English Roses

I have a thing for British women. While I was watching The Invisible Woman last week I was reminded of this, as I pined mightily for Felicity Jones. There a host of young British actresses who are on my radar these days, including Emma Watson, Keira Knightly, Carey Mulligan, Jessica Brown Findlay, Emilia Clarke, and many others.

It doesn't matter if they're English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish, there's just something about them that stirs my loins. I am forced now to examine this, because it can't be appearance. There is really not a British look (there is an Irish look--red hair and freckles, which I love). I mean, there used to be--pasty skin and bad teeth. But diversity has hit the British isles--Naomi Campbell and Thandie Newton are British. The famed Page Three girls, such as Keely Hazell (pictured), Rosie Jones and Lucy Pinder, look more American than British, with their buxomness.

So what is it about British women that gets me? It could be the accent. Whether it's Cockney, Liverpudlian, or upper-class twit, just hearing that voice can be an aphrodisiac for me. Or maybe it's just the exoticism, without being too exotic. They are, after Canada, the closest to Americans we know. I am also English by heritage, but my people left England in the 1600s, so it's not like I have any longing for the old country.

It may just be a part of a larger Anglophilia that I have. I do like many things British. My favorite music is that of the British invasion. I love Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, the romantic poets, the books of Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Bass Ale. I love tales of King Arthur, Agatha Christie, and the British version of The Office.  I have been to London, and would love to live there (an online quiz told me that, too). I do draw the line, though. I care not a whit about the royal family, the food is abominable, and I have yet to see an episode of Dr. Who.

Psychologically, I'm at a loss to explain it. It's not like I had a British nanny that I longed for as a child (though Mary Poppins was the first film I ever saw). I did have a romance with a British girl when I was in my early twenties. She was in high school when we met, and later, when she was in college, she stopped by my place on her way back to England. We had a fling, and she said she wanted to have a relationship, though that would be difficult seeing how she was going back to England. I saw her again when I visited England and she had changed, becoming more radical than even I am. I often wonder how she is now.

Was that the start of it? I don't know, but I definitely have a preference. This has manifested itself in a couple of different ways recently. I saw a trailer for a remake of Endless Love, a movie I would never watch. I did notice the young lady was quite the looker, though. I checked to see who it was--an actress named Gabrielle Wilde. And then--she's English! A beautiful girl, for me, became even more so. And consider Cara Delevingne. She's a fashion model that is known for her thick eyebrows and making out with Michelle Rodriguez at a Knicks game. She has a look that could place her from any country, and she has a French last name. So where is she from? England! She even has "Made in England" tattooed on the bottom of her foot. A mild fascination has now become an obsession.

Anytime I've met English women my heart beats a little faster. There are British porn stars, though not all that many that have become big here. The foremost is probably Roxanne Hall, who I met at a shoot for a fetish video in Brooklyn. She was everything I could have asked for, quintessentially English yet really dirty. She told me that even as a child she had wanted to be a prostitute or a porn star. She told me this while sitting next to me waiting to do a scene, and she was completely naked.

A recent poll indicated that England has the ugliest people in the world. I can see how that could be the perception, since the bad teeth and pale skin thing has become a cliche. But England has produced many fashion models and beautiful actresses, going back in my lifetime to the days of Julie Christie, Twiggy, and Jean Shrimpton, and later to Rachel Weisz and Sienna Miller. I've rhapsodized before about Kate Moss, and there were The Spice Girls, of course (my favorite was Baby Spice, natch). There are a whole bunch of prominent British models on the scene now, such as Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Lily Donaldson, Lily Cole, and Daisy Lowe.

And I love those actresses who have just wonderfully Dickensian names! Imogen Poots. Perdita and Honeysuckle Weeks. Rosamund Pike. And my favorite, Ophelia Lovibond.

Once upon a time I did something proactive about my thing for British girls. In the pre-Internet days, there were "introduction" services, that matched lonely hearts from different countries. Many were for Eastern European or Filipino girls, but I chose one called English Roses, which matched American men and British women. I sent in my picture and my data sheet and ended up corresponding with a few, including a Scottish policewoman and another woman from Newcastle (they are called "Geordies" and have an almost impregnable accent). I met her when she visited New York, and I took her out for pizza. She ordered the anchovies.

But the most meaningful introduction was with a woman named Elizabeth. She was Irish, but lived in London. We ended up talking on the phone quite a bit and we convinced ourselves we were serious about each other. She came to visit me and it was an interesting week, to say the least. It became apparent we were not ideally matched (she framed it as we were like "chalk and cheese"). My mistake was not recognizing that she wanted to get out of England, so me taking her to English or Irish places was the last thing she wanted to do--why come all the way to America to go to McSorley's Ale House?

When we visited New York City, she liked the big buildings of midtown, but didn't like Greenwich Village, my favorite part of the city, because it was too much like London. By the end of her visit we were hardly speaking, not out of anger but a kind of quiet resignation. I dropped her off at Kennedy Airport several hours before her flight, and never heard from her again (this was not upsetting to me). I think she just wanted some guy to whisk her off her feet and move to her the U.S., and me in my studio apartment in Jersey City wasn't her Prince Charming.

That was almost twenty years ago, but it didn't quell my interest in the women of Britain. Rule Brittania!