Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

Certain girls, however — the “scroops!”—loved it and the better to study hid themselves in out-of-the-way places like airshafts and broom closets making lists, writing out mnemonics, and underlining their textbooks in red with massive felt pens. But this was a rare group. Most of the girls at Quinsy, braless and indifferent, either sat around drinking coffee or just went simpling from room to room with a thousand stinks and curses about the impossibility of cramming an infinity of knowledge into the finity of mind in one single night!

Ah, but for the copesmates in Clitheroe 403? It was considered by most of them vulgar to worry. Tomorrow? A pother, a pox! A feather, a fig! For if for them the night grew short, the morning was a world away, that was that, and no amount of pressure could ever hope to lessen the conviction beating in their little hearts that had been established there for all time in the immortal words of Miss Scarlett O’Hara, the Belle of Tara, who, when bravely standing against the world, deathlessly pronounced, “I’ll think of it all tomorrow. . after all, tomorrow is another day.” It was the true materia poetica of Dixiedom, a regional quintessential, the primal scream of the South.

“O gross!” cried Anaphora Franck. “Listen to this!”

“ ‘. . the diddling was hot, hot, hot. Rhoda, utterly enslaved, was sobbing, moaning, gasping and rolling her eyes. How hard, thought Rafe, can a dame press up to a guy, huh? Bro-ther! And why, he wondered, do a dame’s tears taste so good? He squeezed her ninnies and humped in heaves, like a crazed rabbit, while the little sextress, groaning low in the throat, dug her enamelled nails into his hairy back. “O baby, this is positively maddening,” squealed Rhoda, even though she felt like 20, “you’re driving me crazy, you hear me, crazy !” The sexcapade continued. She had spunk. He liked that. And so Rafe took his huge lubricated engine and

“I’m going to get wet,” said Mimsy Borogroves, revolving her torso.

Sally Ann Sprouse made revving noises like an engine.

“Y’all shush , will you?” screamed Loretta Boyco who, dropping her book, leaped up and, nearly garroting herself on the cord, was yerked backwards like a yo-yo. Panfuriously unplugging her hair-dryer, she stomped out of the room bristling like a hedgehog. Mona Lisa Drake, cellotaping her wet-locked hairdo, simply fluttered her eyelids and stuck out her tongue at the door Loretta Boyco summarily slammed.

“Who’s she, somethin’ on a stick?”

“Straight arrow,” said Donna Wynkoop.

“A wonk.”

“I am the Queen of England,” proscribed Hester Popkin, pointing a regal finger at the door, “and you are dismissed!”

“St. Loretta,” said Jessie Lee Deal who took the book which, giggling, Aone Pitts grabbed only to have it snatched from her by Géraldine Oikle who read:

“ ‘. . like a wild stud, suctioning her tongue, gasped on a wave of ecstasy, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, sister,” and he lunged at horny Rhoda whose skin was foxing with lustful chills. They kissed ravishingly. The kiss snapped. And then he made quick little feelies all over her body with his expert tongue, ranging over her diamond-hard nipples, and down, down, down to the fringed secrets below. “Oh yes, yes, Rafe, yesss,” husked Rhoda, “Touch me there !” Ho-ly bananas, thought Rafe. What a brawd! What bliss! What a sextravaganza!’ “

“She must be killing him,” skreeked Celeste Skyler.

Donna Wynkoop clapped. “Ain’t it the bees’ knees!”

“Well, shoot,” interjected lovely, spoiled rich Pengwynne Custis, lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke at the lot of them. “I was fourteen when all that happened to me , fancy. Which gives y’all a considerable something to think about, doesn’t it?” The sentence had been arranged for distribution as periodic. “You better believe it does.”

“Not really, honeychile,” came a sudden reply, cool as camphor. It was beautiful Hypsipyle Poore, stepping pink and fresh and stark-naked out of the shower. She slowly walked to the mirror and, unembarrassed, began to towel off, dabbing, patting, and caressing each limb, her perfect curves, like a luscious and legendary Narcissa. It was a body as smooth and soft as nainsook. She stretched and stepped lithely into a tight pair of silk pale-green panties which fit her too perfectly. “Why, Pengwynne honey,” breathed Hypsipyle with an over-sweet smile, “at fourteen I could have written me a damn ol’ book I’d have blushed to read.”

Splashing on friction lotion, Hypsipyle Poore paused and looked around at the other girls to see if anybody doubted it: even so much as the hint of a raised eyebrow, a smile not softened by belief, would not only have cost the transgressor — and immediately — her friendship but would have launched a campaign of rumor, as if of itself, whereby particular faults suddenly attributed to such a one would become, within an afternoon, distinct faits accomplis . Hypsipyle was strong-willed, did not like to be contradicted, and, if Xystine Chappelle, the class brownie, had been singled out as most likely to succeed, she enjoyed the reputation of being the most beautiful girl on campus. Teachers asked her out. She often made the claim, publicly, that she could seduce any male in the state of Virginia, six to sixty. You didn’t fool with her.

The room was her domain. It was, in fact, not remarkably unlike the others — save that, concomitant with a recent financial gift to the college from her daddy, Hypsipyle had no roommate. The décor, best described as eclectic, was a combination of toyshop, brothel parlor, and theatrical green room. A mobile of crotal bells, wired together, hung from the ceiling. A Mexican jar held several peacock feathers. Three silver fraternity mugs sat on the bookcase, half filled with texts and half with rat-romances, tepid glucose-and-water things like: The Killer Wore Nylon; Color Me Shameless; Miss Juliette’s Academy, or Variety Was Their Byword , etc. — and, of course, a foot-high stack of Bride’s magazines, the college favorite.

Collegiate banners hung everywhere. An orange-and-purple University of Virginia pennant (with two football ticket-stubs stapled to it) was pinned over her bed, next to which stood a table: a stiff gold postiche sat on a dummy head. Stuffed animals, beribboned, were scattered about the room. There was a box of billet-doux.

Coolly, Hypsipyle Poore sat down before her bureau, straightening out the photographs of several boyfriends at the edges of the mirror which was bright with cute, goofy decals. It was her favorite place in the whole wide world, an arsenal of cosmetic powers: toning sprays, hair lacquers, bath oils, body unguents and creams, gums, pomatums, flacons of rosewater, barbaric ceroborants, vaginal gels, creme rinses, perspiration arresters, rouge sticks, eyeliner pencils, lipsticks, cuticle oil and nipple blush, eyelash curlers, bone combs, tissue boxes, and pin-trays. A jewel box, découpaged red, was filled with rings, neck-chains, and bracelets, all gold. Hypsipyle walked her fingers over the phalanx of bottles, lifted out a vial of perfume, and touched a drop to her neck and inner thigh. She then took up a comb and, with the tracelet of a lewd smile in her eyes, tapped the lurid novel Sally Ann Sprouse was holding and now — to oblige her — reading:

“ ‘Rhoda was no little chickerino. She knew the game, the little she-cat — and how! And when they—’ “

Hypsipyle, interrupting, shook her head and told her precisely the page she wanted to hear. Sally Ann Sprouse flashed back the pages.

“ ‘Tantalizingly she pranced—’?”