with Paul Signac in Saint-Tropez, in 1904.

 Detail, copyright Bianca Dorso

I had initially hoped today's installment in this ongoing saga of our mutual friend Didier would be penned by a Guest Blogger who virtually needs no introduction, being the daughter of a titled father and socially prominent mother, known to you, Gentle Reader, as "Pam," although this is not her given name.  Oh yes, she shuns the limelight, the fame, the notoreity, the FaceBook and MySpace of it all, which latter she describes as "strictly for teens and queens."   But can we ever truly escape our past?  Can we deny the time when her mother, my former student, was the subject of a Page Six item headlined: "Italian Grand Prix Driver Scores Big with Sag Harbor Lawn Mower Heiress"?  

But that's another story entirely.

"It's better if you write it," Pam explained when we discussed the pros and cons of the matter.  "Knock yourself out in fact.  That way I still have deniability."

"Which no doubt is important to you in your position," I offered.  "But what about me?"

"Insanity plea is your best defense," she replied rather disparagingly.

None of which, of course, helps you, Gentle Reader, in learning more about poor Didier's so-called crimes.  For how, as I posed the question to Pam, can Youth and Beauty be Crimes?

"Easy," was her answer -- an answer, as you are doubtless aware by now, based on world-weary experience far in excess of her (ostensibly) tender years, chronologically speaking.  And I suppose it was something in my manner, some gesture or unavoidable facial tic or nervous expression in reaction to such a jaded, cynical view that prompted her to sigh and, on a certain level, even to relent.

"Look," she said, leaning forward in a conspiratorial pose, "escaping the past is precisely what we need to be focusing on here.  Because even if Didier failed to realize at first what his new friends did for a living --"

"And why should he have assumed the worst?" I interjected.  "Why should he, (like you, I wanted to say but resisted out of an old ingrained habit of common decency and good manners) -- why should he be so quick to condemn, so eager to think ill of ..."

I trailed off in the glare of her icy, unblinking disdain. 

"Fine," I conceded.  "So he didn't realize his friends dabbled in recreational drugs." 

She coughed theatrically.

"...which, okay, they happened to be selling --"

Another cough.

"...and the other illegal activities --"

A little choking sound and a cough.

At this point it may be helpful to point out (especially for those of you attentive readers who have followed Didier's story in blind items in the press and of course with regards to that issue of an international magazine devoted to the gay lifestyle whose cover he once rather nakedly graced, although inadvertently while still a minor), that these "friends" of Didier's were not, (are not) the ones he met in Paris who took him to Saint-Tropez where Didier ran into Pam and her father on the yacht of an important mutual friend who has a house on Lake Como where Didier had also previously spent some time; no, these are "other friends" if you will of whom, as will become clear, Pam took an especially dim view.

"Oh come on," I complained as she continued to feign a performance of someone needing the Heimlich Maneuver, "I don't see how he was supposed to figure out they were 'gun runners' or 'arms dealers,' or whatever you want to call them, afterall I think to be fair, Pam, that is really giving Didier rather too much credit --"

"How about," she countered, "THEY TOLD HIM?"

"Well, people say things all the time --"

"And he agreed to work for them."

"Look, I admit," I answered, "that, yes, fine, all right, it doesn't help -- it may in fact even seem somewhat incriminating -- that Dider theoretically took some money from individuals with unsavory reputations and --"

"Out of my way," Pam interjected suddenly and without warning, actually shoving my     hands     off      the  k e y b o a r d 

I'LL B L O G  THIS SHE EXCLAIMED HITTING THE CAP LOCK NO I SHOUTED BACK NO I WON'T LETYOU NOYOUCAN'TIT'S ALL LIESYOUDON'TUNDERSTANDYOUDON'TCAN'T

l     i     e     s    --- I   t r i e d    typing      a      l   l             l i e s