My Brief Affair With Marilyn Monroe

My name is Jack Hartley and for the first time I am sharing the truest account of my relationship with Marilyn Monroe, mainly because a love this strong should be an example to all lovers to come and for the additional reason that the seedy tabloid publication "Bizarre Love Tales" has offered me enough money to pay my rent this month.

So, where do I begin? I first met Marilyn in the summer of 1952 on the set of her then latest motion picture, "The Lady in the Pink Plaid Pajamas". In those days, it was obvious to everyone that Marilyn Monroe had a thing for me. Well, maybe not to everyone, but certainly to me.

The motion picture studio she was under contract to kept our love affair secret. The studio executives hated me!

It might have started when I accidentally put a cigarette out on Louis B. Mayer's sofa, which started a major fire that ultimately burned the MGM studios to the ground.

Or it could have been the time I escorted Clark Gable's wife to his dressing room, while he was in the act of making love to his nineteen-year-old hairdresser Denise. As a result of being surprised by his wide-eyed wife while in mid cop of his copulation with her, it caused him to suffer a major heart attack, which resulted in his death a few days later.

Their animosity for me might have started when I had her take a month off during the middle of a shoot in order to drive me around to job interviews at local convenience stores.

Whatever the reason for their dislike for me, I tried not to let it have any adverse effect on my relationship with her.

She often felt emotionally insecure in those days and needed constant reassurance. I just wished she got it from me instead of all the guys she slept with.

There was an innocence about Marilyn that was hard to put your finger on, even though many men tried.

Once, she met this Latin dance instructor, who was helping her with her choreography for the movie musical, "You Gotta Have Dick: The Story of Dick Tracy". In less than ten minutes, they were naked in bed together. The discouraging thing about it was, I was standing there at the time.

The closest I ever came to having full-blown sex with her...so to speak...was the evening I took her to our favorite restaurant for a dinner for two under the stars. You've probably heard of it; the place with the golden arches. We parked under their sign at closing time, while sharing a small order of fries. Suddenly and without notice, she rammed her hand between my legs. Afterwards I realized, she was just reaching for a French fry she had dropped there.

She thanked me proper for her meal by leaning toward me, pressing her breasts against my chest. Her lips were red and glossy, due to the grease from the French fries. As she started to kiss my neck, she moved my head back until it hit the driver's side window. From that position, I could read the sign that read over one million served. I innocently made the casual remark that I was probably the one millionth she had served. Suddenly, there was an uncomfortable silence for only a moment. Then she sat up, slowly adjusted her sweater, got out of the car and walked home.

I realized that I had made a major mistake that night. This was my big chance to have sex with her and I blew it. The trauma I felt from this incident has lasted my whole life and is the reason I don't take baths anymore.

I came up with an idea for a business opportunity that I pitched to her concerning coming out with her own line of casual clothes. I suggested we start off with a line of tight fitting blue jeans. She was not very receptive to my idea and didn't want to lend her celebrity status to the venture. I felt that she just couldn't see the big picture. So later that night, while passed out from drinking too much champagne and eating vanilla wafers, opportunity came a knocking. Quietly, I opened her purse and gently removed her checkbook. That night, our enterprise was born!

I called the tight fitting blue jeans, "Norma's Jeans"! I manufactured thousands of them for the inevitable rush of sales. Ultimately, I didn't sell a one.

One night, I had gone over to Marilyn's apartment for a romantic rendezvous which usually meant hamburgers and an episode of the popular television show, "My Favorite Alien". As I began to knock, the door suddenly flew open and there was Marilyn, holding a towel in front of her, wet and dripping onto the carpet. She must have just stepped out of the shower and was looking either mad or aroused, I couldn't tell. But since she was rarely aroused while looking at me, I'd have to say she was more than likely mad.

She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the apartment angrily and began pointing to her bank statement. She had figured out what I had done. After I had admitted my indiscretion, she proceeded to beat me like a red headed stepson. I was stove up for weeks.

Sometimes, late at night, I still remember that evening, when she expressed herself all over my bone broken body. I especially remember it on the nights when it rains.

At some point later in our relationship, she married a famous baseball player named Joe something or another. Since I promised to never leave her side, I made a nice home for myself in the crawl space underneath their house. I survived there with only a hot plate and a can of pork and beans. Since there was no place to plug the hot plate in, I only pretended to eat them. They were goooood, so good in fact, that I had the same can of beans over and over again in my imagination, before I started to pass out from malnutrition.

Sometimes when she was alone, she would bring me a sandwich and a glass of milk. Often, when her husband was not at home, I would come into the house and visit with her while she was taking a shower. She would insist that I take one too, so she would turn the hose on me in the backyard.

On one particular day, as she was stepping out of the shower, her husband came home unexpectedly. We were in their bedroom and could hear him walking down the hall only seconds away from discovering us together playing checkers. She shoved me under their bed just in time for him to open their bedroom door and see her sitting on their bed, clutching a towel in front of her. This of course, turned him on so he proceeded to have sex with her. This left me in an uncomfortable position of hearing him touch her, my Marilyn, my love, while at the same time, slamming my head into the floor every time they would bounce up and down on the bed.

Her life came to a sad and abrupt ending one fateful afternoon. I had come over to Marilyn's home after leaving my chicken-plucking job. She had not been married for several years and so I had her all to myself. When I got to her home, she was wearing my favorite outfit...nothing...and I wore slacks and a pull over shirt with feathers, a side benefit from my job.

She asked me to make her favorite drink, a Blue Bazooka which happened to be a specialty of mine. The key ingredient was a blue colored liqueur called Blue Curacao. She was fresh out, so I looked around the house for a substitute.

I found some blue Kool aid in a spray bottle underneath her sink and so I mixed up a couple of drinks and put them on a tray to serve her in the bedroom. The carpet was coming up on a spot in the doorway and I tripped, accidentally spilling one of the drinks. I gave her the remaining drink and told her to go ahead and I'd be back with another one.

By the time I got back to her, she was stretched out face down on the bed, her left arm dangling toward the floor.

Well, I knew she must be tired, so I poured out the remaining drinks, cleaned up the mess in the doorway and opened the window to let some fresh air in. I washed and put up the glasses and then slipped out the front door, locking it behind me. I went home for a nap and came back to see her later that evening.

As I pulled up to her house, I saw police cars and an ambulance outside her home.

Then suddenly, the paramedics carried out a stretcher carrying Marilyn's body! I couldn't believe my eyes! I wanted to run to her, embrace her lifeless corpse...and suddenly it hit me...was that Kool aid underneath her kitchen sink or window cleaner? I guess we'll never know.

As the years passed, there were dozens of theories attributing her death to various conspiracies and unsolved mysteries. I'd hate to confuse these speculations with the truth, so I decided to keep the cause of her death just between Marilyn and me. It would be our little secret.

THE END

Bio: Mark Edgemon is the owner of The Creator and the Catalyst Studio, providing production work for 700 radio stations nationally, broadcasting stations oversees and national spots for radio and television. Mark is also a scriptwriter and pens fiction, poetry, and non-fiction (reviews and other essays) in his spare time. His recent appearances in Aphelion include From the Balcony: Ice Age 3 - Dawn of the Dinosaurs 3D (film review, July 2009), Where Do Dark Times Come From? (poem, November, 2008), and audio comedy and fiction available in the Aphelion Forum. To hear a "radio play" version of this very story (with sound effects!), click here.

E-mail: Mark Edgemon

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