Dear Dame Edna...

ADVICE

Always game for a fresh challenge, that 21st-century Solomon, DAME EDNA EVERAGE, bestows her gentle guidance on a modern triangle: a politician with health and marital woes, a wife who shares his public home, and a divorcée who needs help choosing parade outfits

Dear Dame Edna,

I am an uncommonly vigorous public figure. However, this has been, let me make very clear, so you understand me and I don’t have to repeat myself, a time of duress for me. I have been having both marital and health problems, but standing by me throughout this difficult period has been one very good friend, a special, beautiful person who has only ever known me as a public figure. Soon, I will be leaving my post and retreating into semi-privacy. I’m all too mindful of the words of my fellow Republican Henry Kissinger, who said, “Power is the great aphrodisiac.” Dame Edna, will my very good friend still be a very good friend to me even after the power is gone?

Sincerely, Good-Night Gracie

Dear Good-Night,

Unlikely, I fear. Forgive me, Good-Night, for sounding a bit like my more cynical feminist sisters, but there are some pretty tough girls around who do a serious disservice to the fundamental niceness of our sex. I’m sorry but there are.

Remember, marriage is also an excellent aphrodisiac, and some single women are attracted only to a man wearing a wedding band. It is only when he has parted with several million dollars, three penthouses, two BMWs, a Chagall, a Lichtenstein, and a Lempicka, and when the ring is finally off his finger and he says, “I am all yours at last, darling!” that the minx usu- ally runs a mile. Stay married as long as you can. It’s never going to get any better.

Dear Dame Edna,

In recent months I’ve suspected my husband of sneaking his girlfriend into the large house that he, our children, and I still share. One day, in fact, I thought I had her cornered in the guest bathroom, but it turned out to be one of my husband’s golfing buddies toweling off after a day on the links. I won’t mince words; I saw everything—the poor fellow was so stunned he was practically oblivious to the fact that his nether parts were jinglejangling right before my eyes. So I ask you (a) if I should send him a note of apology, and (b) am I within my rights to continue to patrol our large house for signs of that hose-monkey’s illicit presence?

Help, please, House of Pain

Dear Pain,

I can identify with your anguish. I once discovered that my late husband, Norm, was seeing another woman under our very roof and in our bedroom! I actually once came home unexpectedly from one of my fabulous theatrical tours and found them in an extremely intimate situation. Admittedly, Norm was pretty much out of action, hooked up to some rather sophisticated prostatalogical technology, and the woman in question was a flashy young urological nurse who was tinkering with my helpless husband’s ducting.

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I could see through his Plexiglas visor that my beloved invalid had a silly smile on his face, so I fired Nurse Eisenhuth on the spot and from then on I made sure his prostate was serviced exclusively by male technicians.

Your self-esteem is obviously very low and you are forgetting that you are at liberty to enter any room in your house without knocking. If you stumble upon naked golfers doing things to themselves it is they who should apologize to you.

As for the intruder whom you describe as your husband’s “girlfriend,” are you absolutely certain she is not a hardworking urologist on the night shift popping in to collect a routine specimen?

P.S. What is a hose monkey?

Dear Dame Edna,

My newish beau is a powerful man who frequently marches in parades. Sometimes he invites me to march along, which is a hoot for me because I’m really just a private gal who walks her tiny dogs on the street like anyone else, security detail notwithstanding. The problem is, owing to the fact that my guy is still married, I’ve got to be inconspicuous and march three paces or so behind him. Now, I pride myself on always looking very well “put together,” and I want to know which of my favorite outfits is better for marching inconspicuously yet dazzlingly on a warm summer’s day—my backless navy halter dress with white lapels from Loehmann’s (which looks so kicky with my costume pearls!) or the cornflower-pattern sundress I picked up at Daffy’s (which goes perfectly with my wide-brimmed Ascot-style chapeau!)?

Sincerely, East Side Divorcee

Dear East Side,

I’ve never been a mistress and I hate marching. I know most American women are born twirling batons in pleated white miniskirts, but frankly I don’t think I’ve been in a parade of any kind since I was Queen Nefertiti of the Nile in a former life. Then I wore a simple lime-green G-string, lotusstained hands, and rouged nipples, an outfit I wouldn’t be seen dead or reincarnated in these days.

Think of the outfits favored by other members of the mistress community. I wouldn’t recommend the Jessica Hahn look, and you would be foolish to splash out on Monica’s lit- tle navy-blue dress, as others may have done.

Remember, cast-aside wives always ask the same anguished question: “What does she do that I don’t do?” Why not go for the money and get the media really guessing. Slip into your local adult boutique and invest in a black rubber, chrome-studded dominatrix outfit with all the optional extras. The media will love you and even your beau will at last begin to seem interesting.

Dear Dame Edna,

am increasingly disturbed by the lack of cell-phone etiquette among young people. They answer their tiny phones during dinner parties and office meetings. They shout into them while doing the StairMaster at the gym. Sometimes you even hear the “Grande Valse” go off at the theater! How do you suggest I get them to shut up?

Hung Up, Manhattan

Dear Hung Up,

I agree—those cell phones are a curse, and it is spooky to think that only a few years ago we managed perfectly well without them. However, they are a fact of life I’m afraid, at least until the time comes when they all have to carry a warning from the surgeon general telling us they cause brain rot and earlobe mutation.

Long before people had cell phones, I pioneered the world’s first in-purse fax, given to me by Toshiba, and for months I would walk around with yards of thermal paper trailing behind me. But now I have a gorgeous evening cell phone, made especially for me by Van Cleef & Arpels, and I’ve got another stunning one by Kenny Lane for lunch.

I was at Harry’s Bar in London not long ago, where cell phones are banned, and that saturnine old darling Mark Birley, the owner, strode across the restaurant and tetchily asked me what I was doing on the phone. “I’m calling this restaurant, Possum,” I exclaimed. “I’ve been sitting here for half an hour without my cocktail and if it wasn’t for this jewel-encrusted instrument I might well die of starvation. Bring me my virgin screwdriver and the beluga souffle!”

Dear Dame Edna,

My girlfriends and I live in a posh suburban neighborhood. We all enjoy decorating—and redecorating—our lovely homes. Much to my dismay, one friend, who shall remain unnamed, keeps copying my signature touches, such as spriggy floral wallpaper and elaborate window swags. Of course, her results are not as stylish as mine, but I am rather offended. What would you do if you were in my situation?

Imitated but Not Flattered, New Jersey Dear Not Flattered,

I hate copycats and I am surrounded by them. But you sound comfortably off. Perhaps you could even afford to throw her off the scent by having your home hideously redecorated and secretly live somewhere else. Why not a green-and-yellow tartan wall fabric in the living room, with big, ostentatiously framed and triple-matted Mapplethorpe photos from his unacceptable S&M period, gold picture lights, beige vertical blinds, 70s ceiling spots on dimmers, repro Frank Lloyd Wright dollhouse furniture, and at least one Galle or Tiffany table lamp. Oh, and a display case crammed with malachite obelisks and a tiny Jim Dine “bathrobe” painting above a Ruhlmann side table groaning with enormous books on Jim Dine.

The only problem you could have is that your friend might copy it exactly and end up in a decorating magazine before you.

Dear Dame Edna,

I am a lifelong, third-generation Republican who was thrilled to see the Bush dynasty continue. However, I am quite concerned about the next generation. Does President Bush’s inability to govern his children reflect on his capacity to govern this country?

Flagging Faith, Philadelphia

Dear Flagging,

Speaking as the mother of a dysfunctional family, I can tell you that what my children get up to is absolutely no fault of mine and no reflection on my exceptional abilities in all fields, including parenting. I carried a burden of guilt for many years when my daughter Valmai was arrested on shoplifting charges, followed by subsequent scuffles with the police at a Dykes-on-Bikes rally (whatever that might be). But I took the problem to the Los Angeles chapter of Mega-Stars Anonymous—an organization which I founded, incidentally—and they all recommended tough love and detachment. Naturally, I would not want to break President Bush’s anonymity, but I am sure he has received similar advice in handling his wayward kiddies.

We movers and shakers cannot be held accountable for the behavior of our attentionseeking, substance-abusing, spill-the-beansto-the-National-Enquirer rug rats. If parental ineffectuality is human, then the President is very very human.

Dame Edna’s Final Thought: To the home of a friend the road is never long.

Letters to Dame Edna Everage should be sent c/o Vanity Fair, 4 Times Square, New York, New York 10036, or E-mailed to DameEdna@vf.com.