The Naked Truth: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewife of New Jersey--In Her Own Words by Danielle Staub Page A

him. I thought it was going to be easy to date again, but it proved to be much more difficult. I couldn’t just be with someone for the heck of it. I had been with Billy for such a long time that I didn’t know how to connect with a new guy physically. I was always expecting it to feel like love—the way Billy and I had felt when we made love. But when you’re not in love with somebody, I discovered, it couldn’t possibly feel like love. I was confused and had to discover all over again what love was going to be like.
    Most of my partners were in a hurry to jump into bed withme. However, I wasn’t in much of a hurry to get into bed with just any man. I didn’t have any particular complaints about sex, but I didn’t enjoy superficial sex. I have never had a one-night stand in my life. Instead, I enjoyed having a relationship with a man. I liked knowing that he was going to be only with me. I also liked thinking that he was the only one I was going to be with as well. I had a deep desire to build trust with someone and to feel that we were working toward something of substance together.
    It seemed like a waste to just give my body and soul to a man who wasn’t going to say “Good morning” and “Good night” to me
every
single day and night. It’s not that I had such an inflated sense of myself, it’s just that in my subconscious I knew that I had to have respect for myself and my body after all that had happened during my childhood. My virginity had been taken from me without my permission so many years earlier, and in young adulthood I realized that I now had a choice— I could choose to have sex or not have sex with a man.
    Kissing now became an integral part of my love life. In fact, kissing became more important to me than having sex. Sex was taken from me against my will, but nobody ever took a kiss from me. It was the only form of
my
sexuality that I actually had control over. If kissing is done passionately, properly, and with the right person, it feels better than sex. This has been proven to be true for me. I didn’t take off my clothes, yet I got the same satisfaction and fulfillment. For a man, kissing probably isn’t enough sexual pleasure, but for me, it was all I needed.I never felt dirty from it. I didn’t feel invaded or ever have to say to myself afterward,
What did I just do?
    Soon after my fling with the Olympian, a world-famous television star stumbled right into my new fascination with the art of kissing. It happened one night when I went with my girlfriends to the Grand in Coconut Grove. The Grand was a popular and trendy hotel with many bars, a hangout for the who’s who of Miami at that time. That evening, I stepped into the elevator at the Grand to find Don Johnson standing right in front of me. He was really handsome—even better looking than he appeared on television—and Philip Michael Thomas, his costar on
Miami Vice,
was standing right next to him. In those days, these two guys were household names and on the covers of every top-selling entertainment magazine, and
Miami Vice
was one of the top-rated television shows in the country. Crockett and Tubbs with their white suits and pastel T-shirts underneath were a sensation. Men wanted to be them and women wanted to be with them. The hit cop show was shot on location right in Miami, so the cast were out and about at all the local hot spots almost every single night.
    Don opened the conversation in a flirtatious way by telling me that I smelled really good and asking what I was wearing. I responded, “It’s an oil, and I love it.” (I still love it. Whenever I am around somebody who doesn’t smell good to me, I put my wrist up to my nose and breathe in the oil to escape it. I do that to this day.)
    Don and I continued our conversation about aromas. Hethen asked me what I thought of the way he smelled. I said, “Let me have your wrist.”
    “No, it’s on my neck,” he said.
    I smelled his neck and thought it