Gore Vidal decided to run for the Senate from California in 1982, and I was given the Time magazine assignment to photograph him at his elegant Spanish style home in Beverly Hills. As the charming (but eventually unsuccessful) senate candidate showed me around, he alluded to a Moroccan suite that was very, very off limits. Of course that is where I wanted to shoot him, but no.

I was wondering why this remarkably erudite, snobbish, aristocratic, bi-sexual character with the infamous serpent’s tongue who absolutely loved to get into pissing contests, thought the electorate of California would elect him—or for that matter why he would want them to.

After we finished our session, he couldn’t resist showing me his scrumptious Moroccan suite. It was everyone’s dream of an exotic and most dangerous secluded rendezvous. But alas, it would not be ours. It remains only in my memory—not on film.