NOT ALL RED ROSES

Now, your probably thinking this is going to be a post about Grace Kelly. You'd be partly right but indirectly. Often times on this here blog  I mean to post more personal stories, but I never seem to get around it to, or something is mentioned in all the chatter in the comments section, and someone will mention I need to do a post around one of my comments back to someone. Sometimes on a blog the best nuggets are left are in the comments, ever noticed that? Which is why I always read mine, and comments on other blogs. It's often entertaining, and leads to to new blogs also. If a comment is witty, I wanna read their blog. A while back Dawn the Bohemian commented I need to do a post on a nugget I left. And it was my time dating a Kelly. 

After my long term relationship ended, a lady I used to work with at my previous job and I kept in touch. She had a friend who took interests in me, but at the time I was taken. We met several times when they went to lunch together. Very handsome and older then I. After the split, she called and asked again, if I'd like to go out with him, since I was then split up and in a new job...and I hadn't met the Lad yet. Sure I said. She never told me that the guy was a  nephew of Grace Kelly!!  Turns out, the connection was his father, John B Kelly Jr, Grace Kelly's brother. Well, we did indeed go on to date for about a month and half, and had a pretty nice time. My creative, wild side seemed to balance his structured and buttoned up side. He served as president of an environmental organization that focused on climate change, polar and ocean issues and clean drinking water. He was very open about telling stories of Grace and how the family here is still very connected with Prince Albert II of Monaco, and he told of his father  and mother, Mary Freeman Kelly Spitzer, both of whom represented the US in various Olympics for swimming, and rowing for his father. It's also where he said his parents met. John B Kelly Jr won the bronze in 1956, and the gold in the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City.  His mother went one to be one of the greatest swim coaches in the US. 

Father- John B Kelly Jr

But what shocked me most was some of the inside scoop. Grace may have been the only member to marry a royal, but she and her brother certainly weren't without scandal. He told me how his grandparents and others, worried her raging libido almost ruined her acting career, even thought she only starred in 11 feature films... and how her illicit affairs seemingly and miraculously disappeared from cultural knowledge and swept under the carpet. JB regaled me of stories he was told of her affairs with Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, William Holden. Even Bing Crosby tried. He went to the her room in hoping to sleep with her,  only to find Marlon Brando already in her room. Even John F Kennedy and Grace had flings, till his father put an end to that, worrying an actress would hurt his political career. She was even engaged for short time to fashion designer Oleg Cassini, but her parents ended that, as they didn't approve of his Russian roots, and he thinks the family even had a pregnancy terminated by him. Once she met Prince Rainer III, it was no small feat for Kelly, as her family had to fork up a $2 mil dowry. I guess being a princess isn't cheap.

But it was his own father that ignited a family feud that blew the family apart when he began a love affair with a transgender woman. He told me,  his father left his mother with him and his four other siblings for a playboy life. His father was a renowned womanizer when he met and fell for Rachel Harlow in the 70's, while she was working as a hostess at a disco club she owned called Harlow's. Harlow had her confirmation surgery in 1972, and also was well known in the film documentary, a camp classic to be sure, THE QUEEN,  which shows us the Miss All American Camp Beauty Pageant, which she won. So she herself was already a subculture star in her own right.

At the time.  his father was running for mayor of Philadelphia when he was dating Harlow.  JB told me his grandmother was none to happy about this and the public display and scandal of a romance with a transgender woman. She even approached Mayor Rizzo who was restless with trans jokes, and  two powerful Democrats to sabotage his fathers run for mayor. And no one wanted Harlow to be the "first lady" of Philadelphia. His grandparents didn't want the scandal to affect Princess Grace either. Grace herself he was told,  wasn't keen on it, and never mentioned it.  He went on to tell me, that his father was devastated by the political loss and his mothers betrayal.

Soon after, the romance fell apart with Harlow. In the end the whole thing affected his relationship with the family permanently,  and his father died of a heart attack when he was jogging after a row one day in Fairmount Park. Grace had died three years earlier. He was told that  Grace never spoke publicly about her brother or Rachel Harlow, or how it jumped many other issues in the family. But when his father, John B Jr was laid to rest,  Grace's royal family, Prince Rainer III and their children, did come to attend the funeral, which he does remember.

Where did that leave me? Well some things must never change. It didn't go anywhere. I found out from him later he was married!!! Figures, but I don't think in the long run it would have worked anyhow. There was too much hob knobbing with Philadelphia elite, and stuffy events for my liking. Oh I can hold my own, but a like events where there is a nice mixed crowd of all types and walks of life. And he wasn't all that good in the sheet if I have to be honest. But he was very gentlemanly. I only ran into him once since, here in Bucks County, at the ever faithful Raven at Tea Dance, where he no doubt, was looking for some dick. But is was a cool experience hearing first hand knowledge of someone like Grace Kelly and the family.  I hadn't know any of this. And I never did get around to telling him a was a drag queen on the side. Can you imagine what THAT would have done to the family. 

Can you say history repeating?