Monte Carlo Days and Nights

Monte Carlo Days and Nights

By Susan Tepper

Rain Mountain Press, 74 pages

ISBN 978-0-9981872-2-8

Review by Steve Glines

In the 1970’s love was easy. That’s a misnomer, sex was easy. It was a period of free love, the pill, and freedom from worry about venereal diseases that weren’t cured by a small handful of pills.

I hitchhiked to a beach on the northern shore of Prince Edwards Island, Canada. An impromptu camp had developed among the two dozen nomads that had assembled. I pitched my tent next to a pretty French Canadian girl, and we sat next to each other around a campfire someone had built in the middle of our encampment. Our talk was light and inconsequential. She invited me into her tent for the night. For the next week we camped, hitchhiked and had sex as often as we could. At the end of the week, she had to go home and go back to work. We hitched rides back to her home in Quebec, kissed each other on the cheek, and I hitched a ride home. I never saw her again. That was the 1970’s.

Susan Tepper also grew up in the 1970’s, but instead of being an itinerant writer/artist she was a stewardess on an international airline. Today, we call them by the sexless term, flight attendants, but back then they were stewardesses, and all stewardess were hot, sexy and ready, willing and able to take advantage of the first rich man to look their way. Monte Carlo Days and Nights is the story of a delightful romp through a week-long affair that takes her protagonist to Monte Carlo and back to New York.

Objectively, this short novella is nothing more than sex, sex and more sex punctuated by the typical angst that all couples go through when they think about what the other person is thinking. We see this from the perspective of a young stewardess who trades one lover for a rich hunk who’s wealth is derived from the music industry. He is wealthy, arrogant, and used to having a pretty young woman on his arm. We get the impression, from our stewardesses perspective, that he is shallow, and happy only as long as he can impress the other shallow but wealthy men of Monte, as Monte Carlo is called by those in the know. In the end, the story holds up as we see the week-long relationship devolve from the sexual frenzy of a new infatuation to one of self-doubt and diverging interests. He wants to be seen by the hotel pool, and she wants to dip her feet in the Mediterranean. He wants her dressed to the nines, and she wants to be comfortable. We don’t see a breakup, but we see it coming. In the end, he says, “If I were to get married, you’d be the one.” He is not the one.