. Although he undoubtedly died a virgin, he had over 100 girl friends. He didn’t care for little boys: “To me they are not an attractive race of beings.” To one correspondent he wrote, “I am fond of children (except boys).”

  At first he recruited his companions from the children of his friends, but later he expanded his horizons and discovered new child friends on the train, at the beach, or while out walking. He became a connoisseur of little girls, preferring them to be upper-class, fair of face and figure, intelligent, and energetic. He got along well with all girls up to the age of 10, although he thought 12-year-olds were the most attractive physically. Puberty ruined everything, and 9 out of 10 of his child friends disappeared from his life by age 16. Gertrude Chataway, one of the few who remained close to Carroll into adulthood, explained it thus: “Many girls when grown up do not like to be treated as if they were still 10 years old. Personally I found that habit of his very refreshing.”

  Carroll was an early amateur photographer, and naturally his best subjects were little girls. He often posed them in costumes, but his favorite costume was none at all. Apparently this hobby of photographing naked, prepubescent girls (though always with their mothers’ permission) led to some nasty gossip, because in 1880 he suddenly gave up photography.

  In the late 1880s he took to inviting girls to stay with him at his summer quarters in Eastbourne, and he loosened his age restrictions a bit. In a letter to Gertrude Chataway, when he was 59, Carroll wrote, “Five years ago … I ventured to invite a little girl of 10, who was lent me without the least demur. The next year I had one of 12 staying here for a week. The next year I invited one of 14, quite expecting a refusal…. To my surprise, and delight, her mother simply wrote ‘Irene may come to you for a week, or a fortnight….’ After taking her back, I boldly invited an elder sister of hers, aged 18. She came quite readily. I’ve had another 18-year-old since, and feel quite reckless now, as to ages.”

  It has been speculated that Lewis Carroll proposed marriage to Alice Liddell, but there is no proof of this, although Alice’s mother did angrily destroy all the letters Carroll had written to her daughter. It has also been suggested that he had an affair with the actress Ellen Terry, whom he first admired on the stage when she was 8 and he was 24. They did become lifelong friends, but in her autobiography she dismissed talk of a romantic involvement with the comment, “He was as fond of me as he could be of anyone over the age of 10.”

  HIS THOUGHTS: Carroll was very concerned about the proper age to kiss a girl. He wrote to one mother: “Are they [your daughters] kissable? … With girls under 14, I don’t think it necessary to ask the question: but I guess Margery to be over 14, and, in such cases, with new friends, I usually ask the mother’s leave.”

  In another letter he wrote: “Would you kindly tell me if I may reckon your girls as invitable … to tea, or dinner singly. I know of cases where they are invitable in sets only … and such friendships I don’t think worth going on with. I don’t think anyone knows what girl-nature is, who has only seen them in the presence of their mothers or sisters.”

  HIS ADVICE: “If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much.”

  —D.W.

  The Sorcerer

  CARLOS CASTANEDA (Dec. 25, 1925-Apr. 27, 1998)

  HIS FAME: One of the most prominent, most problematic and, perhaps, most profound figures of the consciousness expansion movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, Carlos Castaneda is famous for a series of books describing his training as a shaman under the probably fictional Yaqui sorcerer don Juan Matus. His bestselling works landed him on the cover of Time magazine, and inspired a generation in the use of psychoactive plants and the quest for altered and heightened awareness.

  HIS PERSON: Much of Castaneda’s life is shrouded in mystery and outright obfuscation—following instructions given to him by “don Juan,” and which he prescribed to his students as well. Castaneda invested considerable effort in erasing the details of his life as an exercise in overcoming the personal ego, making lying about his past into a spiritual exercise, and teaching his disciples to do the same. What is verifiable, often in contradiction to what Castaneda claimed about himself, is that he was born in Cajamarca, Peru, in 1925, the son of a jeweler, and immigrated to the United States in the 1950s. He was educated at UCLA (he garnered his Ph.D. in 1970), during which time he was known by faculty and students alike as something of a pathological liar. It was also during this time that he wrote his first three books, describing his apprenticeship under the sorcerer don Juan—a Yaqui Indian that Castaneda allegedly met while doing anthropological field work along the United States-Mexico border. “Don Juan” subsequently took Castaneda on as an apprentice brujo, beginning by “blasting” Castaneda’s hard-headed Western rationalism with psychoactive plants like peyote and jimson weed. Over the coming years, don Juan would mentor Castaneda in further magical disciplines—“dreaming,” “stalking,” ways to shift the “assemblage point” of consciousness and other aspects of the warrior’s path. Don Juan, Castaneda and, later, Castaneda’s many admirers and students had a
paranoid view of a “predatory universe,” haunted by creatures he dubbed “Flyers,” energetic parasites who vampirically feed on the awareness of the masses, making us into “cattle” and increasing the creatures’ power. Castaneda’s work with “don Juan” not only fulfilled the requirements of his Ph.D. but also garnered him international celebrity and many prominent admirers, including William S. Burroughs, Federico Fellini, John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates and Octavio Paz. While the anthropological world immediately called the existence of don Juan into question, the literary and art worlds (not to mention Castaneda’s adoring public) responded with a resolute “who cares?”

  SEX LIFE: Whether or not Castaneda’s magical worldview holds any veracity, what is clear is that he used his celebrity and mystique to surround himself with flocks of adoring female disciples for decades, the inner circle of which was subject to the full gamut of cult tactics. Carlos was 5’2”, and described himself as “short, brown and ugly,” though photographs show an attractive man. Thus, feeling inferior as a young boy, Castaneda listened to what he claimed was his grandfather’s sage advice: “You can’t fuck all the women in world, but you can try!” Castaneda claimed in public to be appalled by this, yet it was a rule he lived by in private. Long-term Castaneda companion and his supposed sorceric equal Carol Tiggs estimated that Castaneda may have been the greatest seducer in history, and that “Wilt [Chamberlain] had nothing on him!” In 1960 he married Margaret Runyon. He had gotten a vasectomy, but wanted a child, and arranged with a friend of the couple to impregnate his wife. Jeremy Castaneda was born, doted over in his early years by his father, and as he grew up, was cruelly rejected, ultimately being cut out of Castaneda’s will.

  While Castaneda’s public image was that of a sincere spiritual seeker and, later, a man of sorceric power and knowledge, in private Castaneda was a power-mad, paranoiac cult leader more than willing to justify any demands or cruelty imposed on his flock of female students by claiming it was for the good of their own development, regularly changing his magical rationales for his actions to suit his whim of the moment. Despite deception, cruelty and abuse, his truly magnetic personality kept his followers devoted to him for decades, all the way up to his death in 1998. Many of his inner circle, for whom he alternately filled the role of guru, lover and abusive father figure, committed suicide or went missing following his death. Despite his public claims of celibacy (which, conveniently, Castaneda’s male followers and seminar attendees followed diligently, leaving more for Carlos), Castaneda was dead-set on the establishment of his own sexual empire. Women brought into Castaneda’s orbit were often romanced and laden with spiritual flattery, given jewelry and other “magical” objects—given roles to play in Castaneda’s world, pitted against one another, told of their special magical status or otherwise subjected to the tried-and-true technique of New Age flattery. They were also encouraged to pimp for him, as an exercise in overcoming their “human” (a.k.a. bad) jealousy. The few male members of the inner circle had rare sex with the three most advanced “witches,” and any romance between group members was strictly forbidden. Amy Wallace, whose memoir of her involvement with Castaneda, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, My Life With Carlos Castaneda, recorded Castaneda’s seduction of her in detail, including his sex-magical claims that his sperm would alter her brain cells and make her a “witch,” a.k.a. a sorcerer. Despite her admiration for Castaneda’s teachings and their passionate love/hate relationship, Wallace believes Carlos was spearheading a cult. Castaneda’s lovers were allowed two roles—those of wife and daughter—and they were interchangeable, a situation made all the more disturbing by Carlos’ frequent boasts that his “daughter,” a teenage waitress he had picked up and given a high position in the groups’ hierarchy, had “seduced” him at the age of seven. Women were subjected to rigorous sexual deconditioning techniques—chief among them the practice of recapitulation, a nigh-endless task in which disciples would make a list of every person they had ever slept with, followed by every person they had ever met—in their entire life—and then meditate on breathing away the psychic toxins left by these interactions. Castaneda terrorized his female followers with tales of energetic parasites—which he called “worms”—left in their wombs by ex-lovers. Short of receiving Carlos’ sperm, women were recommended to accompany their meditations with seven years of celibacy. Presumably this would kill the worms, and they would never have sex again. Children, he believed, left a devastating “hole” in a woman’s energy body, making it practically impossible for her to become a sorcerer. He strongly encouraged the outright severing of relations with children and parents, siblings and friends to reclaim lost energy. The inner circle was under orders to do so—to reclaim lost energy. In one book Castaneda recounts a tale of don Juan convincing him to eat his own child (the waitress) which he does, after which it is revealed that it was only beef jerky, a test of his obedience.

  Carlos lived in a Spanish-style compound in Westwood, Los Angeles, with two close companions, his “witches.” He had a separate entrance, and snuck his lovers in to bathe their genitals in a magical potion of rosemary which grew in his garden, supposedly given to him by don Juan. Washing the genitals with this liquid was believed to further detox and purify the womb from poisonous human sperm. He believed almost all humans are incapable of experiencing sexual pleasure.

  Castaneda’s predatory universe, in which he said “fear was his guide,” justified his by-any-means-necessary approach to breaking into freedom. In that, he was not far from the taboo-busting behavior of Hindu tantrics, or the “crazy wisdom” of Tibetan Buddhist teachers like Chögyam Trungpa. Like many spiritual figures, however, Castaneda had convinced himself that he was a “nagual,” a kind of god—and he and his circle were the only people in the world who had access to true sorceric knowledge. In his mythos, they would burn together, spontaneously combusting, their bodies reforming on another plane, where they would begin their eternal travels in Infinity. Mere human death was seen as a shameful failing.

  Carlos died of complications from adult-onset diabetes and pancreatic cancer, and remaining cult members attempted to keep his death a secret. His body was cremated, and five of the top-ranking witches disappeared to commit group suicide, being unable to live without him. So far, only one body has been recovered, and a Missing Persons search is in progress. Remaining cult members have denied that the missing women planned a suicide pact.

  HIS THOUGHTS: “Man is being exterminated. There’s nothing of our own in our minds—we have flyers’ (the parasitic creatures) minds. pendulum-like, back-and-forth They make us morose, depressive; they fill us with kinky sexual thoughts—all masturbation comes from the flyers. And we don’t even like our own genitals! That’s the flyers, too. They make us frigid... And luhhhvvvveee... that’s the worst thing of all, human love. It’s a flyer trick, looking for ‘love,’ but we just replace one head with another, changing all the time! That’s not love.”

  —J.L.

  The Satyr

  GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO (Mar. 12, 1863-Mar. 1, 1938)

  HIS FAME: A controversial poet and politician during the Fascist era, D’Annunzio laced his works so heavily with vivid descriptions of sex and death that author Henry James labeled them “vulgar.” The eccentric writer, who was also Italy’s greatest WWI flying ace, will perhaps be best remembered as one of the founders of realism in Italian fiction. His works include The Innocent , The Flame of Life, and The Child of Pleasure.

  HIS PERSON: By the time he graduated from the Cicognini College in Prato, D’Annunzio, son of the wealthy mayor of Pescara, had published his first volume of poetry and earned a scandalous reputation as a Don Juan. Women found the handsome, muscular, 5-ft. 6-in. poet irresistible, and he engaged in hundreds of affairs during his lifetime, often using them as story lines for his novels.

  In 1883 he settled down long enough to marry Maria Gallese, daughter of the Duke di Gallese. Despite the fact that D’Annunzio continued his illicit affairs, Maria bore him th
ree sons in the next four years. D’Annunzio spent their income frivolously—on clothes, servants, and other women—until his lavish lifestyle forced him into bankruptcy. In 1910 he fled to France to escape creditors.

  When WWI erupted, D’Annunzio returned to Italy. In 1915 he enlisted as an aviator and was commander of the air squad at Venice; he gained recognition after flying a number of dangerous missions. His heroics cost him his left eye when it was struck by an enemy bullet. Undaunted, he led a troop of 12,000 “Arditi” into the city of Fiume in 1919, conquered it, and ruled the Italian town as a dictator for over a year. In reward for his vociferous support of Mussolini’s Fascist government, D’Annunzio was named Prince of Monte Nevoso in 1924.

  Surrounded by 100 servants and separated from his family, D’Annunzio lived out his final years at his elegant estate on Lake Garda. Obsessed with making his death as memorable as his life, he claimed he’d like to be shot from a cannon or die by having his body dissolved in acid. Undramatically, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage, while sitting at his desk, 11 days before his 75th birthday.

  LOVE LIFE: D’Annunzio, who considered himself a “high priest of erotica,” was a sexual maniac whose life and writings were guided by women. By age seven he had fallen in love for the first time. At 12 he was turned in to school officials for trying to guide the hands of a nun who was fitting his uniform toward his “private parts.” When he turned 16, D’Annunzio had his first woman, a Florentine prostitute, after pawning a watch to pay her fee.