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controversial, urbane and Huck Finn. Her eyes were mostly green. Sometimes blue. Her hair fell
over one side of her forehead in a soft sweep that paralyzed me.
I told her I was putting the make on her. She said, "You are?" She wasn't being coy, she simply
didn't know that was what was happening. Lesson one for the old man trying to play grabass with
(what the nuisance bitchily calls) "young stuff" (when she's trying to bug me): they don't do it
that way these days. They are free--they assure me they're free. They just seem to raise invisible
antennae and the libidinous message pulses off them. And in some marvelous, thaumaturgical
progression of events without time or measure, like a fast wipe in a Chabrol film, pow! there they
are in bed together, free and libidinous, everybody orgasming just the way Alex Comfort would have
it, no effort, no hangups, no groping and no seduction. In the sweet and amoral world of the
children there is no stalking, no hunting, no hustling; just the act, final and total and
contained, as Merwin puts it, "one tone both pure and entire floating in the silence of the egg,
at the same pitch as the silence."
I have no idea what I was thinking. It had been just another pain-in-the-ass speaking engagement;
Price Junior College, an agro school that got confused and wound up with a bedroom-community
commuter day-care babysitting population of twenty-five thousand acne-festooned urchins taking
dingbat classes in Science Fiction, Artificial Flowers I, Bowling, Inert Gas Welding and Current
Events in the Arts (which, so help me, Amen-Ra, turns out to be a course in how to be a good
audience). Because it is essentially a free tuition college for state residents--$6.50 per
semester for students carrying 6 units or more, $2.50 for schmucks handling under 6 units--it is a
refuge for post-puberty illiterates who would better serve the commonweal if they were out
planting Ponderosa Pines in an effort to stem the floodtide of concrete threatening to pave over
the entire state.
If, from these utterly objective and well-mannered remarks you get the impression that I have very
little use for young girls, I am content in the knowledge that I absorbed Lord Alfred Korzybski's
theories of General Semantics. I have but nothing to say to young girls. They're fine to look at,
in the way I would look at a case filled with Shang dynasty glazes, but expecting to carry on a
conversation with the average teenaged young lady is akin to reading Voltaire to a cage filled
with chimpanzees. I'm certain they would feel the same alienation for me. I can live with that
knowledge.
For instance ...
Yes, I realize I'm digressing, nuisance! This is what is called background color. It lends depth
to a story; it establishes character, motivation. Please! Do you mind?
As I was saying. For instance, one night I had a date with a certifiably mind-blowing, color-
coded, lathe-turned, rhodium-plated gorgeous. I picked her up and she was wearing an evening dress
that, had Lee Harvey Oswald turned around from his position crouched in front of that window in
the Texas Schoolbook Depository, 1940 vintage Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano in his mitt, and
seen it, with her in it, would have burned out the clown's eyeballs and we'd be living in a much
better country today. What I'm saying here, if you catch my drift, is that this female was a
positive paralyzer.
Visions of sugar plums danced in my steamy gutter of a mind.
We went to The Magic Castle, which is a fornigalactic private club with dining room that
specializes in showcasing the craft of the magician. We were carrying our drinks around the many
fascinating rooms, and wandered into one where they had an Atwater-Kent setup that was playing
tapes of old time radio. Amos 'n' Andy, Jack Armstrong, Lux Presents Hollywood, Gangbusters. And
above the radio was a glass-fronted cabinet in which reposed half a dozen Captain Midnight secret
decoder badges. I began enthusing over the nostalgic wonders of the little plastic-and-metal
icons, and only paused in my panegyric when I caught the look of total noncomprehension on the
face of my Helen of Troy. "Captain Midnight," I said. "He was on the radio in the Forties, when I
was a kid. I used to lie on my stomach and listen to the program. It was sponsored by Ovaltine. I
had a map of the Pacific Theatre of Operations on the wall. I used to mark the progress of the war
with little maptacks with red heads on them." Absolute bewilderment on her face. "The war in the
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Pacific. Bataan, Corregidor, Saipan, Palau, Wake Island?" Nothing. "V-J Day?" More nothing. "World
War II? It was in all the papers. 1941 through 1945."
She looked at me, perfection in every line and tremble, holding the Remy Martin of lust in the
crystal snifters of her eyes, and she said, "World War II? I was born in nineteen--" and she named
the year that coincided exactly with the date of the fire-bombing of my third marriage. I computed
rapidly and came up with her age as not quite seventeen. I hastily ran the numbers through my
terrified mind a second time and, even allowing for a recent birthday on her part, I was still in
deep trouble. I removed the stinger from her paw very gingerly, smiled my brightest, and said,
"It's time to go home now, dear." Fifteen minutes later she was inside her own home, safe and
unsullied. Christ, I could have been arrested just for what I was thinking!
All of which brings me back to Katie, who was eighteen, and who was the exception to my loathing
of young women that proved absolutely nothing. I was bananas over her from the git-go.
All of which totals up to make the point that we talked to each other. I got answers. Good
answers. A marvel, this Katie. I didn't want to let her get away.
What do you mean: what impressed me most about you? The size of your tits, what do you think?
Don't hit me, I'm a sick man. I was only kidding, for God's sake!
All kinds of things impressed me. That look on your face like a depraved munchkin. The dumb
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