Adios, Scheherazade

Betsy. Is that a great name? Betsy Blake. She sounds like something out of Archie Comics. The Blake part she couldn’t help, of course, and Blake by itself isn’t a horrible name, but Betsy? Of the six thousand different things that Elizabeths are called, Betsy is the absolute worst.

You know, that’s true. Two out of five girls are named Elizabeth, and they all wind up with one of the Elizabeth nicknames, and it tells you an awful lot about the individual girl which one of those nicknames she gets for a label. Like Liz is almost always a real whory swinger, a gutsy good-time girl, unless she’s very bony and has the clap, in which case she’s Lizzie. Bess is respectable but she puts out but she feels guilty about it. Beth saves herself for one man and works in the library and is very square but also reliable and intelligent and a rock in an emergency. Bett is bitchy and expensive but a great lady. Elsa is a ski-weekend swinger, but when she gives her word she keeps it. Eliza hasn’t been seen since the ice floe broke up, but before that she was a whiner. Elsie is lower class, cheerful, big-mouthed, big smile, she doesn’t get laid much because nobody wants to take advantage of her. Ella has a lot of physical female complaints and can’t hold her booze and is very quiet and if things go right she’ll mother you. Lisa has the self-image of a D. H. Lawrence heroine and likes horses and night clubs. Betty is an all-American girl and gets married and has two point four children and lives in one of these crappy suburban developments like where I am right now and it’s her kitchen where the kaffeeklatsch is held and she collects for muscular dystrophy. Betsy is a moron.

I don’t suppose that’s fair, but I don’t give a damn. All I know is, on that first date it had been seven months since I’d gotten laid, I was horny as hell, she was a fairly good-looking girl with all the necessary parts, and in the back seat of Howie’s car I was very bored. Also, at North’s Bar we ordered and drank a pitcher of beer. So on the way back to town I started to kiss her. It was January, we were both encased in tons of coats, it was like a stunt on Truth or Consequences. Finally I put my gloved hand on her knee, which even then struck me as ridiculous, and she let it stay there. She also didn’t object when I poked my tongue in her mouth. She didn’t respond either, but she didn’t object.

I have since then kissed two girls who understood that french kissing is a mutual matter. Betsy just sits there with her mouth open, but both Charlotte and Kay sort of went down on my tongue, which is pleasanter to do than describe.

Anyway. Since my gloved hand had not been repulsed from her knee, and since my tongue had not been repulsed from her mouth, I suddenly decided I was going to get laid. I got very hot and tried to find a way to get my hand inside her coat to her breasts but it was impossible. Also, she didn’t help. Still and all I was convinced that tonight was the night, the drought was over, old Ed was about to get his ashes hauled.

Sure.

Since she didn’t live on campus and everybody else in the world did, naturally she had to be let off first. On the way up to the bar she’d pointed at a closed Esso station and said that was her father’s gas station, but it turned out she didn’t live in the house next to the gas station, she lived in a house in town. Which, as it turned out, was just as well.

She gave Howie the directions, and we finally stopped in front of a totally dark house on a totally dark street. Except for street lights at the corners. I was trying to say there weren’t any lights in the windows of any of the houses. A writer would have worked it out.

Anyway, I said, “I’ll get off here too, Howie.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Ed,” Betsy said.

“No,” I said, doing the gallant number. “You’re my date, I’ll see you to your door.”

Howie, looking at me in the rearview mirror, said, “Should I wait?”

“Naw, you go on,” I said.

Howie’s date, a girl named Dora, sort of grinned at me from the front seat. “Have a good time,” she said. Did you ever notice how the other guy’s girl always thinks you’re hot stuff, how she’s always looking at you like you-devil-you? Never your own date, always the other guy’s date. I have no idea why that should be true.

Anyway, we got out of the car. There was snow all over the place and the air was freezing. Happily, there was no wind. We walked up the cleared slate path to her front porch and up the stoop and over the porch to the front door and then she said, “I had a lovely time, Ed. Thank you.”