Darling, you should visit a brothel – what Carly Simon told husband as passion died
WHEN the passion begins to fizzle out in a marriage, it is not uncommon for one of the parties to indulge in a discreet affair.
Less common, perhaps, is actively encouraging your other half to sleep with someone else because you are no longer attracted to him.
But this was the novel solution suggested by singer Carly Simon according to her ex-husband, who says he was ordered by his then wife to visit a prostitute. The US singer, now 71, is almost as famous for her colourful love life as her chart hits, counting the likes of Sir Mick Jagger among her former flames.
Now Jim Hart, 67, has written a memoir lifting the lid on his 20-year marriage to Miss Simon – which ended with him relapsing into drug addiction and revelations about his homosexuality.
In his book, Lucky Jim, Hart recalled how the couple had drifted apart and so his wife sent him to a brothel in New York’s Chinatown district.
He wrote: ‘She would later realise that she was no longer physically attracted to me, and yet, like me, she so wanted to be. She arrived at a quirky and definitive solution: “Darling, you need to get laid.”’
But after seeing the women at the brothel, Hart realised ‘nothing about the selection attracted me’ and he instead called in at a male strip club.
He said: ‘I was about to betray my marriage vows without an ounce of desire. This was completely off the mark; the last thing I wanted tonight was an Asian prostitute in a seedy massage parlour.’
Of his secret visit to see male strippers, he wrote: ‘I wondered if I could share this with Carly, and then I buried it and realised I never would.
‘How could I explain it to her? I had little understanding of it myself, but it certainly didn’t feel like infidelity.’
Hart, who was Miss Simon’s second husband, would frequently phone S&M gay sex lines during their marriage, which finally ended in 2007.
His book, due to be released this month, also tells how the couple counted the Clintons, then in the White House among their rich and powerful friends. Hart said Miss Simon had also been close to Jackie Kennedy, claiming she and the former first lady would ‘gossip like schoolgirls’, particularly ‘about boys’.
In her own 2015 memoir, Miss Simon, the singer of You’re So Vain, revealed past dalliances with Warren Beatty, Cat Stevens, Jack Nicholson and Kris Kristofferson, as well as Sir Mick.