When No Never Means No - The Sexual Education Of A Handsome Young Man

Bobby Perkins had been a very obedient child, always did what he was told, kept his elbows off the table, closed his mouth when he ate, kept his napkin in his lap, and always said, 'Yes, ma'am' and 'No, sir'. 

He had been an altar boy, an Honor Camper, and a good all-around member of the young New Brighton community, a boy any parent would want to have.  He was a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout, an Explorer Scout, and a hall monitor. 

 

It was probably a foregone conclusion that this complaisance, obedience, and dedication to doing the right thing wouldn't last.  How long could a normal, red-blooded boy keep it up?  How many masses, jamborees, and perfect attendances could there be in him until something clicked or cracked or gave way? 

Not surprisingly it was a girl who turned his head.  Nancy Blythe was a Lolita, a nymphet, a young girl who barely out of seventh grade was a siren, an alluring, irresistible, uncannily sexual woman, and it wasn't long before she and Bobby were in the back of his father's El Dorado, and old-fashioned antique great winged thing with a wide interior and soft leather seats.  

At first he didn't know exactly what to do, but Nancy guided him through the first of their many times together. The back seat was only the first.  There was the 14th hole of the Country Club, the hall closet, and once in his parents' magnificent Mallard canopied bed.  

How she knew about Khajuraho positions and Japanese pornographic acrobatics he never knew; but that was what set Nancy apart. She didn't have to study to learn any of this.  It came as naturally as walking or smelling a rose. She wanted to be touched there, petted, kissed, and entered since before she could remember.  Of course she didn't understand what these feelings were all about, but that was incidental.  She knew something was up and that was enough. 

What changed the reticent, quietly obedient Robert L. Perkins into a sexual adventurer was her willingness.  Anything that Bobby wanted to do, she let him do; and even more importantly she turned him into her sexual toy, a plaything, an action figure with erections; a he-man transformer who held her like Hercules, bent her back like the Rape of Proserpina, entered her like a satyr, then turned over and let her suck and stroke him. 

 

Anything goes was Nancy's meme, and Bobby was lucky to have had her as his first love. After Nancy he had not one timid bone in his body, not one moment of hesitation, not one iota of doubt.  He knew from the very start that women wanted sex as much as men did, and were hard to get only as part of an elaborate animal vetting.  Before rutting, the doe sniffs out the stag.

Nancy taught him how to short circuit the preliminaries, how to approach women the way they wanted to be approached but found hard to admit. So many centuries of demure, eye-lash batting, trussed and wigged comeliness were hard to overcome. Unwanted pregnancy was a death sentence, but the right moves could collar and corral the right man at the right time. 

Nancy jumped the queue. There was no male harness that could hold her, no reins that could force her direction, no bit, no whip that could intimidate her.  Her sexuality, her open, uninhibited desire and wonderful, innate ability to whore up or bed down as the mood suited her was defining. 

Laclos' Marquise de Merteuil was a woman for whom sexual pursuit, conquest, and domination was all there was in a narrowly confined courtly life. She had a Machiavellian will and devious intent - an intellectual prurience and a second-hand interest in sex (she liked to watch) when first-hand had to be deferred.  Nancy's sexuality on the other hand was honest, easily definable, and irresistible. She was simply a woman who was absolutely, impeccably, and insistently sexual. 

 

When Bobby ran up against the MeToo, 'No Means No' ethos of the day, he was perplexed. Not only was the elaborate balletic dance of courtship gone, but a censorious, fearful, legal battleground has been put in its place.  

Nancy Blythe laughed at this dry irritability. She not only knew what men wanted but how make them whatever she wanted - her sexual poupée, consort, or husband accordingly.  

Women, Bobby knew thanks to Nancy, wanted the same uncorralled sex that she had - a wide open Iowa prairie kind of sex.  No fences, no barbed wire, nothing but free range.  'No' was never in Nancy's vocabulary, nor was it in any woman's.  The MeToo movement had spayed women, messed with their minds, and sent them reluctantly to a chaste bed to be awakened by a Prince Charming who did their bidding and treated them like princesses. 

Knowing this, Bobby was a successful as Casanova, Valmont, or Lothario.  Women adored him.  There was no fooling him about their intent, and his was as plain as day.  He was a man who loved women and whose confidence, attention, and unbending sexual desire turned them inevitably his way.  'No' was never uttered, never necessary, never needed, for here was a man who instinctively understood women, who needed nothing but intimacy, respect, and charm to seduce them.

   

Many were like Nancy who needed no seduction, and for whom sex with Bobby was what they wanted; not so much on their terms, for that would be MeToo legalism, but something theirs and their alone.  A woman's desire, after all, defines who she is. 

Bobby lost track of Nancy, but like most older men who turn to their first loves for a second chance at innocence, looked around for her.  She was in Oregon someplace, but had left no paper trail.  Oregon could mean anything, deep woods, Portlandia, hausfrau...If a woman's desire does indeed define who she is, then Bob knew her better than any other woman he had met, so open, distinct, and aggressive had she been about it, and so the search would be worth it. Except for the other undeniable fact - God created men with a lifelong sexual desire, but granted them but a few short decades to realize it.

And so it was that the days of Nancy Blythe-type sexual epiphany were long gone.  Better to leave well enough alone. Given what she had meant to him, it wouldn't pay to see an old lady.  Yet there wasn't a day when the image of young Nancy Blythe didn't pop up in a daydream, that smooth, warm body next to his and her absolute delight with him. 

Much has been made of sexuality these days, but only the alternate kind.  An incredible demission of sexual intimacy.  The individual woman plays second fiddle in a political group. She is a point on a gender spectrum, but only an indistinct, unmeasurable one; a quantum probability. 

Bobby retired well and easily, a happy man. Nancy was not an obsession, he reassured himself, only a young love; but he knew that wasn't true at all.  She was his first love, his only love. 

When Barton's Holler Went Woke - A Biden Operative Goes Deep Hillbilly

Bob Muzelle had been a social justice advocate for decades, as far back as he could remember.  Of course not in Throgg's Neck where he grew up - that part of the Bronx was pretty Italian, lace-curtain Irish, and Orthodox Jew before it became overrun with Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. 

In none of these ethnic enclaves were there seders mourning the passing of Samuel Gompers and the great trust-busting socialists of the day, drunken brawls over Dewey and Roosevelt, and certainly no sympathy for Harlem.  Progressivism was not even a second thought. 

It was a working class neighborhood, hard by, patriotic as far as Fourth of July went, but the ties to The Old Country still bound tightly, and Bob's neighbors raised their glasses to Eire and Umberto II more often to Washington and Jefferson.   The Jews of course had nothing to celebrate, the Holocaust being such a recent memory, and they kept to themselves and their shops in an 'I don't want no trouble' peaceful coexistence with what, let's face it was an anti-Semitic corner of the Bronx.  

Somehow Bob moved away from that conservative, enclave and became engaged in the social causes of the day - the War in Vietnam, women, and the black man.  Over the years, through college and beyond, Bob's commitment to Neo-Progressivism became unshakeable.  Reform was his calling, and Utopia his goal. 

More than anything Bob was a fighter - that was one good thing at least that the multi-ethnic ghetto had given him.  His bloodying of the bully of 12th Avenue was but the first notch in his belt.  He of course gave up street fighting when he left the Bronx, but the spirit of what he liked to call 'aggressive defensiveness' stayed with him throughout his politico days in Washington. 

It was this tough, barroom energy that led his ‘Biden for President’ colleagues to issue him a challenge.  The agenda of diversity, equity and inclusivity had not reached into the hinterland, and there were potential converts and votes there.  Eastern Kentucky was one of the swing districts important to Democrats for the upcoming election, so Bob was dispatched to Barton's Holler.  

Barton's Holler was a nasty, dark, gross place of trailers, mud, coal dust, and the stink from the smelter on the river.  The holler was set in the crotch of two mountain ridges, too steep to farm, all but denuded for firewood, given to mudslides, and high enough to block all but the noontime rays of the sun.  It was a dismal, ugly, hard-bitten, miserable place.  

'Howdy', Bob said to the old men sitting on the front porch of 'Billy's', the general store owned by Billy Thatcher, retail in name only - bootlaces, mops, and 100 lb. bags of cornmeal on otherwise empty shelves. Billy still stoked the old potbellied stove to keep the place warm, but on warmer days like this one, he kept the screen door open and let the customers rest awhile in front. 

The Cowen brothers were playing checkers and never looked up.  Hack Wilson and his bluetick were asleep in the sun, and Billy was in the back room.  Bob just stood there smiling.  Finally Billy walked into the store, heaved the sack of cement he was carrying onto the floor, stepped from the cloud of coal dust, and nodded. 

 

It wasn't just that Bob looked like an outsider, he was suited up in cracker wear designed to fit in.  He had been told in Washington that these good ol' boys didn't like 'furriners' and best he dress the part; but everything smelled too much of L.L. Bean just out of the Amazon box, too pressed and stiff to help anyone fit in. 

Billy gave Bob the once-over, spat into a corner just beyond the sack of cement, and said, 'So?'. 

Bob smiled even more broadly, extended his hand, cleared his throat, and began his spiel.  He was here, he said, to discuss points of national interest, the Biden agenda, and how the President's re-election would promise well-being and reward.  

'Like what?', said Billy, jacking up his overalls and spitting again into the corner. 

Now Bob was on solid ground.  He talked of Bidenomics, energy renewal, a more generous, accepting and tolerant society, and the foundation of civil rights.  He smiled again, paused, and waited for what hoped would be a favorable response.   

'What about all them queers and trans-fucks?', Billy said, 'and them Bolshies'. 

Bob had not heard the term Bolshies since his father's day, but got the drift.  Bolshies, Commies, Socialists, same denominator, and here he was at long last in Indian country but a little nervous, in the maw of the beast. 

Bob explained about his President's efforts at inclusivity, and although he respected the past, one must accept and embrace those of alternate sexuality. 

'We don't want no butt-fuckers and cock-suckers down here', Billy said, 'so tell Joey we ain't buying his bullshit'. 

Bob knew he shouldn't have worn his Biden/Harris campaign button, but it was too late to take it off. 'I understand, Mister....' Here Bob stopped short.  He should have found out Billy's name before even stepping into this foul-smelling, cracker shithole. 

'None of your goddamn business', Billy said, spat in the corner, hitched his overalls, and walked away.   

There weren't many other places to schmooze in Barton's Holler.  Billy's store was just about it, but there was the church, always a meeting place in these backwoods places.  Had he come on a Sunday he could have heard a Bible-thumping, hallelujah, Praise the Lord, holy rolling sermon, a real sermon and far cry from that of his own Reverend Barker Phillips of the Westover United Church of Christ in Bethesda, marvelously secular in intent with Jesus only a backdrop. 

The door to the rectory was open, so Bob let himself in.  A place of worship welcomed all visitors. Pastor Bridges, a young, distracted-looking man, saw Bob and waved him to the old wooden Remington Carbine crate at a Victorian, cracked, engraved coffee table.  

'Sorry', the pastor said, 'Looking for my glasses', and at that swept around the room, half-blind, stumbling, arms out, until he finally found them, hooked around an empty bottle of horse liniment. 'Knew they were here somewhere'. 

The response of the pastor to Bob's spiel was no different than that of Billy sans epithets.  He hated the idea of...here he looked for the proper terms to describe the disgust he had for homosexuals...men who did it with men, and all the combinations and permutations of normal sexuality that God forbade in the Bible; and given that he hadn't seen a black man since twenty years ago when he attended a Baptist conference in Louisville (where he was surrounded by them), he was nonplussed at the idea of this racial summitry in the White House.  Of course he didn't put it quite that way, but Bob translated dialect into intelligent metaphor and understood. 

Two for two.  Two strikeouts in hillbilly land, cracker-town, the dismal hollers of Kentucky.  Should he try the school? Nah, why bother? And so, as a parting shot at this miserable, backward place, he left a bag of Biden/Harris buttons on the front porch of Billy's under the rocker where some old toothless bastard had nodded off. 

'How'd it go?', asked a colleague when Bob returned to his K Street offices.

'Pretty darned good', Bob replied, and tucked in to his outbox. 

Yale's Swan Song - The Pathetic Demise Of Excellence

Harper Fielding's father and all forbears had gone to Yale - the old Yale, that is.  Skull and Bones, Fence Club, the upper crust, Gentlemen's 'C', summers on the Vineyard, winters at Gstaad, a sinecure at Bear Stearns, and a wedding with a Cabot or Lodge on Nantucket. 

Things had not changed much over the years since Great Grandpa went there, interrupting his education to fight the Hun at Ypres and receive a Distinguished Service Cross; or since Granddad spent four years there, shuttling between New Haven, New York, and Smith College in a happy Fitzgerald-esque whirlwind of social affairs; or even since his father, stellar student of Maynard Mack, Harold Bloom, and Vincent Scully, all stars in the academic pantheon, illuminating the likes of Blake, Hamlet, and the great temples at Cnossos. 

 

The erosion of that idyll which had continued since the days of Elihu Yale and John Davenport, had begun when Inslee Clark, new Dean of Students, opened the floodgates to all comers - the best and the brightest were no longer from St. Marks, St. Paul's and Groton, but from Stuyvesant, Thomas Jefferson and Carver High.  If its social viability went down, its academic reputation went up.  Always a place of seriously higher learning, Yale with the matriculation of these smart Jews from Crown Heights and Italians from Bay Ridge, became a magnet for achievers.  Out were the days of a 'well-rounded' education, and in were the days of all-nighters in the laboratory or in the carrels of Harkness. 

Even that halcyon of high academic interest and rigor, however, had its day. When the university opened its gates not to the best and the brightest, but to anyone who had a gripe - victims of white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, and economic exploitation - down crashed the ivory tower.  In its place was a hodge-podge of comers from every closet, ghetto, and Appalachian hollow.  It was a jamboree of the 'newly privileged', the leftovers and left-outs who finally were having their day. 

Out too were the classes of Bloom, Mack, and Scully and in were a wide range of offerings dealing with the same oppression, victimization, and alienation experienced by those students recruited and admitted under the university's new DEI policy. 

So, when Harper Fielding stepped up to carry on in the footsteps of his father and his father's family, he was greeted not with the generous welcome he expected - after all the Fieldings had contributed tens of thousands to the university - but with suspicion.  As a white boy from a wealthy, privileged Boston family, he was immediately suspect.  How would this legatee of racism fit in to a university in the process of expunging white privilege from every nook and cranny? 

The names of residential colleges which had been in place for centuries thanks to the preeminence, historical prominence, leadership, or early American patriotism of its founders, were being changed to those of minor characters as 'diverse' as the student body.  It simply wouldn't do for LaShonda Jackson from Anacostia to have to live in a residential college named for a bigot. 

Just as the overt signs, indicators, and memes of racism were being erased; and just as the academic offerings were reconfigured to reflect the interests and personal backgrounds of students, so did the nature and quality of discourse.  Gone were open inquiry, intellectual debate, logical exegesis, and analytical parsing, and in their place a gooey mix of expected outcomes.  Classes on the evils of slavery were paired with ones on the greatness of African culture.  Sociology courses on the white pathology of oppression were paired with those on the environmentally-attuned consciousness of the African and the higher order of his tribal religions. 

 

Logical inquiry, the very heart and soul of American higher education since the founding of Harvard and Yale centuries ago, was replaced by tautology and received assumptions. Slavery need not be studied as a socio-economic and historical phenomenon, dating back to the first Paleolithic human settlements, because it is, ipso facto, an evil institution.  In an ironic reminder of George Orwell's Animal Farm's meme, 'Four legs good, two legs bad', the University's 'Black is good, white is bad' was chilling but universally endorsed. 

Students of color had to get the lead roles in theatre productions, campus media, sports, and social clubs.  It wasn't just that the university was still trying to redress former wrongs, but to elevate one race over another because of its clear, unequivocal, absolute superiority.  

The same was true of gay men and lesbians.  They were promoted to the top of the heap not because of former insults but because they represented the new reality of fungible sexuality.  Gender was a choice, not a biological or genetic given, and those who chose to defy the patriarchal, homophobic, Bible-thumping ignorance of the past were heroes to be feted, honored, and respected. 

It gets worse. On the day that Harper was to visit Yale, the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic protests were in full swing in Beinecke Plaza. It was another Orwellian nightmare, with logic, precedent, and history inverted.  The Israelis were the genocidal murderers, not Hamas who for decades had preached nothing but anti-Jew hatred and called for the elimination of Israel and the extermination of the Jews.  

 

The Israelis were overlords, maniacal occupiers of sovereign territory, not self-defensive, legitimately protective national sovereigns who had to occupy, extend settlements, and create defensive perimeters. 

Despite thousands of years of the existence of the Jewish homeland, Jews had no claim to residence there because a few Arab goatherders were scattered in the Sinai.  Despite Israeli calls for peace and prosperity with only one proviso - that Hamas admit Israel's right to exist - the Palestinians have used every dollar of foreign aid, every Iranian rial to build an aggressive military infrastructure. 

A wild, feral mob. This was Yale? 

Indeed it was.  A cabal of students, teachers, and administrators had successfully promoted a woke culture on campus - a culture that determined admissions, courses, and school policy - and once in place, adopted, and endorsed, there was no turning back.  Nothing but the dismantling of the system would set things aright. From Board of Directors to students, a reversal of policy and nothing less would stop the ridiculousness, inanity, and downright destructiveness of the current situation. 

Harper's father was initially disappointed that the unbroken legacy of Yale attendance would now end; but he was no Old Blue codger.  He saw what was happening to this once storied institution, withdrew his substantial financial support, and cheered his son's matriculation at a far more sensible place.