The last mystery of Vidal

"In any country on Earth but the United States, people would understand this," he says. "For grown people, [sex] is something apart from living with somebody; it's just a disturbance." But people in the States "want total fidelity from the other person, and as much sex as they can get on the side. Preferably in a massage parlor. We are \o7not\f7," he says, turning for emphasis, "regarded as brilliant by other people."

It wasn't a marriage with Auster, nor a partnership. Vidal doesn't like to name what they were, just as he hates being pigeonholed as homosexual. No, they were Gore Vidal and Howard Auster, two men who decided to spend their lives together. "He's a private person," Vidal demurs. "There's not much to tell."

He must feel Auster's absence? "It was only 55 years," he says. "I don't know. It's.... Everyone handles it in their own way." He stares into a distance beyond the room. "I'm at the age where I'm asked to dinner parties with numerous widows and widowers, and they're all kind of cheery in a macabre kind of way. One illustrious lady said to me, don't you hate it when people tell you that time will heal all wounds? Of course I hate it. Time just reminds you of what is lost and not coming back again."

*

The old Hollywood

VIDAL shares the house with his Filipino cook, Norberto Nierras, while his 23-year-old assistant, Daren Simkin, lives in an apartment above the garage. He goes out very occasionally -- he enjoys, for instance, the acoustics and architecture of Walt Disney Concert Hall -- but mostly he stays at home. Work remains the constant throughout his days, as it always has been. He reads and writes in an upstairs study, where three windows look out onto swaying palm fronds; beyond, fancy cars speed too quickly around the curves. He prefers a typewriter or pen and paper to the computer, which he calls "that machine," but he respects the Internet and has published several political essays on his friend Robert Scheer's website, Truthdig.org. He rarely writes letters, because "practically everyone I know is dead." What friends remain do come calling fairly often. He abhors the telephone.