TimesOnline Reports
The ménage à trois seems, at first glance, to be rather quaint. It conjures images of Jeanne Moreau, with her two lovers in the film Jules et Jim, or Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir with their shared student lovers in Paris in the 1950s. As a way of life, it appears to have all but vanished: its conflicting passions seem out of date in this era of sexual freedom and gender equality.
Equality is the modern mantra for relationships, but there’s plenty of evidence to show that striving for equality can cause problems. How many of us have had some experience of being in a couple in which one partner tries to make the other more like him or herself? Usually this becomes a war of attrition, through which both parties ultimately reduce each other’s freedoms; one person surrenders and a regime of compromise, damage limitation and emotional management is established.
This scenario troubles me greatly as I’ve fallen foul of it many times. The hard-won “peace” can lead to boredom, the victor becomes tired of the person they’ve turned into a reflection of themselves and usually, at this point, one partner leaves to start the battle again with a new lover.
There is a radical alternative and it was one advocated by Simone de Beauvoir. She claimed that “there can be no equality between the sexes, only conflict” and believed that monogamy always led to adultery. Her ironic solution was to accept conflict rather than trying to eradicate it — to accept and welcome adultery into the home. Her ideal was to live within a ménage à trois; to fight daily with irreconcilable differences in an emotionally charged war-game of constantly shifting allegiances.
From personal experience I can honestly say that, crazy as it sounds, the ménage à trois might be a solution to the problems of contemporary relationships.
In 1993, I was 22 and a recent arts graduate, when I walked, quite by chance into a ménage. Carol, 30, and Jake, 44, were artists, bohemians and also my landlords — I lived in the flat above their home in Camden, North London. Jake had been a successful artist in the 1980s but had fallen out of fashion when the new Young British Artist scene took over.
Carol had been a muse for the older man — he’d made many paintings that attempted to capture her youth. It was clear to me, on moving in, that Jake’s star had long since faded as had their affections; they had been living on his savings, he drank excessively and had become boorish and resentful. He picked fights with Carol, claiming that she was becoming a “typical bourgeois housewife”.
She bitched at him and hated herself for doing so; she had never built a career of her own or had children, and was often resentful because of all that she had sacrificed for him. They were trapped in a stalemate, becoming equal in as much as they were denying each other joy and freedom. Their clothes had become grey with washing.
Jake and Carol were hungry for my attention. I spent long nights hearing Jake’s encyclopaedic theories on politics and art, I became the student of the older man, and perhaps in doing so accelerated Carol’s disillusionment with him and her desire to rebel.
He talked of the Surrealists, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Paris in the 1920s, of Anaïs Nin. All of whom, it is now well known, were engaged in long and historically significant ménages à trois. (The list of artists and thinkers who were involved in ménages in the last 200 years is revelatory and includes: Jack Kerouac, Paul Éluard, Émile Zola, George Eliot, Eugene O’Neil, Duchamp, Augustus John, Stanley Spencer, Marguerite Duras, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, D.H.Lawrence, and Nietzsche.)
Influenced as he was by so many, I do not think that Jake had consciously conceived the idea that his wife should seduce me. As with most ménages à trois, it started with adultery. If Jake taught me about art then Carol taught me the art of deception.
As the months went by and our liaisons became more frequent, we became more careless in hiding ourselves. Strange changes occurred within him; he reported one day that he and “the bitch” had started having sex again after a period of many stale years. Their fights did not abate but now led to furious lovemaking. His smile secretly thanked me.
Our ménage did not extend to “three in a bed” (the modern day “threesome” usually utilises a “disposable” third party and is not an ongoing commitment between three). In many of the most famous ménages, the long-term liaison with the third person is a known fact, which is nonetheless never discussed.
This was the case with Anaïs Nin whose husband Hugo was fully aware of her bed-hopping with Henry Miller but quietly condoned it because of the sexual and artistic awakening it had brought to his wife. Had the reality been forced into the open, it may have ended their marriage.
This was also the case with the ménage between Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Neal’s wife Carolyn. With Cassady’s permission and encouragement, Kerouac lived with Carolyn when Neal was touring. Whether Jack and Neal were also lovers is up for debate but certainly Kerouac was in love with Neal Cassady’s mind (he was the inspiration for the hero, Dean Moriarty, in On the Road).
It is clear from memoirs that their creative relationship-à-trois was never discussed. This secrecy is hard to grasp in our era of emotional transparency, personal accountability, the confessional and the talking cure. It is impossible to imagine the sort of trio in which Kerouac was involved sitting down with a relationship counsellor on a “level playing field”, trying to “iron out differences” in the name of equality.
No, for a mènage to flourish, everything must remain unsaid, there must be secrets and deceptions, all conflicts must be kept alive, inflamed, eroticised. Flying in the face of our modern values, it is not self-expression but the constant suppression of truth that is empowering.
Those who have more formally organised agreements are the exception to the rule. The example here is Henri-Pierre Roché, the author of the book upon which the film Jules et Jim was based.
In 1925, Roché lived with a married couple, the Hessels, and had an arrangement to have “weekends off” from his sexual obligations to Frau Hessel. Although musical beds took place on a rota, the tone of communications on the subject (revealed in Roché’s memoirs) was polite. “We shall stay at Fontenay and you shall also have a room to yourself,” wrote Herr Hessel to Roché.
Such an unspoken arrangement was similar to what I experienced. Even when Carol and I had slept together, it was agreed that she would creep back to Jake’s bed so that he could wake to see her face — this was part of our silent understanding, our “perverse equilibrium”. Any attempt I made at confession he waved away with a laugh. I knew that he knew and he knew that I knew he knew. And Carol smiled over us both.
Carol enjoyed the pretence at deceiving her partner and he was reinvigorated by having to fight for her attentions. Their musty old home had been transformed into a cauldron of competing energies, which then spilled over into their lives.
Carol started looking for work, radically changed her appearance and began shaping a future independent of “the old tyrant”; Jake in turn began experimenting with new ways of making art. As for me, although they drained me, I felt absolutely indispensable to their survival and the constant flexing of the emotional muscles brought a sense of personal strength.
It can be no coincidence that the ménage is linked to the ambitious and powerful. Voltaire and Rousseau were involved in their own liaisons-à-trois as they drew up the concepts of liberty and freedom. Comrade Lenin, François Mitterrand and Franklin D. Roosevelt, all had two women at the same time. Marx and Engels, both had wife and lover — Engels living with two sisters. It’s possible that the same energies of ambition and belief in change that fuel creativity are common to those drawn to politics, and that the ménage à trois is the natural home for such living forces.
Our ménage had to end, not because the pressures became too great but because the outside world had its own demands. I had been with Jake and Carol for almost nine months and was living on next to nothing, when an offer of work came up in Scotland. Jake refused point-blank to allow me to leave. He would reduce the rent to zero. He feared getting old, he said. Carol was scared of being left alone with Jake — things would regress, she would have to leave him. Even as I moved out, nothing was said of what had happened between us.
The ménage is certainly not for everyone, its demands are taxing and there are victims. Many now claim that the affairs of Sartre and De Beauvoir were exploitative, that their “third parties” were abused. Their lovers were certainly not treated as equals (ironic, as they were both Gauchiste radicals). To the modern mind, which advocates equality, fairness, and the avoidance of all conflict, this must seem utterly undemocratic — a tyranny of the passions.
Nonetheless, one must look at the many artists and radicals who were involved in ménages and acknowledge the power of the artworks and concepts that have been unleashed from living in such a way.
Sixteen years later I learned that both Carol and Jake have new careers, and a live-in lover. Their marriage has survived when nearly all those around me (apart from gay and lesbian couples) have failed. As for me, after many attempts at monogamous union, I find myself writing about the ménage à trois with a certain nostalgia.
A true ménage is a rare thing, and cannot be willed into existence. Who in their right mind would invite such conflict into their bedroom? Either someone very mad, very eccentric or very brave. Such people are rare in this time when everyone is striving towards that sameness that is called equality.
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LATIMES Reports
Los Angeles County coroner’s officials said today that they have looked into security breaches involving the investigation of Michael Jackson’s death, including hundreds of improper views of the pop star’s death certificate and the discovery of weaknesses in two other computer systems in which more sensitive records were stored.
At least a half-dozen coroner’s staff members were among those who inappropriately accessed Jackson’s death certificate, officials said today. Within two weeks of his death, the certificate had been viewed more than 300 times.
In some cases, staff members appear to have printed copies before it became a public record. Earlier this month, coroner’s officials warned employees to cease, cautioning that they had previously been admonished about the security hold on the Jackson case.
"There's only one person in the investigation of Mr. Jackson who needed to have a copy of the death certificate, and that was the investigator," said Craig Harvey, chief coroner investigator.
Harvey called any access of the Electronic Death Registration System for personal use “not appropriate.”
In a July 9 e-mail reviewed by The Times, a coroner’s captain told staff that future abuses of the system would result in disciplinary action. Staff members who had printed a copy of the death certificate were advised to destroy it.
Harvey said he learned that coroner’s employees were inappropriately accessing Jackson’s death certificate after he received a tip alleging that a funeral home employee created a fake death certificate for Jackson in the computer system.
Harvey did not uncover any fraudulent death certificate, but did discover the names of coroner's employees who had looked at the record even though they had no role in the Jackson investigation.
He said he had not contacted any law enforcement agency about the actions, saying he believed that internal rules had been broken, not any laws.
Death records in the EDRS system, which is state-supervised, can be accessed by anyone with a state-issued password, including employees at coroner’s offices, funeral homes, hospitals, and county and state registrar's offices. Users input information on death certificates that must be signed off on by doctors or coroners and made public by the state registrar.
Coroner's employees are supposed to look up cases "strictly in the performance of your official coroner duties,” according to the e-mail reviewed this month.
In addition to issues with the electronic access to Jackson’s death certificate, Harvey said that his office also had trouble securing two other computer systems in which they kept Jackson’s death investigation reports.
Investigation reports, which are not public records, typically are accessible only to investigators and other employees with office-issued passwords. Once employees log in, they can access others’ investigations — unless the reports are locked.
The investigator’s reports on Jackson's death were locked from the start, Harvey said, meaning access should have been available only to employees with the rank of captain or higher. Because of the high interest in Jackson, coroner’s officials took the added precaution of restricting access to only a few administrators. Harvey said the hard copy of the investigation was stored under lock and key.
Still, after the investigation started, they discovered vulnerabilities in the computer systems that might have allowed employees unauthorized access, Harvey said. He declined to say what those weaknesses were.
“We took extra steps to plug those holes,” he said.
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A day meant to pay homage to local rapper Trae the Truth ended in violence earlier today, when a shooting broke out on Texas Southern University’s campus, injuring several people.
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AllHipHop Reports
With Nas confirming and celebrating his first son’s birth during a performance in Queensbridge earlier this week, Kelis has disclosed her own official statement on the child’s delivery.
Representatives for the singer confirmed that Knight arrived healthy with no complications, despite a long labor period.
"Kelis gave birth to Knight Jones last night on July 22nd around 9PM,” stated publicist Tracy Nguyen. “Weighing a healthy 7.8lbs, the beautiful baby boy and his mother are doing wonderful. This was a natural birth and Kelis has been in labor since early Monday morning around 2AM.”
A normally joyous occasion had been marred by reports that Kelis barred Nas from seeing the birth of his son.
While the supposed ban was not confirmed nor denied, Kelis’ representatives did verify the Queensbridge legend was not present.
“Knight was delivered in a NYC hospital with her mother and sister in the room,” Nguyen stated. “This is the mother's first child.”
Kelis and Nas were scheduled to attend a court hearing regarding their divorce, which was filed by Kelis back in April 2009.
Recently, lawyers for both parties have been disputing matters of spousal and child support, along with Nas’ current income wages.
Lawyers for Kelis claim Nas has made over $11 million courtesy of his lucrative 2006 Def Jam contract, and request the rapper pay upwards to $20,000 a month in child and spousal support.
Attorney’s for Nas argue that those income figures are grossly inflated, and request the singer only receive a child support stipend of $5000 monthly, and involve the rapper fully in the child’s raising.
At press time, a rescheduled court date hearing is pending.
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AllHipHop Reports
Twista’s foray into independence has proven to be successful, as his sixth studio album Category F5 has landed at #1 on Billboard’s Top Rap Albums chart and #8 on the Top 200 Albums Chart.
Category F5 was the first release in a new partnership between Twista’s Get Money Gang Entertainment (GMG) and EMI Label Services and Caroline Distribution. '
EMI provides the promotion, press, online marketing, tour services and other duties for Twista’s GMG imprint, which is run and co-owned by Twista’s manager Rawle Stewart and Henley Halem.
"It really says something when you sell more independently than you do on a major label,” Twista told AllHipHop.com in a statement. “I really have the fans, EMI and radio to thank for this great accomplishment in my career. Times are changing and I'm glad I chose to partner with EMI to help form a new business model that benefits all parties involved especially the artist."
Twista’s album continues EMI’s hot streak with the Hip-Hop genre, as it’s the label’s fourth #1 debut Hip-Hop/R&B album in a row this year.
EMI Label Services notched #1 album’s with Trina’s Still Da Baddest, Ice Cube’s Raw Footage, Bobby V.’s The Rebirth and now Twista’s Category F5.
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AllHipHop Reports
Hip-Hop star Nas revealed the name of his new son during a concert last night in New York, just hours after Kelis gave birth to the child.
A visibly intoxicated Nas gave a performance yesterday in the Queensbridge Housing Projects, the housing complex that has reared a number of rappers, including Marley Marl, Craig G., Mobb Deep, MC Shan and numerous others.
“This is like the best thing ever,” a tipsy Nas said flanked by rap legend Luv Bug Starski. “My Son’s name is Knight. That’s what I named the young God. Yall heard it first. Don’t believe nothing in the media.”
In a recent viral clip featuring former Nas affiliate Cormega and Tony Yayo going on a "tour" of Queens, the G-Unit member quipped that "You don’t see Nas around here."
While not identifying the clip directly, Nas took time to light-heartedly address that and similar accusations made that he doesn’t visit his old neighborhood.
"We’re out here, like my n***as Lox say, with no security," Nas stated. "In my hood, this is my motherf**king hood. My hood, n***a! Trust that! But much love, this is a beautiful thing."
The drama between Nas and Knight’s mother Kelis also continued yesterday (July 21).
A source close to Nas released a statement to AllHipHop.com revealing that Nas was not allowed to witness the actual birth of his child.
“It was his intention to be there for the birth, but unfortunately he has not been allowed to be present,” a source close to the rapper told AllHipHop.com. “While this is clearly heartbreaking to him, Nas continues to offer his support and love to his new baby boy and his mother.”
Nas and Kelis were supposed to be in court yesterday for a hearing related to their pending divorce.
They have been married for almost four years. Kelis filed for divorce in April, citing irreconcilable differences.
The former-couple are now involved in a nasty court battle over spousal and child support. Kelis is seeking almost $20,000 per-month in child support costs.
Nas has already countered that amount with an offer of $5,000 per month.
A new court date in regards to Nas and Kelis’ divorce proceedings was not immediately available.
Nas is currently headlining the popular Rock the Bells tour. His collaboration project Distant Relatives with Damian Marley is tentatively scheduled for an August 2009 release.
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BallerStatus Reports
Jay-Z did a little overseas press recently, addressing a few hot issues including rumors that he blocked Chris Brown from landing a Michael Jackson tribute and Game's recent disses.
In the interview, which will debut this weekend on Tim Westwood's BBC radio show, Jay denied rumors that he had Brown's scheduled Michael Jackson tribute at the BET Awards canceled.
"That's the silliest rumor I've ever heard," said the rapper/businessman. "First, let me categorically deny that. That's not even my style. If I got a problem with Chris Brown, I got a problem with Chris Brown. I haven't said anything -- I haven't said anything live, or behind the scenes. Whatever. I don't agree with what he did, and that's it."
"That's a sucker move, I wouldn't do it," Jay added.
The rapper did not have anything bad to say about Chris Brown as the interview continued in the short preview clip, saying "all of us are flawed human beings."
Westwood quickly moved on to other controversy, changing the topic to The Game, who Jay-Z mentioned in a freestyle during a recent show in Las Vegas, spawning numerous disses from the Compton rapper during his overseas tour.
Jay-Z pointed out that he spit the line: "I'm not talking about Game," asking how it could be a diss. Then, laughed it off before closing with "Tell groupie to get over it."
He also confirmed that the next single off his upcoming Blueprint 3 album would be "Run This Town," featuring Rihanna and Kanye West.
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PerezHilton.Com Reports
The director of the now infamous "banned" Sprite commercial is speaking exclusively to PerezHilton.com!
Apparently, the backlash from releasing the spec commercial has resulted in some other works being taken down off the internet as well. The director, Max Isaacson, wanted to say his peace about his piece and we found it to be very interesting.
He says:
"At the heart of it all these spots were meant to exist as something of a social experiment. It went much better than I had expected. I wanted to do two things: first to make the spots, which I thought were pretty entertaining ideas; and second to release it to the world and see how many people would believe that it was real. I made sure to put under the description that they were spec commercials, but that seemed to have little import.
To be honest I just wanted to get a rise out of everyone. I was kind of knocked off my ass when I spent an hour reading on the Huffington Post about whether or not the ads were pulled because it was an interracial couple. I mean that's about five seconds of spray! How could it be real let alone banned for racial issues. One commenter said that they knew someone on the censorship board, and I didn't even plant that one.
We shot those spots for no more than three thousand dollars, total. The only thing we had to shell out for was the five foot tall Sprite can. The kitchen is my kitchen and the bedroom is my roommates. Everyone donated their services, and were awesome I must add, but this was as by the seat of my pants as it could be, but I guess if you tell a big lie long enough etc. etc.
I'm not really sure what else to say. I'm sad that the videos have been pulled so quickly, it's been something of a roller coaster day. I wish that everyone involved could have come to some kind of an accord, especially since there was no offense meant towards Sprite or the Coca-Cola corporation. C'est la vie, I guess.
I guess at the end of the day I just have to thank my lucky stars and get working on the next project. Who knows maybe I can make something else that will get people going as much as this did.
By the way, thanks for being one of the only sites to keep this online. Nice to know they're out there.
Thanks,
Max Isaacson"
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