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Show 196 had my fill-not like the tease of blonde Clare's neckline, that anomalous pact which allows a woman to show her tits but says that a gentleman doesn't look. That's schizophrenic, while art is sane. We stopped before the young Arab girl painted by Sargent, a full figure seen from the rear, and I was immediately struck with the sheer erotic beauty of her, of her derrier and her supple back. Kate sniffed in scorn; she did not like Sargent, didn't at all like that painting, said the figure was idealized, sentimentalized. "Looks OK to me." "It would. You were trained on Petty drawings." Actually I was remembering the Chinese fan-dancer in San Francisco, the breasts of Avis Carter, the bodies of a few common whores, those girls of Miami, the girls around me in Chicago. And I surely remembered Kate's cheerleader butt, more womanly now. "You don't think Clara would look that good?" I asked her. "Hell no. With her behind tucked up in a girdle? With a bra to make that cleavage? I'll bet she does have stretch marks." "But there are girls, there's all sorts of--" "What makes you think there are? And even so, there's time, gravity . . . Oh what they do to the human body!" "To you, for instance." "To you too, buddy." Time rides the pale horse, gravity close behind. "I mean I'll bet you would look that good." She shook her head firmly. "Back in high school you did. When you were that Arab girl's age." "How do you know?" "I know," I said. "I wasn't that dumb, ^nd I'll bet even today-not the |