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Show 7? 236 THE WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW for him, throwing off her robe, and her shoulders were pretty, I suppose, but I did diink die camera dwelt on them overlong. Then when it did move, it blacked out and went down for a close-up of her feet, rising slowly to a short distance above her kneecaps, not nearly high enough for Ted and me, growing boys, and showing nothing between diigh and shoulder. Big deal. Really, magazines were much more satisfying: they teased harder and were everywhere. Life especially was living with flesh in those days, in picture stories, in soap ads, everywhere the smooth sensual flesh of beautiful women. Thus I discovered the legitimate American erotic dream, woman ubiquitous but untouchable in a photo, and thus like all men I began to live daily widi my lust Burning but chaste, for I hadn't yet discovered even the simplest way to quench it. I did find ways to feed it, the most notable being a magazine I bought uiird-hand from Ted. It was called Gay Puree and I read the stories with a strangely beating heart, all laid in France and in each one a handsome American who plucked the most beautiful French blossoms with marvelous ease, giving the distinct impression that French girls felt unnatural when not supine. Fine, but the stories broke off at rather crucial moments and left me hanging by my diumbs. Then I would turn to the center section where there were photographs of ladies, most certainly French because naked. My favorite lay upon her elbow across two pages and I would groan with gratitude for her abundance, then groan widi agony for the black lace draped carelessly but so carefully over her loins. The weight on my thumbs grew unmerciful. But erotic or chaste none of my visions of womanhood had anything to do with the young woman next door - until one morning in early summer when I was drowsily pulling up my Levis and, as I glanced toward her window, she walked across in front of it. No close-ups of feet here, no black lace: all I didn't see of her was her feet. She had just risen from a bed out of my sight, she moved across to a closet also out of sight, and her sudden naked body shook me thoroughly. Not that I really saw much: she was twenty yards away, I wasn't expecting her, and, although I came awake and focused with astonishing rapidity, by that time she was gone. Thus I only glimpsed a white figure without detail and I don't know why I was so shaken, unless because visionary and fleeting as she'd appeared she was so undeniably real, so solidly alive - so much so that I wanted to run from my window. But I stayed and strained my eyes, and I would have chopped off both my thumbs to have seen her more clearly or to see her again. But when she did reappear she was dressed and I went out to breakfast. The next few mornings I lurked at my window but when I didn't see her I began, strange as it seems to me now, to get up and dress without giving her a thought. Then I saw her again - or rather her husband. I looked, blinked, |