There was a woman who loved men. She just naturally gravitated to any man before she would even notice a woman.
She had a sweet smile and softly admiring eyes for all Y chromosomes. She dressed prettily in bright but gentle colors. If you got close enough she smelled faintly like baby powder.
She married young and had a daughter, but the marriage did not last. She married twice more. Her third husband left her for a one legged alcoholic. The blow to her ego at this last abandonment left her too a cripple.
She was sitting watching TV one night wondering where she went wrong when Theda Bara and Mary Pickford appeared in her living room. Then Mae West walked in. The woman was embarrassed. She didn't like to be surrounded by other women.
``What are you all doing here?'' she asked.
``We felt your pain,'' Mae West said. She winked.
``We thought you might like some advice,'' Mary Pickford said.
``What makes you think I need advice?''
Theda Bara blew a great cloud of smoke in her face.
``We felt your pain,'' she said with an eye brow raised as she stepped out her cigarette on the old rose carpet.
``They're like race horses. Dangerous. If you can't control them you're lost. Hardly worth the effort.''
``Be nice but keep your distance,'' Mary Pickford said, twisting a ringlet.
``Never ask more from a man than sex and money,'' said Mae West, adjusting her decolletage.
``You're full of it,'' the woman said, ``You're just a bunch of dead movie stars. What do you know?''
``A hell of a lot more than you,'' said Mae West.
Just then Marilyn Monroe climbed in through the window. She collapsed on the sofa between the woman and Theda Bara. She peered at herself in her compact mirror and tidied her lipstick with a little finger.
``They want to possess you,'' she sighed, ``then they want to destroy you. Then they don't give a dam...''
``All I wanted was to please them...'' the woman said.
``And look where it got you!'' said Mary.
The woman got out a bottle of tequila and they drank and talked far into the night and the stories of the men they had loved - and sometimes the women - piled up all around them. Tales of loyalty and perfidy, of tenderness and cruelty, of kindness and brutality.
By morning they were gone, the dead movie stars, leaving only the aroma of orris root, patchouli, Joy and Balkan Sobranie. The last words said still hung in the air.
``They make nice toys.''
The woman realized it was she who'd spoken them.