I yearned for the "source of deliciousness," in Rumi's words, which for me means emotional intimacy and soul connection. We got there on occasion, Ted [Turner] and I (I remember each time vividly, when he would look deeply into my eyes and I felt we were truly connecting), and sometimes when that happened I swear he'd get scared. It was as though emotional intimacy (as opposed to needy longings) had to be kept in check. Still, there were the lovemaking times when we would lock eyes and melt into one. There were the times when something would set us to laughing so hard we'd sink to the floor, like the night when our guffaws collapsed us at the foot of the Gone with the Wind staircase at his Avalon plantation and we had to crawl up to bed on hands and knees.

We had been going steady for almost two years when in 1991 we got married at Avalon on my fifty-fourth, winter solstice, birthday. Troy gave me away, and Vanessa was maid of honor.

A week later Ted was Time magazine's Person of the Year.

A month later I discovered he was sleeping with someone else.

Life had taught me that men, at least those I tended to go for, operate by the Fornicato, ergo sum (I f—, therefore I exist) principle, but since there'd been plenty of Versailles moments of lovemaking with Ted and me, I'd rarely be away from him for more than a few hours, and since I knew he loved me, why?

Copyright © 2005 by Jane Fonda. From the book My Life So Far by Jane Fonda, published by Random House, an imprint of Random House Publishing, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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