HERBERT GOLD
A Blazing Incident
Here at last is the true confession of how a big-breasted, dreamy, willing,
and psychotic sorority person took advantage of me in the late fifties;
and of how I suffered the consequences of sinlcssness; and implicitly con–
tained within the body of my avowal, evidence can be found of how the
times have improved, thanks mainly to improvement in the times .
First, a short vocabulary lesson from days gone by.
Making
Ollt,
Sorority, Pin lied, Fiance, Girl .
..
Do some of us recall that the word
Saranwrap
could raise a snicker in gatherings small or large? The di–
aphragm was an unreliable convenience, like the little wheels on luggage.
The Pill was a gleam in the eye of a few scientists at Syntex of Mexico.
N evertheless, the impulse to perform acts of love, tenderness, lust, or
squirminess had already existed for many a year. How to answer this call
of nature?
Through neurosis and psychosis, plus squirming, lusting, tendering,
loving.
Could we have the story, please?
Cornell University, high above Cayuga's water, is a cashmere vision
of the perfect college campus in any winter of memory. When the snow
falls, the carillons in the library tower sound and resound across Quad
and gorge, across hillside and against the brick walls of Willard Straight
Hall - champion snowqueen music. The sky might be leaden, although
memory tends to relinquish this fact, but the wide lawns are white and
every cheek is pink. A few ethnic cheeks are dusky.
We grizzled profs in our galoshes and scarves were quaint. The
statute of limitations may app ly to descriptions of winter campuses,
dreamy coeds, winsome faculty, fraternity dances with roaring fires, mak–
ing out upstairs or in parked cars or no place. I had recently suffered the
compli cated luck of a divorce, a bout of chi ld support and alimony
poverty, depression mingled with c1ation , an immersion in the
Manhattan of young writers studying how to advertise themselves. On
smoky afternoons I wanted both in and out. I had been playing touch
football in a sidestreet of Manhattan when someone leaned out a
window and said Vladimir Nabokov requested I come to the telephone.
