There are two topics the chattering classes are obsessively prattling about in Manila this week: the helicopter tragedy that claimed two lives, and Isabel Preysler’s new romance with Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. Depending on your point of view, the latter could also be a tragedy.

While Isabel Preysler may have been branded in the press as a home-wrecker, husband-stealer, and, to a certain extent, the Pamela Harriman of our times, you have to allow, however begrudgingly, a certain measure of admiration: even at 65 years of age, dammit, the girl’s still got it.

Promiscuous, she’s not.  Despite her high-profile liaisons, she seems to be a serial monogamist, the way Elizabeth Taylor was, though with three marriages behind her and a possible fourth perhaps in the works. Isabel has quite a way to go before equalling the Hollywood legend’s marital record.

“What I’d like to ask Isabel Preysler,” said a gay friend the other night at a dinner party, “is this: Who is your feng shui master? Because you must have had your pussy feng shui’ed!”

Rumors about the sexual prowess of “La Reina del Glamour,” as the Spanish press has dubbed Isabel, are legion.  For decades “la china”—as she has also been referred to in Spain, half-derisively and half-enviously—has been thought to possess mysterious powers of ensnarement. Her alleged Venus flytrap of a pussy is apparently capable of making men leave their wives, even long-suffering wives of 50 years who have stood by their hijos de puta of a husband, his multiple infidelities notwithstanding.

“Her pussy must have fangs,” concluded another guest at the dinner.

“Well,” chimed in yet another guest, “she may be a home-wrecker, but she doesn’t seem to have destroyed the men she married.  I mean, look at Elizabeth Taylor.  She may have been the great love of Richard Burton’s life, but she was also his undoing.”

“Even Michael Jackson was never the same!” said the gay host.

By that measure, Isabel is nowhere near the level of Elizabeth Taylor, nor does she approach, really, the level of Pamela Harriman’s scandalous affairs with the tycoons and power brokers of the day.  Think about it.  She has snagged some pretty exceptional men, but neither of them could be called the Richard Burton or Gianni Agnelli of their time.

But why is the vitriol directed more at Isabel than Mario Vargas Llosa?  Eminent man of letters or not, he obviously couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, and clearly wasn’t doing so for the last 50 years with his wife Patricia—who happens to be his first cousin, which in itself is pretty creepy. No offense to those who married their first cousins.

Then again, Mario does have a penchant for keeping it all in the family, maritally speaking. His first wife was Julia Urquidi Illanes, a Bolivian journalist 13 years his senior, whom he pursued as a young man, notwithstanding the fact that she had recently divorced his uncle by affiliation.  Persistence must have triumphed in the end as the lovers eloped and moved to Europe.  Alas, the marriage only lasted nine years. 

Tia Julia, as she was immortalized in Mario’s novel, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, was actually the sister of the wife of his maternal uncle Luis Llosa, Olga.  As fate would have it, Tio Luis ended up being his own father-in-law, as his daughter, Patricia, became the novelist’s second wife.

Patricia, it turns out, came to Paris at the tender age of 15, while Mario were living there, and naturally, stayed with her paternal cousin and her maternal aunt.  Soon enough, the cousins were spending an inordinate amount of time together, going to the movies, strolling around the streets of Paris, and basically driving poor Tia Julia insane with jealousy, to the point of allegedly contemplating suicide.  But the smooth Mario denied that there was any kind of affair brewing, even as Patricia’s sister Wanda, who also lived with the couple during a brief sojourn in Paris, told her aunt that she had seen the cousins kissing several times under the staircase.

At 15, she must have possessed the magic pussy.

Julia eventually published a book called Lo que Varguitasno dijo (What Varguitas Didn’t Say), which was her own account of her marriage and divorce from the writer. Needless to say, it’s not a flattering portrayal of Mario

Perhaps it’s a wee bit reassuring that he cast his net far away from his family circle to lure his new paramour.  But to yet again cast Isabel Preysler as the irresistible seductress is rather unfair, and frankly, tedious, magic pussy or not.<

But imagine if genitals endowed with superpowers were passed on from generation to generation?  Could Enrique Iglesias have the magic dick then?

B. Wiser is the author of Making Love in Spanish, a novel published earlier this year by Anvil Publishing and available in National Bookstore and Powerbooks, as well as online on nationalbookstore.com. When not assuming her Sasha Fierce alter-ego, she takes on the role of serious journalist and media consultant.

For comments and questions, e-mail [email protected].

Art by Dorothy Guya