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Out of context: Reply #744

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    The woman was tall, slim and blonde, the way Patricia Highsmith liked them. Kathleen Senn was at Bloomingdale's on this day to buy a doll for her daughter, and the 28-year-old Highsmith — a few years away from her success with "Strangers on a Train" and her novels about the murderous, amoral Tom Ripley — was then a temp worker in the toy department and a writer of comic books. She dutifully took down the information and arranged to have the doll delivered to the Senn's home in New Jersey.

    But Highsmith — a brittle, closeted lesbian with a deep interest in abnormal psychology — found inspiration in that brief encounter. Highsmith used this encounter to open "The Price of Salt," a lesbian love story that would be published under a pseudonym a few years later. The novel tells the story of a budding relationship between two women, one a young department store clerk and a divorcee fighting for custody of her daughter, that becomes threatened when the ex-husband hires a detective to get evidence of a lesbian relationship to use in the custody hearing. "Salt," unique for having a happy ending and would end up selling a million copies in paperback and become a classic in lesbian literature.


    But after writing the novel, Highsmith wasn't through with Kathleen Senn. On two occasions, she took the train from New York to Senn's New Jersey town. She wandered the street near her house, and even caught sight of Kathleen as she drove by. Highsmith mused about the incident in her diary:
    "For the curious thing yesterday, I felt quite close to murder too, as I went to see the woman who almost made me love her when I saw her a moment in December, 1948. Murder is a kind of making love, a kind of possessing. (Is it not, too, a way of gaining complete and passionate attention, for a moment, from the object of one's attentions?) To arrest her suddenly, my hands upon her throat (which I should really like to kiss) as if I took a photograph, to make her in an instant cool and rigid as a statue."
    Senn never knew of her role as Highsmith's muse. Nor did Highsmith know that Senn was, in reality, the ideal Highsmith character. Behind her beautiful, cool facade, Senn was a mentally ill woman and an alcoholic. Shortly before "The Price of Salt" was published, she stepped into her car parked in the garage, turned on the engine, and killed herself.

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