According to the source, Menendez and Kennedy (who is traveling) have yet to connect, but they are expected to do so imminently. The source also said Menendez is favorably inclined to the idea of Kennedy filling Clinton's seat, which was once occupied by her uncle Robert F. Kennedy, because he believes she has the capacity to tap into an extended network of influential and wealthy Democrats to raise money for a re-election campaign in 2010, and then again in 2012. If Kennedy were appointed, her candidacy would not be a burden on the DSCC, which is particularly important because New York is an extremely expensive media market, where campaigning costs millions.

David Paterson has already spoken with Kennedy about the Senate job, according to The New York Times.

Worth noting, and perhaps meaningful, is the fact that Paterson's former chief of staff and right hand man, Charles O'Byrne, is extremely close to the Kennedy family, though he was forced to resign from the Paterson administration recently because of a tax scandal. O'Byrne became a confidant of the Kennedys after befriending Stephen Smith Jr., the nephew of John F. Kennedy, in law school. When John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash in 1999, O'Byrne, who by then had become a Jesuit priest, led mourners in a funeral mass. O'Byrne has since left the priesthood and become a power player in New York State politics. There is much speculation that he is acting as the liaison between Kennedy and Paterson, who will appoint Clinton's successor.

But always walking one step behind Paterson now is his own éminence grise, Charles O'Byrne, an extremely intelligent, well-connected, tough and reclusive former Jesuit priest who as the governor's chief of staff will be one of the most powerful players in New York government. When the Spitzer governorship fell under the weight of the recent sensational sex scandal, Mr. O'Byrne became the gatekeeper of the new regime in Albany.

In a city of colorful resumes, Mr. O'Byrne's stands out. He abandoned a promising career in law to seek formation as a diocesan Catholic priest and, later, a Jesuit. At times, his chief parishioners seemed to be the Kennedy family, to whom he became a confidant after befriending Stephen Smith Jr., the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, in law school.

But within Jesuit circles, Mr. O'Byrne is the consummate "ambitioning prelate," who left the Order and the church and published a 4,000-word piece in a 2002 issue of Playboy in which he wrote about "the fundamental dishonesty of the church’s leadership."

"I became aware that there was sex all around me—including relationships between Jesuits," he wrote. "Seminary life was hypocritical."

That has earned him a good deal of resentment among Jesuits.

"His leaving was not good," one Jesuit priest, who would not allow his name to be used, said. "He left with a certain amount of contentiousness that left a lot of resentment on the part of Jesuits."

Pointing out that the three traditional vows of Jesuits are poverty, chastity and obedience, the priest said: "He was very ambitious, and that ambition sort of goes against our obedience."

And yet it served Cardinal Richelieu just fine.

Born in what is today St. Luke's Hospital in New York, to a father who taught in New York public schools and a mother who worked as a psychologist, Mr. O'Byrne, 48, spent his first years in Manhattan and Staten Island before moving to Oceanport in New Jersey at the age of five. He attended Red Bank high School, off the Navesink River on the Jersey Shore, and after graduating in 1977, he attended Columbia University, earning his degree in 1981.

During college, he took a summer job in the New Jersey Attorney General's office, and at 22, became acting superintendent of elections and acting commissioner of registration in Monmouth County. In 1984 he earned his law degree, also from Columbia, where he and Mr. Smith Jr. became good friends.

His first job out of law school was a corporate litigator for the white-shoe firm Rosenman & Colin, but after four years there, O'Byrne found a different vocation.

He briefly attended Saint John Neumann Residence and Hall, a sort of preparatory school for seminary under the Archdiocese of New York. The school usually acts as a training ground for potential seminarians who lack a college degree or enough philosophical or theological credits. Mr. O'Byrne, who majored in history with a concentration in the medieval and Renaissance periods at Columbia, and whom legislators have known to bring Aristotle into his political vernacular, seemed to have been ready.

Perhaps suspicious of his Ivy League pedigree, the school officials sent him to teach a year in the South Bronx. He did. He wrote about the experience in Playboy.

"During my training I taught at a Catholic girls' high school in the South Bronx," he wrote. "My students were streetwise. They were heroes to me, trying to make something of their lives against unbelievable odds. Most of them were sexually active, by their own accounts. At that time, the rate of HIV infection among babies born at Lincoln Hospital, a stone’s throw from the school, was increasing rapidly. I chose to do for my students what the nuns in my school had done for me. I told them that if they were going to have sex, to make sure they did it safely."

Despite, or maybe because of, his teaching in the South Bronx, Mr. O'Byrne was asked to leave the seminary.

In the article, he explained it this way: "I quickly learned some harsh truths. Many of my classmates in the New York archdiocesan system were exceptionally narrow-minded, and some were out-and-out bigots who made offensive remarks about Jews and Hispanics, among others, all the while offering pious phrases about Jesus. I protested, but nothing happened. I protested some more, and then told a friend what was going on. My friend wrote to John Cardinal O'Connor and urged him to investigate what sounded like officially approved hate crimes. With reason to fear a media scandal, the archdiocese pretended to discipline the seminary superior who had coddled the bigots, but in reality it merely shuffled him off to a cushy job. I was expelled from the seminary."

When asked for comment about Mr. O'Byrne's version of these events, Joseph Zwilling, the longtime spokesman for the New York Archdiocese, said: "His description of the people in the Neumann program and the program itself is certainly not consistent with the people I know in the program and the priests who emerged from it."

In any case, Mr. O'Byrne sought a different environment.

In 1989, he attended Saint Andrew Hall, the Jesuit Novitiate in Syracuse, for his primary formation as a Jesuit. Two years later, he followed the traditional path to formation by completing his "First Step" of studies at Loyola in Chicago, which he completed in just one year. For the Regency stage of his vocational education, which is essentially a break from studies to work in the field full time, Mr. O'Byrne accepted the invitation of the president of St. Peter's College to work as an assistant.

"Usually," said one Jesuit priest, "your regency work is teaching in a Catholic high school."

Rev. James Keenan, a pastor at the Nativity Parish on Second Avenue on the Lower East Side, who used to serve on the college's board of trusteess, said he remembered Mr. O'Byrne.

"He was very easygoing," said Fr. Keenan, one of the few Jesuits to describe Mr. O'Byrne as anything other than driven and ambitious. "He was interested in helping kids, he was interested in administration."

Fr. Keenan also remembered his prestigious friends.

"His contacts with the Kennedys go back to his school days," he said.

On the day a jury acquitted Stephen Smith's brother, William Kennedy Smith, of rape in 1991, Mr. O'Byrne, then a seminarian, attended mass with the family and spent the day in the courtroom.

Mr. O'Byrne went on to seminary at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge in 1994, and some Jesuits remember his time there as somewhat confounding. He was clearly brilliant, several Jesuit priests said, and determined and a hard worker. But he seemed to some too eager to please.

"When he was up at Weston, he had the reputation of being part of the orthodoxy police, theologically, making sure the teachers were really teaching the party line and all that stuff," said the Jesuit priest who had characterized Mr. O'Byrne as ambitious. "Charles was seen on that part of the culture wars."

While Mr. O'Byrne seemed to take to the conservatism that swept American Catholicism under Pope John Paul II, he also kept one foot in the secular world. Even as he double-majored in two theological disciplines at Weston, he worked as a popular teaching fellow at Harvard University with Robert Coles, the Pulitzer-prize winning author and child psychiatrist of the series of books "Children of Crisis," and acted as Harvard Law School's chaplain.

After completing his studies, he returned to New York, where he served as a deacon at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan and worked towards a PhD at Columbia in American history. In 1996 he married JFK Jr. to Carolyn Bessette in South Carolina.

In 1996 he was ordained a priest. His supposed orthodoxy to the priesthood did not last long. After doing assorted parish work, and then, in 1999, leading mourners in a funeral mass for John F.Kennedy Jr. after he died in a plane crash off Martha's Vineyard, he left the order. He apparently investigated but ultimately decided not to apply for the process of incardination into the New York Archdiocese.

"We do not discuss or confirm or deny matters involving individuals and priests or personnel decisions," said Mr. Zwilling.

Within about five years of his ordination, he had removed his collar and left the priesthood.

"Charles O’Byrne entered the Society of Jesus as a novice in 1989 and took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as a religious in the Society of Jesus in 1991," said Thomas R. Slon, a Jesuit priest with the New York Province of the Society of Jesus. "He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1996. Having declared his choice to leave active ministry, he received a Decree of Dismissal from the Society of Jesus in 2002.

But the door Mr. O'Byrne slammed behind him – in the form of a tell-all about sex and vice in the church for Playboy magazine -- rattled the Jesuit community.

In the Fall of 2002, O'Byrne worked on his memoir, never published and apparently a longer version of the piece that ran in Playboy. A year after leaving the Jesuits, he became an Episcopalian.

After a long hiatus, he returned to politics, joining the Howard Dean campaign in the summer of 2003 as a researcher, policy director and speechwriter.

"There is not a pressure cooker in any walk of life like working on a presidential campaign," said Ethan Geto, who ran Dean's campaign in New York and hired Mr. O'Byrne. "He was extraordinary."

"He was one of the few naturals in politics I have ever met," said Mr. Geto. "That was his first real job in politics. I think his background prepared him in one critical way: Charles is extremely empathetic. He can really put himself in the shoes of another human being, he is very comforting, centered and spiritual. I'm sure that had a lot to do with him having been a priest."

It turned out that not even a former priest could save the Dean campaign, and Mr. O'Byrne was forced to look for work again. He volunteered his time for adult educational programs at St. Bart's in Midtown, and St. Luke's in the West Village. Eventually, he caught wind that Paterson, then in his second year as Senate minority leader, was looking for hires. He joined as a speech writer, and climbed the ranks to become communications director and then deputy chief of staff.

On November 14, 2006, Paterson appointed Mr. O'Byrne his chief of staff in the Lieutenant Governor's office.

And on Monday March 17, when Paterson is sworn in, the new chief of staff to the governor of New York will be close at hand.

Aside from admitting her excitement over Wire magazine and the then-forthcoming magazine George, which was launched by the late John F. Kennedy, Jr., she speaks of “an underground German designer named Helmut Lang” and a new designer out of Italy, Miuccia Prada.

The magazine industry may have changed a lot over the last decade, but fashion, it seems, has not. Whereas the style gap between 1985—think: neon, shoulder pads, enormous coifs—and 1995—think: earth tones, loose fits, greasy locks—is alarmingly vast.

“The look that we’re seeing across the board is very grown up,” Ms. Wintour, then 45, said. “A lot of designers are calling it ‘reality check.’ I think we’ve moved on from feeling very sorry about the 80’s, when we weren’t into grunge and depression and all-black and no makeup and no eyebrows.” She goes on to say that the season’s aesthetic is all about “wearability” and being “classic” and “chic.”

Sound familiar? Perhaps that’s because fashion journalists like the Times’ Cathy Horyn continue to describe new and future trends with words and phrases like “sophistication” and “the appeal of more womanly clothes.”

It’s also safe to assume that the qualities Ms. Wintour seeks in a prospective employee haven’t changed much either. After all, she told Mr. Rose: “I’m always looking for people with a sense of news and a sense of journalism, because I don’t think a magazine can be a kind of coffee table book,” Ms. Wintour continued, “One’s always looking for young people who are willing top push the envelope and who are willing to tell you you’re an old fuddy-duddy.” Ha! For some reason, imagining a Vogue staffer calling Ms. Wintour a fuddy-duddy to her face is supremely difficult.

The heat-softened plastic flowers, the withering balloons and the sightless stares of the teddy bears made me lose my appetite and feel faint. Who had placed these tokens there? Certainly not anyone who really knew the Kennedys or Bessettes. These offerings had been left by persons who wished to be connected to this event, who felt elevated by presuming this closeness to a famous family.

When did the misappropriation of mourning begin? Grieving was once a dignified condition—with privacy respected, seclusion secured. If I wrack my now tragedy-strained brain, I think the truly massive funerary gifts from strangers began in shrink-wrapped earnest with the death of Princess Di. I recall a telescopic long shot: acres of cellophane-wrapped bouquets, spread, rotting on the ground, then, later, the tales of mourners wading into her memorial pool, clogged with more “offerings.”

On the home front, I can conjure another disturbing, precedent-setting scene: the death site of Susan Smith’s two little sons, the ramp into John D. Long Lake in Union County, S.C., where Ms. Smith drowned her toddlers in their car seats. I was stunned to see the greeting cards and teddy bears piling up on this death pier. Television news showed these “mourners”—parents whose outrage had led them first to a Toys “R” Us, and then to the dock. What did this accomplish for two small boys who died? Was this a contemporary and egalitarian update of the ancient Egyptian belief that possessions might accompany the dead pharaohs? Could the purple plush Barney travel into eternity with Ms. Smith’s sons, acting as a stuffed sentinel into the afterlife?

In a moment on live TV, a man who had driven some distance was shown, yanking his own child to the death scene. I wondered if this wasn’t more severe a lapse of taste than ordinary rubbernecking? Why would someone go out of his or her way to pay such “tribute?” Did they wake up and say, “Hey, let’s go to that ramp where the mother rolled the car with her children into the water?” I had the thought—perhaps unfair—that the father had some dark impulses of his own, and he was expunging these urges through sanctimonious voyeurism. I could not regard this man as much “better” than Ms. Smith, who had at first sniffled on national TV to “find whoever took my children and bring ’em back.” She uttered the usual tearful pleas with a tinny insincerity that matched the cheap toys laid to rest on the dock.

The only innocents in the Susan Smith drama were the dead boys. The mourners—save those who really knew the children—struck me as emotional accomplices after the fact. Who, after all, sees the news and thinks, “Now I must run out and buy teddy bears to place at the spot?”

Yet these forensic “presents,” teddy-bear and floral placements, are now commonplace. The line between personal and public has been erased, as a talk-show audience nation has pre-empted the lives and deaths of anyone in the media for whatever reason. The grisly pleasure taken in this behavior is barely disguised. When the now-famous runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks turned up alive in Georgia instead of in the predicted culvert, the townspeople seemed outraged: The public displays of mourning had already begun, and there was a community rehearsing for her funeral. Her fiancé had the grace to welcome her home, but most of the town looked enraged. Not, I might venture, at the wasted expense of searching for her corpse, but at the disappointment in not having a corpse for a final vigil. The accustomed rhythm—search, ribbons, corpse, teddy bears—had been disrupted.

In the past few days, I was also troubled by a radio interview with a woman who was commenting on the death of a high-school hero in Iraq. She was busy manufacturing yellow ribbons. She was so busy with those ribbons that the true loss of a young life seemed a loose end. The industry of ribboning had wrapped up the grief process and tied the final bow of justification on the war that killed the boy.

In contrast, Cindy Sheehan, the “Peace Mom” who refuses to accept Presidential platitudes, is demonstrating an earned, and genuine, way to mourn—and also to channel her inconsolable loss into a meaningful action against the forces that killed her son. She is the personification of true feeling, as opposed to sentimentality.

Now, as mass tragedy engulfs us on several fronts, the magnitude may wash away much of the falseness that has taken over as a national habit. In New Orleans, death became mundane: “Turn left at the corpse.” Perhaps this pragmatism more accurately depicts the state of involvement of most strangers on the scene. In a sunken mass grave, there is no way to float kitsch.

With so many to mourn, it may be time to return to appropriate response, and acknowledge that flowers, poems and gifts are the province of the bereaved. In our accelerating new Dark Age, while we grieve for so many lives lost, we may also mourn grief itself.

When did the misappropriation of mourning begin? Grieving was once a dignified condition—with privacy respected, seclusion secured. If I wrack my now tragedy-strained brain, I think the truly massive funerary gifts from strangers began in shrink-wrapped earnest with the death of Princess Di. I recall a telescopic long shot: acres of cellophane-wrapped bouquets, spread, rotting on the ground, then, later, the tales of mourners wading into her memorial pool, clogged with more “offerings.”

On the home front, I can conjure another disturbing, precedent-setting scene: the death site of Susan Smith’s two little sons, the ramp into John D. Long Lake in Union County, S.C., where Ms. Smith drowned her toddlers in their car seats. I was stunned to see the greeting cards and teddy bears piling up on this death pier. Television news showed these “mourners”—parents whose outrage had led them first to a Toys “R” Us, and then to the dock. What did this accomplish for two small boys who died? Was this a contemporary and egalitarian update of the ancient Egyptian belief that possessions might accompany the dead pharaohs? Could the purple plush Barney travel into eternity with Ms. Smith’s sons, acting as a stuffed sentinel into the afterlife?

In a moment on live TV, a man who had driven some distance was shown, yanking his own child to the death scene. I wondered if this wasn’t more severe a lapse of taste than ordinary rubbernecking? Why would someone go out of his or her way to pay such “tribute?” Did they wake up and say, “Hey, let’s go to that ramp where the mother rolled the car with her children into the water?” I had the thought—perhaps unfair—that the father had some dark impulses of his own, and he was expunging these urges through sanctimonious voyeurism. I could not regard this man as much “better” than Ms. Smith, who had at first sniffled on national TV to “find whoever took my children and bring ’em back.” She uttered the usual tearful pleas with a tinny insincerity that matched the cheap toys laid to rest on the dock.

The only innocents in the Susan Smith drama were the dead boys. The mourners—save those who really knew the children—struck me as emotional accomplices after the fact. Who, after all, sees the news and thinks, “Now I must run out and buy teddy bears to place at the spot?”

Yet these forensic “presents,” teddy-bear and floral placements, are now commonplace. The line between personal and public has been erased, as a talk-show audience nation has pre-empted the lives and deaths of anyone in the media for whatever reason. The grisly pleasure taken in this behavior is barely disguised. When the now-famous runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks turned up alive in Georgia instead of in the predicted culvert, the townspeople seemed outraged: The public displays of mourning had already begun, and there was a community rehearsing for her funeral. Her fiancé had the grace to welcome her home, but most of the town looked enraged. Not, I might venture, at the wasted expense of searching for her corpse, but at the disappointment in not having a corpse for a final vigil. The accustomed rhythm—search, ribbons, corpse, teddy bears—had been disrupted.

In the past few days, I was also troubled by a radio interview with a woman who was commenting on the death of a high-school hero in Iraq. She was busy manufacturing yellow ribbons. She was so busy with those ribbons that the true loss of a young life seemed a loose end. The industry of ribboning had wrapped up the grief process and tied the final bow of justification on the war that killed the boy.

In contrast, Cindy Sheehan, the “Peace Mom” who refuses to accept Presidential platitudes, is demonstrating an earned, and genuine, way to mourn—and also to channel her inconsolable loss into a meaningful action against the forces that killed her son. She is the personification of true feeling, as opposed to sentimentality.

Now, as mass tragedy engulfs us on several fronts, the magnitude may wash away much of the falseness that has taken over as a national habit. In New Orleans, death became mundane: “Turn left at the corpse.” Perhaps this pragmatism more accurately depicts the state of involvement of most strangers on the scene. In a sunken mass grave, there is no way to float kitsch.

With so many to mourn, it may be time to return to appropriate response, and acknowledge that flowers, poems and gifts are the province of the bereaved. In our accelerating new Dark Age, while we grieve for so many lives lost, we may also mourn grief itself.

There's no inheriting a writing gene. When parent and child both write brilliantly it's a fluke, or else we'd be overrun by Martin Amis types. (Maybe there is a master plan, after all.) Instead of literary dynasties, we get a parade of famous writers' kids who try to match or outdo their progenitor, and fall short. So I was intrigued by the idea that Saul Bellow's son was writing a book about nepotism. A great writer, heaped with honors, can pass along all kinds of advantages to his or her children-but not the talent that made the parent great. My hope was that as the beneficiary of such a poignantly incomplete legacy, Adam Bellow could give us a nuanced account of nepotistic advantage and the burdens that accompany it.

No such luck. Mr. Bellow's In Praise of Nepotism is not just badly written but also shallow, boring and sloppy. A former editorial director of the Free Press known for publishing conservative authors, Mr. Bellow approaches his subject with all the sparkle and elegance of a burnt-out junior-high civics teacher. How did he manage to begin his book with a recap of the Presidential election of 2000-which started out as nepotism run amok and ended up as something altogether more sinister-and yet not generate even the faintest shiver of drama or tension? If his lumbering project has a purpose, it's to legitimize the Bush dynasty by poring over nepotism's ancient pedigree and pointing out its persistence. But curiously enough, Mr. Bellow's book-length justification of the system that has allowed W. to triumph and the Bush family to leave so many indelible marks on our nation ("precisely the kind of nepotism of which this country needs, not less, but more") sounds less like Bush-speak than Albert Gore Jr. on the stump, dazing us with his "oppressively earnest sobriety."

Mr. Bellow claims that In Praise of Nepotism is "not a polemic" and "not a contrarian attempt to defend an unpopular practice." (Really? Then why the in-your-face title?) The subtitle is "A Natural History." That's a dodge meant to invoke evolutionary biology, and to deflect attention from the polemical undercurrent. Nepotism, Mr. Bellow insists, is "natural." He offers a few pages of unimpressive pseudo-scientific theorizing (all of it borrowed-"I make no claim to original scholarship") about nepotism as evolutionary strategy. Then he banishes us to faraway lands long ago (caste in India, clans in China, Augustus Caesar, the Borgias, Napoleon, the Rothschilds). He's pushing something like history, though actually it's just an endless stream of anecdote-imagine Simon Schama lobotomized. Occasionally Mr. Bellow appeals to "nature." Which makes the book a natural history-get it?

Almost 250 pages into the book, Mr. Bellow lands on Plymouth Rock, and from there he trudges forward, sketching nepotistic practice in America from the Puritan era to the late 20th century. Though he devotes a 48-page chapter to the Roosevelts and a 44-page chapter to the Kennedys, he ignores the Bushes entirely-the opening glimpse of W. locked in electoral combat with his nepo-nemesis Al was apparently just a teaser. Mr. Bellow perhaps realized that a rigorous examination of the Bush dynasty would scupper his argument, which is that nepotism has changed, and that the New Nepotism has adapted to meritocracy, that in fact it improves meritocracy ("the return of the hereditary and dynastic principle in the heart of the American elite represents a valuable corrective to the extreme tendencies of meritocracy itself"). "In short," Mr. Bellow sums up, "nepotism works, it feels good, and it is generally the right thing to do."

Darwin and Freud are the intellectual godfathers of this enterprise (nepotism is an "instinctual drive" that's been "psychologically sublimated"), but Mr. Bellow seems uncomfortable with ideas in the raw, and moves on in a hurry to his litany of anecdotes about how families everywhere have always tried to get ahead. Later, when he's in summary mode, we get sentences like this: "Under the impetus of their demanding father, the Kennedy family became a roaring turbine of sibling competition, reflecting the sublimation of erotic and aggressive drives in the socially useful pursuit of power and status." The problem with sociobiology (and, notoriously, with Freudian theory) is that it equips the layman with jargon that helps speculation sound like scientific fact. "There seems no doubt," Mr. Bellow writes, "that human beings were massively selected for nepotism because it was, in simple reproductive terms, a highly adaptive behavior." But evolutionary biology doesn't really explain anything if you're vague, as Mr. Bellow is, about what's "natural" and what's "cultural" in human behavior. (Freudians, similarly, can't afford to be vague about how exactly "sublimation" works.)

The real problem with In Praise of Nepotism is not with the head, but with the heart. Among the hundreds of examples Mr. Bellow relentlessly supplies of fathers and occasionally mothers pushing sons and occasionally daughters, there's barely any recognizable human interaction. Though he assures us that nepotism "feels good," he never shows us the flush of emotion that turns the family romance into a bodice-ripper. His anecdotes are hopelessly flat and colorless. Not everyone can write a dry account of the Borgias, or produce a stale summary of the Kennedy saga-but it takes an extra-special talent to begin a one-paragraph summary of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane crash-shortened life with the observation that he was "no high-flyer intellectually."

I suspect that this book will have the opposite of its intended effect. Anyone who reads it all the way through is likely to be permanently disgusted with nepotism-even with the New Nepotism-and thoroughly disinclined to "get over our ambivalence about the 'return' of dynastic families." If the ascendancy of George W. Bush represents an improvement on meritocracy, then give me the old-fashioned kind. And if the sons of Nobel Prize–winning novelists write this badly, it's time for publishers to start paying more attention to unsolicited manuscripts.

Adam Begley is the books editor of The Observer.

I got my first haircut at Michael's, and every haircut after that until, at the ripe old age of 16, I finally rebelled. Haircuts in my family were traumatic, psychologically scarring events. The fault lay not with Mr. Michael, as the salon's owner was called, or with his No. 2 man, Mr. Gay, both of whom gave a competent haircut. The problem was my mother.

First, there was the hair style she'd invented for us. It was like nothing that existed in nature, or even in science fiction. Well, maybe science fiction: It sprung from her fertile imagination like that creature in Alien . The easiest way to describe it is as a crewcut, a Marine buzz cut-except that my mother, God forbid, would never let anything as proletarian as a razor near her four sons' tender heads.

Instead, she insisted that we be trimmed to a state of virtual baldness-except in the front, where we all sported Tom Sawyer–like cowlicks-with a scissors. To keep our hair just so required that we visit Michael's religiously every two weeks. And since my parents were apparently under the impression that the only way to cope with four boys was to treat them like military cadets, or rather prisoners of war, we all had our hair cut on the same afternoon every other week. And by the same barber.

At first it was Mr. Gay, a pleasant man with a business-like mustache-until he crossed my mom. From the age of 3 until I was 8 or 9, no one but Mr. Gay was allowed near my hair. Until suddenly one day, without explanation, my mother dropped him for Mr. Michael. It was disorienting for a child, to say the least. So much importance did my mother attach to our appearance (and to our hair in particular), and so completely were we Mr. Gay's customers, that it was hardly less significant than if she'd just filed for divorce from my father.

I recently asked her why we abruptly switched from Mr. Gay to Mr. Michael, a sweet-natured opera buff with the world's bushiest eyebrows, who ran the salon from Chair No. 1. At first my mother denied we'd ever patronized Mr. Gay, so utterly had she banished him from her memory. Eventually, she admitted there must have been some falling out over hair.

It's coming back to me now, almost as if retrieved by hypnosis. Mr. Gay, who seemed like a decent enough guy, eventually balked at clipping our heads with a scissors. Since the final result was hairlessness, he didn't see why he couldn't save lots of time-not to mention his mental health-by simply plugging in a razor.

I was on his side. I can't exaggerate the exhaustion for all involved in going to Michael's. It was like getting your own hair cut four times on the same day. After I was through, I'd have to wait while my brothers got their hair cut, my mother standing over the barber the whole time. The comic books and lollipops helped. But by the time my youngest brother Jamie slipped out of the barber's chair with his crewcut, I was crawling the walls.

We spent so much time at Michael's that historic events transpired while we were there. The great blackout of 1965 occurred during one of our biweekly visits. Unfortunately, the lights didn't go out until our haircuts were finished and we were leaving. Not that that would've made any difference: My mother would've simply insisted that Mr. Michael complete the job, to her specifications, by flashlight.

This form of child abuse went on until June 1969, when I'd just turned 16 and my mother sent me off on one of those eight-week, cross-country "teen tours." She didn't realize the far-reaching consequences it would have, for both my hair and our relationship. If she'd known, I'm certain she'd have forbidden me to go.

Suffice it to say that I wasn't popular with the young ladies on the trip, at least not at first. When it's the Age of Aquarius and you're a 6-foot-2, 125-pound hairless geek, you aren't going to attract women whose idea of handsome is Paul McCartney. I was stuck sharing hotel rooms with all the other losers on the bus because nobody, not even my cousin, would room with me.

But something miraculous happened during the journey. My hair started to grow. And since I was on a bus crossing the country, there was nothing my mother could do about it. The longer my hair got, the more socially acceptable I became. Halfway through the trip, the coolest guy on the bus-a rock musician who attended an alternative high school in Newton, Mass.-decided I was hip, or at least unconventional, and became my roommate, bless his heart. He remains a friend to this day.

By the end of the vacation, my hair was almost normal length, and under his tutelage I was considered cool, too. I even started having girlfriends. But I knew full well that this fantasy would soon end and I would be delivered back into the clutches of my mother and her evil scissors.

So I had everybody on the bus sign a petition pleading with her to leave my hair alone. I delivered the document to her in Italy, where I joined my family after the teen tour ended. Predictably, she almost dropped dead when she saw my hair and insisted that I get it cut immediately. I agreed-on the condition that it remain a reasonable length.

She concurred. But I should have known that when it came to hair, my mother had no scruples. She was ruthless: As soon as I was seated in the barber's chair, she kept instructing the barber, " Piu corto , piu corto "-shorter, shorter.

I didn't catch on until it was too late. When my haircut was finished, it looked exactly as it had before I'd departed on the trip. No longer a cool teen, I was a heartbroken pinhead once more. To punish her, I wore a hat everywhere, even to dinner at fancy restaurants in the sweltering heat of the Italian summer, and I never again let her near my hair. I also never went back to Michael's.

The tragic thing is that by the time I finally got to wear my hair the way I wanted, in college, it was already starting to fall out.

Now, Michael's is a Face Stockholm makeup boutique. I suppose there's some poetic justice there. It's one of my daughters' favorite stores, a place where they love to try on lip balms and blushes and where they're free to experiment with their appearance. If I'd had that chance at 14-I don't mean being allowed to wear makeup, but sporting the same bowl cut as J.F.K. Jr. and all the other guys-who knows how nicely I might have turned out? I guess it's never too late to consider a hairpiece.

voguish theater companies, but what he's really good at is positioning himself.

In his two decades in Manhattan,

Mr. Merrill has perfected the Art of Proximity. He's one of

those people who's always in the luminous orbit of one rich or famous

person or another-but who does so without guile or sycophancy. Although Naked

Angels, the theater company he co-foundedin1986-which featured Sarah Jessica

Parker, Matthew Broderick, Gina Gershon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Rob Morrow

and Fischer Stevens, and had the late John Kennedy Jr. as a board member-is

basically defunct, he has stocked his latest theater troupe, Urban Empire, with

the sons and daughters of the rich and famous: actors Rob Kravis (Henry Kravis'

son), Daniella Rich (Marc and Denise Rich's daughter) and Linda Powell (she

calls the Secretary of State "Dad"). Board members include Norman Mailer's son

Michael and David Niven's granddaughter Fernanda.

Needless to say, most nights he's out.

"I get invited a lot of

places; I've always been lucky that way," the 37-year-old Mr. Merrill said. "I

think I'm easy . There are famous

actors who always say, 'I just showed up on time.' That's what I do. People

invite me, and I show up and look nice and I don't complain. And I appreciate

it and I have fun! Then you get invited back. I am extremely grateful, constantly grateful."

"He's one of the poorest guys I know who lives the lifestyle

of the rich and famous," said actress Nancy Travis, who's known Mr. Merrill

since college. "He's always calling me to tell me, 'Well, I just came back from

Aspen,' or 'I'm off to so-and-so,

and I'm going here, and I was just at this dinner and that dinner,' and my God!"

Until this year, Mr. Merrill went by his given name-Merrill

Holtzman. But he changed it to avoid any gender confusion, particularly with

casting agents. "It's like, enough with the boy named Sue," he said. His

friends still call him Merrill. In addition to acting in plays, he's had small

parts on television (a sleazy lawyer on Law

& Order , a blind date on Sex and

the City ) and some parts in films (John Sayles' Eight Men Out , Neil LaBute's Nurse

Betty ). Earlier this summer, Mr. Merrill took five one-act plays that first

appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story,

Francis Ford Coppola's literary magazine, and staged them at Show World, the

porn palace on 42nd Street.

"He just ran with it, as only a person who has a strong sense of what they're

trying to accomplish does," said Zoetrope:

All-Story editor Adrienne Brodeur, who will team up with Mr. Merrill again

this fall to hold new fiction readings by actors at the Screening Room in

Tribeca.

But none of the above explains why he's decided to become a

stand-up comic.

At a recent New Talent Night at Caroline's comedy club on

Broadway, Mr. Merrill was onstage. "How you doing?

Nice to see you," he said. "I just want to say that I'm a Greenwich

Village homo. How did this happen? Well, I'll tell you how it

happened, because all of you sitting in this room tonight are complicit in the

nationwide conspiracy that's affected my entire

life. It's the one-dick rule. You know what it is: The guy sucks one

dick-just one- he's gay. O.K., all right, fine, fine. I sucked one dick. O.K.? One little dick . O.K., it wasn't that little. O.K., I sucked one big

dick. O.K., I sucked an enormous cock .

So what? So, so I'm gay and I'm out-and I don't mean out, I mean out , like a social outcast, one of those fuckers on the bottom rung in India.

Give me a pile of cow dung to sleep on, you know what

I'm saying? It's a nightmare, and it's my life."

Laughter-he was winning the audience with the blue material.

"Oh, girls," he continued. "Girls can eat all the pussy they

want-they're still straight. Girls can go out and eat pussy breakfast, lunch

and dinner-they're straighter than ever. Guys, one dick: gay. Gay, gay, gay . Why

is this? Where's the outrage? I say, why don't we make it a five-to-10-dick

rule? Why not?"

Caroline's ended up booking him for two shows, Sept. 25 and

Oct. 29.

I asked him later why he got into stand-up. "I thought, 'Oh,

that looks like fun, let's do it,'" he said. "It's that simple. I saw Jerry

Seinfeld at a benefit, and he was so funny and so simple, I was so inspired, I went and wrote my thing. I'm always telling

jokes anyway. I just took some of them and threw them into an act."

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Mr. Merrill was in the bedroom

of his spiffy, low-ceilinged basement apartment in the West

Village.  "This is where it all happens!" he said. He

showed off his glass bathroom cabinet. "It's all laid out very nicey-nicey," he

said. On a table was a provocative picture of his friend, fashion designer and

former Jerry Seinfeld flame Shoshanna Lonstein. "She has a perfect body," he

said. On the refrigerator was a picture of himself

with actress and oil heiress Ginny Bond. Above his desk was a photograph of

John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bissette. "She gave that to me," he said, his

voice cracking. "Quite a couple, huh? I kind of put it

there so they're like watching over me."

I asked him what his favorite thing to do was. "I would have

to say, I'm very attracted to people," he said, laughing. "Sometimes they don't

find me as attractive as I find them, but I would say that's the one thing I

indulge in: getting to know people on a variety of levels ."

Sex?

"It's relatively steady," he said. "It doesn't seem to be

diminishing, either."

Most of his friends are straight. "I've never really

understood the gay world very much and never really felt a part of it," he

said. "Because I'm not sure that there is a way to be a part of it. I've always

felt like an outsider in that world, because I don't really think there's much

in common there.

"I've always been an outsider," Mr. Merrill said. "But not

because I was gay. I've always been an inside outsider, always felt that way. I

belonged everywhere and nowhere at the same time."

Falling in Love

He was raised in Evanston, Ill.,

by a mother who loved jazz and a father, Jerome Holtzman, who was a well-known

baseball writer. Young Merrill wanted to be an actor but spent more time

playing sports. He barely cracked a book at Evanston High, which he called a

"classic John Hughes, all-American high school …. I would be the perfect mix

between Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald. I was the debutante who was always in

trouble."

He had girlfriends and "there were a couple guys around, and

I sort of experienced both sides of the equation by the time I was midway

through high school," he said. "But I always thought I'd be married with kids."

Then, as a teenager, he

fell for a guy in an emotional way that he'd never experienced with a girl.

"And I had to pay attention to that," he said. "I really fell in love with him,

and that was the indicator for me. I

loved girls , but the depth of the way I was in love made me realize that where

your emotional life is, that's really where your sexuality is."

At 16, he moved out of his parents' house. "That was

probably one of the gutsiest moves I made," he said. "It just wasn't a happy

situation, although things are fine now." Lying about his age, he got his own

apartment and a job as a waiter at Barbara Eden's nightclub in Chicago.

After a year at the University

of Illinois, he drove to New

York and moved into a studio on West

28th Street with a slanting ceiling and big

roaches. He waited tables at the Russian Tea Room; Madonna was the coat-check

girl.

"She had a bunch of shit

in her hair," Mr. Merrill said. "I also remember she was a bitch."

He got fired for breaking a Bellini. But he had an uncle in New

York, a successful sculptor and businessman named

Karl Mann. One day they were at Macy's, and Mr. Merrill mentioned that he had a

birthday coming up.

"We were standing near the men's department," Mr. Mann said.

"So I took off my watch and said, 'I'll give you two minutes-I'll give you

anything you want.' So he grabbed up all these different clothes and threw it

on the counter, and they added it, and it came to about $560. So I paid for it.

A week or two went by, and the next time he came to see me at my studio, he had

this nice jacket on. I said, 'That's a very nice jacket.' And he said, 'I

cashed in all that trash you bought me and bought a new jacket.' And I thought,

'Well, that was a smart thing to do.'"

In 1983, Mr. Merrill enrolled at New

York University.

"I hadn't really planned to go to college when I got here, but then I found out

N.Y.U. had a great gym and a good acting program, sort of in that order," he

said. The playwright David Mamet was teaching there and became a mentor. Mr.

Mamet hired Mr. Merrill as an assistant during the Broadway run of Glengarry Glen Ross . "That year, I sort

of met everybody I'd thought I'd ever meet in my entire life. It was very

exciting," Mr. Merrill said. Mr. Mamet took him to his cabin in Vermont,

told him what to read, taught him how to shoot a gun

and how to produce plays.

He took some acting

workshops; at one, he met Martha McCully, who later was on the board of Naked

Angels and now is an Internet consultant at Gloss.com. At the workshop, Mr. Merrill

told a story about the Christmas he'd given a down jacket to his sister, who

was institutionalized and later tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge

in Chicago. But she was wearing the down jacket, which

acted like a life preserver, so she floated and lived.

"That side of Merrill is not really the side that everybody

sees all the time," said Ms. McCully. "When I saw him up onstage and he told

this story, and I was, like, crying .

I knew I was going to be friends with him forever."

In 1986, Mr. Merrill co-founded Naked Angels with Jenifer

Estess and other friends; she was then an actor and is now perhaps his best

friend. His uncle provided the acting company with rent-free space in a

building he owned on 17th Street

for a year and a half. "He wheedled it out of me," Mr. Mann said, adding, "He

is the guy who put the Naked Angels on the street. You know, John Kennedy was

of great use to him, but he didn't use John Kennedy-they were really close

friends. He was really respectful of Kennedy's feelings; he didn't trot him out

like a trophy. The whole board of directors was attributable to Jack Merrill.

He was the impresario. He built the damn thing."

Mr. Merrill acted in 28 Naked Angels productions, often cast

as a tough guy. In 1997, he went to Hollywood

for the TV pilot season and had an agency meeting. "There's like seven agents,

and heads of the department, and assistants sitting in the back-one of those

big, classic Hollywood meetings," he said. "And they

tell me that I'm the next this and I'm the next that: 'You're the next Tommy

Lee Jones'; 'Look at him, he's got a little of the Bruce Willis thing going

on'; 'Billy Bob'-whatever-and 'We're so glad you're

here, we're thrilled,' blah blah blah. I'm just stunned; I'm thinking nothing

like that ever happened to me before in my life, I don't even know what to say.

I walk out of the office, and this agent puts his arm around my shoulder and

says, 'Now, listen-when you buy your house out here, I think that you would

probably be happiest somewhere above Sunset in the hills.' And I said, 'Really,

that's great-can we just work on gas in the car?' And he smiled."

After eight weeks, nothing happened. "I don't like Los

Angeles," Mr. Merrill said. "It's one of those places

you go out for two weeks and think, 'Wow, this is great. This weather's perfect

and there's flowers ,' you're driving

around and everyone's got a house and

there's a lot of work and everything's great. And then you go on auditions

where they want to put a rubber thing on your head and have you be some alien."

The friend Mr. Merrill sees most often is Ms. Estess, who is

paralyzed from Lou Gehrig's disease. He visits her four or five times a week.

They met at N.Y.U., and now he helps her with Project ALS, a nonprofit she

founded. CBS has made a movie of Ms. Estess' life, The Jenifer Estess Story , with Laura San Giacomo playing her.

"I think he wants to

will me back to health, which is pretty cool," said Ms. Estess. "He's extremely

persevering, a wild force of nature or something-he just sort of propels

forward. I remember when we were at Naked Angels and thinking about getting our

first project up, and everybody was like, 'Oh, we're not ready; maybe we

shouldn't do it,' and Merrill's like, 'We're doing it.' He's about getting it

up and getting it out. It's about carpe

diem . In terms of the scene here, I think he's a leader. Although right now

Merrill is not Mel Gibson, he does rally the troops forward; he definitely

rallies New

York City

in a great way, sort of keeps it moving."

The one thing about straight life that Mr. Merrill says he

yearns for is a traditional marriage.

"There is something

about being gay and going to weddings and seeing families stand up and make

speeches about how happy they are about this union , and how thrilled  about the love that these people are experiencing. And you know,

I have been to them and thought, 'That will never happen to me.' I don't get to

do that: I don't get to have everybody come and tell me how proud and happy

they are that I have met somebody who I love and want to spend the rest of my

life with. I don't get to do that. And if I do, it's not real . I didn't really get

married. It doesn't really count."

On a recent night,

documentary filmmaker Alexandra Shiva ( Bombay

Eunuch ), who is a board member of Urban Empire,  took Mr. Merrill to a $1,000-a-head

benefit for the Public Theater. There was a private barbecue dinner by the

Great Lawn in Central

Park, followed by a

performance of The Seagull at the

Delacorte Theater and then a party on top of Belvedere Castle. Mr. Merrill, wearing a fedora, mingled near cast members Christopher

Walken, Kevin Kline, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Goodman; bummed a smoke

off actor Liev Schreiber; and fell into conversation with  Marcia Gay Harden, who won the Best

Supporting Actress Oscar this year for her role as Lee Krasner in Pollock . 

"Let me tell you something, you looked beautiful," he told

her. "I was at the boob tube, root-toot-tooting. You looked so fucking

beautiful. I was like, 'Oh my God, she's a huge movie star. She's a movie

star!'"

Ms. Harden said she was going for an Ava Gardner–Jackie O.

look.

"You want to know

something?" Mr. Merrill said. "You looked like a total fucking movie star. You

know, I love the girls with their hair all fucked up, and then you come out: a

red dress, fucking hair, it's like, 'You go,

Marcia Gay Harden! You get up there and you be that fucking movie star, Marcia Gay!"

At midnight, people sang happy birthday to Ms. Shiva. Mr.

Merrill escorted her down the castle's stone steps, and they got into a golf

cart. They zipped past the people who were already camping out to buy tickets

for The Seagull . Ms. Shiva checked the messages on her cell phone. There

was a voice mail from Daniella Rich, who'd bought a ticket for the benefit but

discovered, when she arrived, that her name wasn't on the list. So she went

home.

"Oh my God, it's horrible-she's pissed, " Ms. Shiva said.

Mr. Merrill said he felt awful, too, but then he leaned over

conspiratorially and said, "It's a great New York

night."

They make paper shredders for things like this.

In a letter dated November 8, 1999, and addressed to actor Mel Gibson, care of his Rogers & Cowan publicist, Alan Neirob, George magazine's senior editor and resident celebrity wrangler Jeffrey Podolsky opened up a big can of kiss-ass to lock up the actor for the publication's July issue.

Mr. Podolsky began his pitch by hailing Mr. Gibson's good taste in choosing to star in The Patriot , which was still in production at the time the letter was written. "Searingly accurate, historical dramas like The Patriot have become a rare art form in Hollywood these days," Mr. Podolsky wrote. "And rarely is there a film that so perfectly fits GEORGE, a magazine which continually strives to educate the masses about American history and politics."

Perhaps unaware that The Patriot would arrive in theaters with an R rating and battlefield scenes of cannonballs shearing off soldiers' limbs and heads, Mr. Podolsky asserted in his letter that The Patriot would "bring to life for millions of school children (and adults) a little-known, but crucial chapter in our history: the importance of South Carolina joining the fight for independence and holding off Cornwallis from heading north until the French arrive.

"Few Americans realize that this war was every bit as ugly as the Civil War or Vietnam–waged by rag-tag militia, littered with racial conflicts, and fought in people's backyards," Mr. Podolsky continued. "There was a human element to it, which has been lost in history books and barbeque-laden holidays. You brought that depth to Braveheart and will do the same with The Patriot ."

Then Mr. Podolsky whipped out his Kennedy trump card and shifted into a plain-spoken tone right out of Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington . "As you can see, I've gotten pretty worked up over this film. I suppose it's because I'm something of a history buff. I gather you are too. So was John." (Mr. Podolsky was here referring to the magazine's late founder, John F. Kennedy Jr.) "That's why he chose to name his magazine GEORGE when all the fancy consultants told him it wasn't commercial enough (he told them to go to hell)."

After dropping the code words that Mr. Gibson needn't worry about a tomahawk job–"We will photograph and write a cover story that will do justice to your work. Something that both you and the magazine will be proud of"–Mr. Podolsky signed off with the written equivalent of a Clinton hug: "I hope the production's going well and, thank you, for making this movie."

Mr. Podolsky did not return phone calls; however, Dianne Milton, George 's spokesperson, hastened to note that the letter was written a few weeks before the arrival of Frank Lalli, the magazine's squeaky-clean editor in chief. In response to Mr. Podolsky's invocation of Mr. Kennedy's name, she said: "Jeffrey was referring to the founder of the magazine, and obviously wouldn't talk about John in any inappropriate way. And just so you know, George doesn't guarantee covers in this way any longer. It's more that we now work with people to create covers."

For the August issue of George , Mr. Lalli opted to do something that the magazine's founder told employees he would never do in his magazine: put a photo of President John F. Kennedy on the cover. The elder Kennedy, along with Ronald Reagan, is used to illustrate the cover line "Who Will Make Us Proud Again?" Asked if Mr. Lalli consulted the Kennedy family on the "creation" of the cover, Ms. Milton replied, "I don't know anything about any of Frank's conversations."

Fun with Joe Eszterhas

George Plimpton arrived late to the staged reading of Joe Eszterhas' book, American Rhapsody, on July 17. There he stood inside the cozy Douglas Fairbanks Theater on West 42nd Street, underneath the orange exit sign and near Talk editor Tina Brown, who was hosting the event.

Mr. Plimpton kept his arms crossed as eight no-name actors sat in stools on the stage with black binders open and read lines from Mr. Eszterhas' book, which is partly a retelling of the Clinton impeachment and partly a ground-scorching, Tom Wolfe-parroting memoir of Mr. Eszterhas' reign as the professional asshole who somehow managed to make a lot of money writing movies such as Basic Instinct ($1.55 million), Showgirls ($2 million) and Jade ($2.5 million).

As Mr. Eszterhas' blonde, very pregnant wife, Naomi Eszterhas, chortled in the front row next to her smirking husband, Mr. Plimpton, in his summer tan suit and blue rep tie, wore a look on his face of a Putney schoolmaster who had happened upon a fart-lighting contest. And this was before an actor named Brian F. O'Byrne began reading the lines of Willard, the personified version of Bill Clinton's penis. As Mr. Eszterhas' agent, Ed Victor, giggled and Ms. Brown beamed, Mr. Plimpton's eyes narrowed into a Grinchy scowl.

When Ms. Brown introduced Mr. Eszterhas earlier in the evening, she said, "I think that what's so wonderful about Joe is that he's not at all what he appears to be. He's not a jaded ex-hippie or a tired celebrity at all." As the night wore on and an actor read the part in American Rhapsody where independent counsel Kenneth Starr masturbates in the basement to Internet images of Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Eszterhas and some of the others in the room sure seemed like celebrities of a bygone decade, laughing at two-year-old jokes.

Yet, as the author of a 432-page Knopf-published book that blurs fact and fiction, Mr. Eszterhas also seemed considerably more dangerous than the man who had written sex scenes for Sharon Stone.

After the reading, Mr. Eszterhas posed for a few pictures outside the front doors of the theater. In one, he kissed his pregnant wife's belly. When someone asked for the unborn child's name, Mrs. Eszterhas replied, "Luke," adding: "We already have a Joe, Nick and John." She wore a chunky gold cross. "One just turned 6," Mrs. Eszterhas chirped. "And I said, 'I am doomed to a lifetime of wet toilet seats.' I sit down and say, 'Oh God, I didn't check!' Always!"

Mrs. Eszterhas told The Transom that "the biggest feedback we get [about American Rhapsody ] is that people said, 'I had so much fun!' Kind of like Tina, when she said she got on a plane and didn't look up for seven hours. She said, 'I had so much fun!'"

Mr. Eszterhas wore a short-sleeved black shirt open to his chest, a gold chronograph and a number of gold rings. He looked a bit like Santa Claus, if St. Nick had been subjected to intense gravitational pressure. A cluster of irritated-looking, possibly precancerous blisters decorated his sunburnt forehead. Still, with a Salem Ultra Light hanging from his lips, he, too, seemed to be having fun.

Ms. Stone probably wouldn't use the F-word to describe American Rhapsody . She is portrayed as a mercenary human Electrolux who sucks her way to the top while fretting over losing her looks. In the book, Mr. Eszterhas writes that during the making of Sliver , Ms. Stone told him: "'My ass hangs halfway to my knees.'"

Jane Fonda probably doesn't think Mr. Eszterhas' book is fun either. She gets compared to "leftover beef Wellington." Neither would Farrah Fawcett, who, Mr. Eszterhas wrote, defecated on the lawn at the same party where New Line's Mike DeLuca was the recipient of some now-famous oral sex. Nor would Lyndon Johnson's family: In his book, Mr. Eszterhas wrote that the late President "had scrotal skin hanging halfway to his knees." Then there's Oliver Stone, "as often stoned as he was not," and "homophobic" Mel Gibson. And Robert Evans, whom Mr. Eszterhas quotes as saying: "Sharon Stone is a lying dumb c*** who's had all the brains in her head fucked out."

The Transom asked whether Mr. Eszterhas had spared anyone in Hollywood.

He paused and blew out some cigarette smoke. "With me?" he asked, incredulous. "I'm one of the wild men of the Western world. Someone's going to say to me, 'No, you can't write about it'? Are you out of your fucking mind? Me? No way."

And, of course, the thing had been lawyered.

"The book was vetted for three days by three lawyers," said Mr. Eszterhas, who is not currently working on any screenplays. "Then it was vetted by fact checkers, and after this process, they said they'd never run into a book that was this backed up."

Mr. Eszterhas' fleet of lawyers and fact checkers must not have read the first 10 pages of his book, though. On page 4, he writes that Jimmy Carter claimed he was attacked by a killer rabbit while jogging. Actually, it happened when Mr. Carter was on a canoeing excursion. Then there's Mr. Eszterhas' recollection of President Clinton's most famous line in the Lewinsky matter: "I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Mr. Eszterhas uses an abridged version: "I want to say one thing to the American people. I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Perhaps his memory of Sharon Stone's ass is better.

In Liu of Ling

… The View 's Lisa Ling may want to start wearing a "Not the Asian You Think" T-shirt to parties. At the premiere party for X-Men on Ellis Island on July 12, actress Ashley Judd greeted Ms. Ling by stretching out her arms and calling "Lucy!"–presumably confusing Ms. Ling for a moment with Ally McBeal star Lucy Liu. That same week, Hamptons Magazine printed a party picture of fashion designer Randolph Duke with an Asian model who was misidentified as Ms. Ling.

Ms. Ling said that she thought that Ms. Judd–as well as many of the others who regularly make the mistake–could actually tell the difference between her and Ms. Liu, and that Ms. Judd was both embarrassed and apologetic. Ms. Ling said she thought the confusion was frequently due to the alliterative L's that the women share. Ms. Ling said she was considering her options. "I'm thinking about changing my name to Wong," she said.

The Transom Also Hears...

…The estate of Walter Matthau may want to keep a wary eye out for two self-described "Gucci-damaged and Bowie-obsessed" musicians named Adam Pollock and James D'Adamo, who have a little duo they call UFA. Just one year after they took advantage of the coming millennium to do a techno remake of the song "In The Year 2525," they're back in the commemoration game, this time releasing what they call "the first musical tribute to the late John F. Kennedy Jr."

The song, which they've offered up for sale on MP3.com, is a jaunty little number that features a classically trained singer named Stacia Thiel belting out lines like "And when the stars / Couldn't guide your way / Down, down, down, down / Covered in blue," which is all followed by a good deal of operatic shrieking from Ms. Thiel.

So they know it's in bad taste, right? "It was a thought that crossed my mind," said Mr. D'Adamo, "but he was such a cool guy, and … it's more of a fitting tribute than the 'Candle in the Wind' kind of thing." Besides, the duo say that if they actually make a dime from the thing, they'll donate it to Reaching Up, one of Kennedy's pet charities.

So what's next for UFA? Mr. D'Adamo said that they're considering penning a Liz Tilberis tribute, with collaborations from their dream list of Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, Harper's Bazaar editor in chief Kate Betts, and Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley. "We're thinking of calling it 'I Am The World,'" said Mr. D'Adamo. "I think Anna Wintour could do the Joe Cocker part."

Mr. Blow has reason to be on edge. He's the latest guy to enter the vicious hailstorm that almost inevitably kicks up when someone with proximity to a famous person decides to tell all after that person has died.

For Mr. Blow, the storm began in late March when news began to circulate that he had sold to Little, Brown & Co., for a reported mid-six figures, a proposed memoir about his time working with John F. Kennedy Jr. at George . (In the interest of full disclosure, The Transom applied for a low-level editorial position at George in 1996, and met with all of the senior-level editors, including Mr. Blow. The Transom never heard back.)

That somebody was writing a book about Kennedy's George years was not surprising in itself. "Gee! A magazine editor writing a tell-all book!" said Texas Monthly deputy editor Evan Smith, a friend of Mr. Blow's for more than a decade. "I'm shocked to discover that! You're kidding me!" Mr. Smith shouted into the phone. "Give me a fucking break! The idea that people in this business are going to get up on their high horses and look down their noses! Tell them to call Bill Clinton to commiserate with him over George Stephanopolous. Oh, boo hoo!"

But the news that Mr. Blow had seized the opportunity was shocking to those who remembered that, in his role as George 's No. 2, he dealt harshly with those employees who had talked to the press about John Kennedy, however fondly, in the days following his death. In retrospect, it looked as if Mr. Blow had been using his position at George to ensure that his memoir idea did not get put into play.

Mr. Blow's memoir deal seems to have split the media world into two camps. There are those, such as Vanity Fair editor in chief Graydon Carter, who want a piece of Mr. Blow's book. Mr. Carter told The Transom that he recently called Mr. Blow's William Morris agent, Joni Evans, to offer to buy an excerpt of the book sight unseen.

And then there are those, including a number of former George staffers, who want a piece of Mr. Blow. Their sentiment toward Mr. Blow's six-figure deal was captured in the headline of a recent Salon magazine piece about the sale: "John-John, I kinda knew ye. And I'm going to make a bundle writing about you."

So just as the Diana crash had its paparazzi, and the O.J. Simpson trial had Mark Fuhrman, Mr. Blow has emerged as a heavy in the John Kennedy tragedy. In the span of just a few months, Mr. Blow, who was one of the last of the original George employees when Kennedy died, found himself practically friendless among George alums. And those who once defended him and worked with him, looked back at Mr. Blow and reassessed him as a weasel who aimed to throw open the doors to the one place where the paparazzi could not follow Mr. Kennedy: the offices at George .

"[ George ] was the one place that John could go and not have to worry about that," said Ned Martel, a former senior editor at George who considered Mr. Blow a friend. "And this is the thanks he gets. One of the people he entrusted the most is doing this to him."

"I kind of don't give a shit about my image in the media," Mr. Blow told The Transom as he sipped his cappuccino. But clearly, his reputation among his former colleagues concerns him.

A few days earlier, Kennedy's assistant and confidante RoseMarie Terenzio, the only George staff member to be provided for in Kennedy's will, said: "Pretty much the whole original staff is unhappy about [Mr. Blow's book]. If you knew John at all you'd know that this isn't what he wanted. Rich would not be the person to write the book about George or about John. Rich was the executive editor for four months … Why would Rich be the one to write this book?"

There's more. At a recent gathering of ex- George editorial employees, an informal poll was taken as to who still didn't "hate" Mr. Blow. According to one observer, nobody raised a hand.

Mr. Blow had an explanation for this behavior. "These are the lingering psychological issues of a group of people who worked at a place that was very intense, very insular, [and] who went through a terrible loss together," he said. "It needs to be seen in the context of that loss. You don't get over losing someone like John in six months. Some of the strength of the emotion has a lot to do with that."

"I think John would be surprised if there weren't a book written about George ," he said. "I think he would say, write a good book. Write a book about what was important about George not what was banal about the day-to-day life of any office. Articulate what we were trying to do. Be fair. Be responsible. To those people who disagree with it, let it go, live your life."

Yet, the sampled bits of Mr. Blow's book proposal that were leaked to Salon on March 28 read more like a Casey Kasem long-distance dedication than a serious memoir of a semi-serious magazine. "No one else has the experience with and perspective on John that I do," Mr. Blow wrote, "I hope that doesn't sound like boasting … because I don't mean it that way-and there were times I wished for someone else to be in that position."

Mr. Blow wrote of the "thrill" of wearing Kennedy's discarded ties, and alluded to diaries that he'd kept since he began working at George . "We had no preparation, no defenses, against someone so charismatic, so charming," he wrote. Mr. Blow went so far as to state that " George was one of the most influential magazines of the 1990's."

Mr. Blow came to George by way of affluent Fairfield, Conn., where he grew up in a politically well-connected family. His uncle was a founding partner of the Washington law firm Patton Boggs and his grandmother was a Republican who ran for congress in Virginia.

Mr. Blow went to Yale, won a Rolling Stone College Journalism Award, worked at the New Republic under Michael Kinsley, and spent a few years in the Ph.D. American studies program at Harvard. After toiling as the editor of the Washington, D.C., business bimonthly Regardie 's, Mr. Blow was hired as senior editor to launch George in 1995. In January 1999, he was promoted to executive editor when Elizabeth (Biz) Mitchell resigned from the position.

At the time, Mr. Blow presided over a stable of writers who may not have quite adored him, but who certainly respected him. Like his boss, he was tall, chiseled and muscular; he in-line skated and dated foxy women. There is even a nude black-and-white photograph of Mr. Blow and his ex-girlfriend hanging on the wall of his West End Avenue apartment. ("You can't see anything," Mr. Blow said.)

And most important, John Kennedy apparently believed in him sufficiently to toss him the keys to his magazine.

But then, Mr. Kennedy died, and Mr. Blow's trouble began. After spreading the word that the Kennedy family wanted George staffers not to talk to the press, in a much disputed incident, two writers with close ties to John Kennedy, Lisa Depaulo and Doug Brinkley, were released from George after disobeying the edict. Ms. Depaulo had spoken to New York magazine specifically about how Kennedy had helped her get emotionally through her mother's terminal cancer.

"We felt that to speak about John, we should do it in the pages of his magazine," Mr. Blow told Brill's Content at the time. Ms. Depaulo's dismissal was not a popular one in the office. About this time, George staffers began calling Mr. Blow 'L.B.J." or "Lyndon Blow Johnson," for his eagerness to pick up the reigns. Mr. Blow maintains that he did not fire Ms. Depaulo and that they had a mutually agreed upon parting of ways over an impasse resulting from her not receiving an invitation to the Kennedy memorial service.

"Oh please," said Ms. Depaulo. "This is the fourth new version of the story I've heard him try to peddle since he sold the book, but I guess now that he's making a buck off of John's death, he has reason to re-spin that little chapter."

When Frank Lalli was chosen to succeed Kennedy as editor in chief, Mr. Blow exited George . On March 11, just weeks after he left, Salon reported that Mr. Blow was shopping a book proposal about working with Kennedy.

This story led to another press report that Mr. Blow had signed a paragraph-length confidentiality agreement, which stipulated that he would not talk to the press or write about Kennedy or his then-partner, Michael Berman. It was an agreement that he said he signed grudgingly in early 1996, after a couple of George office tales leaked into the tabloids. Mr. Blow calls the non-disclosure "an agreement that was never intended for this situation." He said that he thought that Kennedy's co-author of the agreement, lawyer and former George senior editor, Gary Ginsberg, would agree.

Mr. Ginsberg, who now works for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., said that the agreement was intended to cover the principles during their lifetimes, because no one had ever contemplated Kennedy dying prematurely, but the spirit of the agreement was such that no one was supposed to write about their experiences at George . Mr. Ginsberg declined to comment any further on Mr. Blow.

Other former staffers were more willing to talk about Mr. Blow, provided they weren't identified. Some contend that Kennedy merely "tolerated" Mr. Blow, and never had the towel-snapping relationship that he had with less-fussy male editors.

These sources cite the ticket incident as the watershed event that defined Kennedy's relationship with Mr. Blow. The former George staffers told The Transom that in the early days of the magazine, Mr. Blow allegedly went into Kennedy's corner office after he had left for the day, and grabbed his boss' pair of floor seats for a Knicks game. When Kennedy found out, the sources said, he had a closed-door session with his editor.

In addition to denying that this incident ever occurred, Mr. Blow took issue with this characterization of his relationship with Kennedy. "I don't think John would have made me executive editor if he quote, tolerated me," he said. "I think John could have done better than that. That's insulting to John."

Cupping his cappuccino, Mr. Blow said: "I think when this book is published it will be interesting to go back and look at some of the things that people have said about me and compare those insinuations to the reality of what I've written." There was a heavy tone to his voice. "I think that comparison will reflect more on the people saying these things than it will about the book."

Many, like Lisa Depaulo, who since being dismissed from George has been writing for New York and Vanity Fai r, are not convinced. "Even if Rich Blow's book is a valentine to John, he still broke an agreement. I don't think anyone, especially journalists should be doing that for blood money," she said.