Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon

But why am I writing about these catamites? I have never held nor aspired to high office, but I can tell you one thing: The end of an era is even worse than the end of a great love affair. In last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, there was a picture of Coco Chanel surrounded by eight of her beautiful models. It was taken in 1959 and I knew all of them except for Mademoiselle Chanel—as they all called her—but two of them had been very grand love affairs.

Mine were the two prettiest by far. The affairs took place four years apart, in 1959 and 1963. I was 23 and 27; they were 25 and 28. Both were married, and both marriages collapsed, but they were already cracked, as they used to say in Brooklyn. Both ladies were known as the most beautiful in the City of Light, which was renowned for its beauties. Both had that nonchalant grace for which American women are not known. Both were ethereal creatures who managed to retain their beauty to old age. (One is gone.)

Seeing the picture brought a kind of pain only sensitive souls such as the poor little Greek boy can feel, but it also reminded me of the void left by the disappearance of “heightened sensitivities and focused concerns.”

I never met Chanel, although she advised both of her girls to marry me—she told them Greeks are good fathers and love their children. (It had nothing to do with me, but rather my own father. She had asked them my age and if I had money, and both had answered that I did not but my father did; hence the advice.) In today’s world, where people are either asleep or online, I miss that wonderful Paris era when I was young and had a couple of Chanel’s girls at my beck and call.