The night in 1976 when Brenda Venus had planned to hear Henry Miller deliver a lecture to her acting class, her house burned down. She didn't make it. A few weeks later, at a rare-books-and-antiques auction, she found a first-edition set of books called Women Through the Ages. She examined one of the volumes and found in it a letter written by Miller to a woman. She bid on the books. Before the evening was over, Brenda Venus owned the first editions and Henry Miller's address. She wrote to him, returning his letter and enclosing a few pictures of herself. That piqued the famed author's curiosity and, shortly thereafter, they began a correspondence and a friendship that would last for four years, until Miller's death in 1980 at the age of 88. "When I read Tropic of Cancer, in college, I had a premonition that I would meet him one day," Brenda said. "There was something about Henry's writing; I knew if we ever met, we would get along. I had never had that feeling about anyone else. By the time I met him, I had been going to school for a long time. I'd had a few acting jobs, won some beauty contests and moved to L.A. My parents insisted on the schooling. I wanted to be out in the world. I wasn't educated, in any real sense of that word. Henry was a genius. He educated me. Were we fated to meet? I think so. He thought so, too. Henry once said this about great lovers: They can't write about each other when they're both alive. One of them has to be dead. He told me that several times. I used to wonder why he kept saying it, but I guess I really knew it was about the letters. I had to know what he wanted me to do with the body of work he had given me. I couldn't have made a decision about the letters without him." Miller's writing is famous for its fleshy descriptions of sexual love and the uneasy alliance between the sexes. In his relationship with Brenda, the possibility of actual sex was out of the question, because of his failing health. That freed him to woo her with words. And he did. "Without the pressures that come with a sexual relationship, you can focus better. For Henry to be my mentor, I had to be in love with him. He was a hard teacher, because he was intense. He was also very sick and could have died at any time. So everything was speeded up. He knew that there wasn't much time. He stressed that there would be a lot of things I would remember only after he died. He gave me love and I gave him love. But I also gave him something to live for. It was a wonderful exchange. I don't think either of us got shortchanged. The passion of raw sex makes you play games, even if you're unaware of it; Henry always said that man/woman games would never end. The beauty of our relationship was the purity of it." What will Brenda Venus do after the book reviews and the talk shows and the movie deals are history and her letters from Henry Miller become part of his literary legacy? Don't worry about her. She's a strong, beautiful, intelligent woman. And a 20th Century Venus.
You are the heart of my heart. I am lursting with you! now for a water color! Your Hinry
all of you, my darling Brauda, is tender to the touch, tender but im touchable, what complications! all because of a little crad between the legs, which drives new crazy and makes angles im attainable.
