Opus 21: Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age, a Concerto for a One-man Band, Six Arias for Soap Operas, Fugues, Anthems & BarrelhouseWylie, Philip
Philosophy
Opus 21: Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age, a Concerto for a One-man Band, Six Arias for Soap Operas, Fugues, Anthems & Barrelhouse
Wylie, Philip
Authors -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Patients -- Fiction; Philosophy -- Fiction
"She's married. Lives in Troy. Comes to see me once in a while. Lovely
girl. And--Charmaine? The president of an oil company moved her onto
Park Avenue--died--and left her his heap. Millions. She's a good
customer of mine. You know, Kinsey should interview me before he writes
more books."
Kinsey again.
"Why don't you drop him a note? Volunteer?"
Hattie's face wrinkled with amusement. "I wouldn't want to shock the
poor man."
I laughed.
Her brows came together. They were ordinarily straight and level, red
once, black now--like a crayon mark made with a ruler. She still had
good-looking amber eyes, fiery but steady, and her forehead was very
high. She was beginning to look like some sort of sachem--a tribal
wiseman, or a poet. Quite an impressive dame.
"It's funny," she said. "I've even heard men right in these rooms
argue that Kinsey was a liar and crazy and incompetent and a menace to
society. Otherwise bright men. Heard them say that Kinsey only talked
to screwballs and neurotics and people who were inventing stuff to show
off. You'd hardly believe such self-kidding was possible!"
"They said it about psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, too," I agreed.
"Said that their conclusions were obviously nutty because they never
saw anybody but nutty patients. Never stopped to reflect that a
neurotic is not a nut, that every patient did his best to tell the
precise, detailed truth about his private life, and that every single
one of those stories involved the sex behavior of many, many other
people who are called normal. I mean--the psychologists learned a whole
hell of a lot about what normal people did from every neurotic patient.
So when they talked about sex--they had the dope. Most people never
thought of that angle."
"Most people," Hattie said, "never think. And when it comes to sex,
they think about ten times less than never."
"Which brings me," I nodded, "to the matter in hand. I got a nephew. A
brainy apple and a good kid. And you had a girl here--or on your call
list--till about six months ago, named Marcia something--who's gone to
live with Paul--he being the nephew."
Hattie said, "Yes," and waited.
I realized that a dozen years is a long time in which not to see
anybody--a time long enough for a change, especially if one has quit
drinking, married again, and so on and so on and so on. Hattie was
afraid I was up to some sort of Presbyterian nasty-work--and she was
ready to be disappointed. Ready not to help me call the cops on Marcia,
so to speak, and ready to write off one more guy as a galvanized
hypocrite.
I said, "In my frank opinion, Paul is not the sort who will be happy
with an ex-houri. And I don't say that because he's my nephew and
because I'm broad-minded about everybody but who-touches-me. Let me
tell you what Paul's like--and how he came to confide in me on the
situation--how he got into it--and how he's acting about it as of this
afternoon."
"Tell me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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