“It never hurts to meet a sexy man,” Elizabeth Kaye’s editor once told her.

“It always hurts to meet a sexy man,” she said.

With more than forty years of passionate, wisdom-making love affairs behind her, Kaye knew what she was talking about.

In “Sleeping with Famous Men”, she has written an elegant, rueful and astonishingly frank account of her search for comfort and love and, finally, for meaning and peace. In the tradition of such masters as Marguerite Duras and Colette, Kaye comes to terms with her turbulent romantic past.

Her position as an esteemed profile writer for such publications as Esquire, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times gave her access to a world of celebrity in which she felt that she “was traveling on a visa that was about to expire.”

She often found herself attracted to famous men. “Fame,” she writes, “is an intoxicant, a form of energy.” In its presence, she felt “bigger and bolder and sometimes, transformed.”

There was The Anchorman, who sent her secret messages during his newscasts, and showed up in her apartment an hour later. There was The Astronaut who had set foot on the moon and whom she met at a conference for recovering alcoholics. There was The Actor, known for his brilliant performances, whose greatest part may have been that of faithful husband. There was The Dancer, The Writer, The Critic, and the musician who quizzed her to see if she could be his intellectual equal, while hoping she couldn’t.

In this Byliner Original from the new digital publisher Byliner, Elizabeth Kaye, author of “Midlife: Notes from the Halfway Mark”, reveals the pains and pleasures of a life spent pursuing love, and calculates their costs with shivering precision. Sleeping with Famous Men affirms that, while she did not always love wisely, her life has been rich with daring and passion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A longtime contributor to “Esquire,” “Rolling Stone,” and “The New York Times,” Elizabeth Kaye is the author of “Mid-Life: Notes from the Halfway Mark” and “Ain’t No Tomorrow: Kobe, Shaq, and the Making of a Lakers Dynasty,” as well as the Byliner Original “Lifeboat No. 8.”

Elizabeth Kaye

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