Lucky Girl

When she was born, the doctor warned Elizabeth's parents that their child was a mutant, a genetic freak. She had been born with 2 sets of eyelashes, like a shark has rows of teeth. And then there were her eyes.

"Your child has what is commonly known as Alexandra's Genesis. She is descended from a race of ancient Egyptian spirit people who disappeared 8000 years ago. She will never grow body hair, menstruate, or get sick. However, she will never find true love. "

"But her eyes doctor! What about her eyes?"

Her parents, who had envisioned a life in the movies for their baby girl before she was even born (and had in fact sold her soul to MGM 4 months before she emerged from the womb), immediately took advantage of her father's contacts in the German government, where in 1932 all the great advances in ocular science were taking place. The desperate family moved to Berlin, and Elizabeth's mother set up shop near Humboldt University, as a technical editor for the sciences and part time prostitute. With the help of a cadre of young brash Czech optometrists, the Taylors designed the world's first pair of colored contacts, which were a wonderful violet color, her mother's favorite color.

MGM, with the resources of all of Hollywood, eventually tracked down the fugitives, and there followed the famous shoot-out which took Elizabeth's father's life and set back the science of lenses more than thirty years. The studio carted Elizabeth and her mother back to the States under lock and key, and installed them in a guarded bungalow, where Elizabeth would live out the rest of her life as a cinematic concubine.

The Taylors never divulged Elizabeth's secret. They kept no close friends, made a practice of eating in, never went abroad if they could help it. Her mother learned to make the contact lenses by hand in kitchen. When her mother died, Elizabeth took on the responsibility, even though by this time there were commercial colored contacts available. Her eyes had become such legend, she couldn't risk the knowledge leaking out to anyone in the press. Not even her many husbands knew, with the exception of one, who died the day after he discovered her secret, purportedly in a plane crash. The examiner never explained the nail gouges around his eyes, or the apparent ritualized scarring on his torso.

What color are Elizabeth Taylor's eyes? Though we may never know for sure, at least until her body is in the coffin, there are rumours. There are the tales of servants, whispered secrets from paparazzi dismissed as the ramblings of alcoholics, reports from the asylums. When Elizabeth Taylor takes out her contacts, her eyes are black. Black like her soul.