Everyone's name in this story has been changed except Arnold, me, and Maria)

Okay, okay now that he's all over the news again I think it is time to reveal my own Arnold story (for the few of you who have not already heard it). Yes, I have met the man--had dinner with him in fact--but I did not have an affair with him.

The year was 1981, the place Madrid. I was there for my junior year abroad. He was there filming Conan the Barbarian (a movie I still have never seen). His cast and crew were living at the Villa Magna, a fancy high-rise near the University and my ex-roommate "Wilma", a fancy girl from Louisville had moved out of our boarding house and into the Villa Magna over the Christmas break. Being blonde and American the Conan Crowd quickly found Wilma and she became friends with a lot of them and had parties with them that we were all invited to or sometimes we just all hung out in the Villa Magna bar.

My friend "Mary" (no that's really her name, she doesn't care if I tell this story) started dating one of the stuntmen, a nice dumb kid from LA whose name I still see in movie credits from time to time. He's the guy in the cowboy hat on the left. The guy on the right is also a stuntman, Tony something. The girls are classmates.

One night that winter, Wilma called me with a last-minute dinner party invitation. She was hosting Arnold and his buddy Franco and Wilma's roommate, "Catherine" (the fabulously wealthy Belgian girl who had been sent to Spain to get over the death of her Grand Prix race-car driver boyfriend who'd been killed in a race....you can't make this stuff up), had to cancel at the last minute. Did I want to come? Heck yes I wanted to come. It was free food and I was always a starving student in those days. It was a low-key night. The guys were exhausted from a tough day of shooting on horseback and I don't remember much about it except that I ate more than either of them which was kind of funny.

The parties were more fun-- an eclectic mix of American actors, crew-members from all over, and the students at our Spanish school who were mostly American and European, and our Spanish friends. At one party, I remember, Arnold grabbed Mary's ass as she was introduced to him. This was just his way of being friendly apparently. He also would work out in the apartment gym with my friend Wilma and give her fitness tips that also included a butt-grab--purely technical of course--to demonstrate what she should be working on.

I'm a little sad to say that he never tried to grab my behind. It may be because I was with my Spanish boyfriend when I met him the first time or it may be, as Mary says, he sensed I would deck him if he tried. Of course it can't be because my ass is not grab-worthy--it still is and it surely was in 1981.

Anyhoo, even then there were rumors that he was cheating on Maria (they were not married yet, still dating) with one of the European girls from my school and rumors about his co-star. I've been thinking about all this as the tawdry news unfolds. I remember thinking back then that surely even Maria, a cosmopolitan member of the Kennedy family would not be okay with this. Maybe I should have sent Maria an anonymous letter then. Maybe she could have avoided this.

Who know? She probably has received a lot of anonymous letters over the years and chose to ignore them.

Which is too bad. I feel badly for her, and her children, and the housekeeper, and I feel even worse for the 14-year-old "love child" who surely is the most innocent victim of all in this mess.

But I sure don't feel bad for Arnold. I don't suppose anyone feels bad for him.

Except maybe Tiger.