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Talent.
After she turned me loose, kissed for keeps, I heard a voice from my left:
"Don't I get a kiss, too?"
Gretchen is a soprano; this voice was tenor. I turned my head.
Galahad. I was in bed with my doctor. Well... with both my doctors.
When I was a lad in Iowa, I was taught that, if I ever found myself in this
or an analogous situation, the proper gambit was to run screaming for the hills
to save my "honor" or its hom-ologue for males. A girl could sacrifice her
"honor" and most of them did. But, if she was reasonably discreet about it and
eventually wound up married with nothing worse than a seven-months child, her
"honor" soon grew back and she was officially credited with having been a virgin
bride, entitled to look with scorn on sinful women.
But a boy's "honor" was more delicate. If he lost it to another male (i.e.,
if they got caught at it), he might, if lucky, wind up in the State
Department-or, if unlucky, he would move to California. But Iowa had no place
for him.
This flashed through my mind in an instant-and was followed by a suppressed
memory: a Boy Scout hike when I was a high school freshman, a pup tent shared
with our assistant Scoutmaster. Just that once, in the dark of night and in
silence broken only by a hoot owl- A few weeks later that Scout leader went away
to Harvard... so of course it never happened
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