People Who Matter

Okay, I'm done now. Finished the book.

Oddly, the book is really two books: The first book is about this 19 year old girl who is thrilled to be involved in a straightforward sexual affair with John F. Kennedy and the second book is the book about the boring life she led after the affair.

And there is the problem: How do you top that wild, mad 18 months?

In a larger sense, it's the problem most of us have as we move through our 60's and 70's--we don't matter much any more, except to our kids or our closest friends.

Bill Clinton once said what he really liked about being a former President is he could say whatever he wanted to say without wimping around and worrying about the implications of each phrase; the only problem is, he noted, nobody cares what he says now.

I had a colleague, Bill, whom I eventually learned to like, from a very blueblood Philadelphia family. He had gone to Yale undergraduate, Penn for medical school and he would say things occasionally which would stop me in my tracks. Once, he was describing somebody he had known at Yale, a young man who was struggling to find his place in campus life, but his basic problem was, Bill said, he was "not a very important person." Bill said this with a twinge of real sympathy, pity almost, real feeling for this guy, who was not in the Social Register, whose family was simply put, in Bill's world, not very important.

And that's an amazing concept, when you think about it. The concept that some people are simply not important.

When I was a medical student at the very blue blood New York Hospital, on the chic upper East Side of Manhattan, the most downtrodden Bowery bum admitted through the ER was always, "Mr." So and so. We were taught by our Park Avenue faculty, there was no higher status than that of "patient." The attendings treated these people, the patients, with elaborate respect and we all got the message.

I don't know whether or not they still believe that at New York Hospital, which is no longer the same hospital, really, with new buildings and a new name, built over the old place, but I hope they still believe that, even if it's, in these days of Republican one percenters, a fantasy.

But Mimi Beardsley, that 19 year old girl is fascinating because she accepted the idea she was unimportant, that what was important was the world she had entered, and that made her interesting.

It's the same thing that put young men in fighter planes--the idea that I am not all that important, but what we do here, what I'm part of, does matter.

Comparing the President's mistress who spends her time having sex , with a young man who risks his life in battle over the English channel, saving Britain may seem absurd, but the common element is the sense of I am doing something which is more important than anything I'll ever do again.

But what do you do with the rest of your life, after you've had that intense experience?

The sad, and disappointing part of the book is watching Mimi trying to piece together an answer to that question. She details the demise of her first marriage; she outlines the weariness of her life after that marriage, her search for something worthwhile, and she claims to have found peace of mind.

But you can see the reveal. She is talking about her affair with JFK, she says, as therapy.

It's not therapy, it's living in the past.

It's seeking a better time and trying to recapture it.

Mephistopheles says, in Dr. Faustus, "The greatest sorrow is remembering happier times."

That's what you feel as you leave 1963 and live through the next five decades with Mimi and her secret. The sad thing is, she never found anyone she liked as much.