The Stag at Eve

It is not without a certain eagerness that I watch the year 1954 lick its wounds and repair to some remote corner of limbo to die. For as New Year's Eve draws ever closer, I am reminded of last New Year's Eve and of my conduct on that occasion, the scars of which have not yet quite vanished from my psyche.

The evening began quietly enough: the clink of ice-cubes in the martini pitcher, the gentle laughter of a few dear friends--these were the only sounds to sully the air of my small but impeccably appointed digs. And pleasant sounds they were. Civilized sounds. Outside, the coarse proletariat was giving vent to its animal spirits by blowing tin horns, beating on washtubs, and goosing its females, but in the trim upholstered sanctuary of my apartment, order prevailed. Someone had even put a Bach passacaglia on the phonograph. Nothing, I thought with security as I poured the martinis and popped a furtive olive into my mouth, is more orderly than a Bach passacaglia.

My guests had arrived singly or in pairs during the past hour: an insurance underwriter and his wife, an amateur actor who thought he resembled John Gielgud because he had a large nose, a lady writer who had once sold a poem to The New Yorker and would quote it at the first lull in the conversation, an ad man who had read The Hucksters and felt guilty ever since, a dress designer whose sex I had never been able to decide, and a staunch old drinking companion of mine, Roscoe Kennedy, a man of profligate habits, who arrived simultaneously with a young woman whom I took to be his current preoccupation and who introduced herself simply as Charity.

"Perfect martinis, old man," my guests said warmly as I passed among them with the icy glasses. The first round went quickly down the thirsty throats and I was soon in the kitchenette again, mixing another pitcherfull.

Charity followed me in to request "Just a little less vermouth this time, darling, please" and to bite my ear in a friendly way. Charity, I should add, was yellow of hair, ripe of figure, and full of Southern Comfort she had acquired somewhere en route to my modest little soirée. She referred to me as a doll and ran her index finger leisurely up my spine. This I found strangely provocative.' "Give me an olive, doll," were her words, and they were uttered in plush contralto tones that went straight to my groin and stayed there for several minutes.

I think I can say without extravagance that I am likable, warm of heart, and mildly pleasing to the eye. I have, in fact, been compared favorably to Gregory Peck by one young lady, and I must admit that although Mr. Peck is somewhat taller than I, and perhaps thinner, with wider shoulders, a trifle more hair, a squarer jaw, and a more classically modelled nose, the comparison is not unfounded.

Cognizant of my charm, then, I was not particularly surprised when Charity announced a preference for having the requested olive conveyed to her teeth by the medium of my lips, rather than more conventional techniques. 'Always amenable, I proffered the tiny green spheroid to her in this manner. Quite by accident, our lips touched. A full forty seconds later, they were still touching, and we were playing a kind of dental tug-of-war with the olive. I was also becoming aware of her bust, which was brushing my lapels with almost premeditated regularity. This, too, I found strangely provocative.

"The ice-cubes," I said after recovering from my paralysis and relinquishing the olive, "are melting. We don't want watery martinis, now do we?" I attempted an arch tone, but I fear it came out as a rather scratchy whimper, due to the sudden dryness of my throat.

"Hell no, lover," she said huskily, "that would never do." Then, hiccuping daintily, she turned and ambled sinuously toward the living room, giving me a protracted view of her mobile hips. At the doorway, she paused, turned in my direction, and allowed her eyes to travel slowly from my eyebrows to my shoes and back again. Licking her lips and emitting one short, dog-like bark, she exited.

I looked into the martini pitcher. The ice-cubes had shrunken to the size of dice. I emptied the limp dilution into the sink and mixed another batch, working rapidly lest Charity should decide to return and again interrupt my labors. I filled the glasses and, finding and inch or two left in the pitcher, lifted it to my lips and drained it. I got an ice-cube in my eye, and my chin dribbled, but it was worth it. After that episode with Charity, I desperately needed strong drink.

Let me say at this point that I am no prude. Indeed, some conservative persons have called me a rounder. I deny nothing. But strict parental discipline as a child has had a far-reaching effect upon me. Mid-Victorian though it may seem, I cannot bring myself to, for example, trespass upon another's property. And, though Charity was unmistakably inviting my trespasses, it was an incontrovertible fact that Roscoe Kennedy was my best friend. That he was also a head taller than I, several pounds heavier, and had won notoriety in the Golden Gloves as a youth, is, of course, irrelevant.

When I re-entered the living room with the second round of drinks, the Bach passacaglia was a thing of the past and Ravel's Bolero had taken over. (Lest you think badly of my taste, let me assure you that I do not possess, and have never possessed, a recording of the Bolero. Somebody must have brought it along.)

Charity was--dancing. Yes, that's the word. Her pelvis was spasmodically twitching as if attached by strings to the throbbing accents of the music. Her eyelids were at half-mast. Her shoes were off. Her lips were parted. It occurred to me that Charity's lips were always parted. I found it strangely provocative.

"The libation bearer approaches," I quipped, to conceal my true emotions. But as I walked, my eyes remained riveted to Charity and I tripped over the underwriter's feet, sending one chilly martini down his wife's decolletage. Her reaction was brief and to the point. She rose quickly, with a sharp cry, and headed toward the bathroom and a towel.

While I was on my knees, mopping up that small percentage of the martini that had missed the lady, Charity leaned over and whispered in my ear. My eyeballs seemed to creep from their sockets and saunter down the neck of her dress as she said, "And what if that happened to me, doll? Would you go after the olive like an enterprising young buck should?"

"Now see here--" I began, waving a righteous forefinger. She seized it.

"Cold hands," she said, and added with a wealth of lechery, "warm heart."

I stole a quick glance in the direction of Roscoe. He was looking at me with an expression best described as unfathomable. It may have been Suspicion, Aroused Ire, Shattered Faith, Intent to Kill, or possibly a combination of these. It may also have been Nausea, although my gin was the very best brand. I avoided his eyes.

The lady writer had found an opportunity to recite her New Yorker verse:

"I will concede their lofty aim

Is eminently laudable.

Their gentle comment none can blame:

But must they be inaudible?

"It's called On Certain FM Announcers," she explained.

"On your feet, doll," said Charity, dragging me to a standing position. "You and I are gonna trip the light fantastic."

Fantastic it was, but hardly light. Against my better judgement, I joined her in a grotesque parody of a dance I had seen performed by George Raft and Carole Lombard, when a lad. The general flavor was Spanish: it involved a lot of foot-stamping and snapping of fingers over the head, dilated nostrils and narrowed eyes. You know.

Ravel's Bolero, in case you haven't heard it lately, consists of exactly one theme endlessly repeated in ever-widening circles of hysteria. The effect is hypnotic. After the first five minutes, I became an automaton. I couldn't stop. Neither could Charity. The music grew louder, the room grew hazy. Periodically, someone would thrust a drink into my hand and I would swallow it in one gulp, return the glass with an abandoned toss over the shoulder, and shout "Olé!"

Then the noise outside grew louder than the noise inside: horns were blown with a vengeance, washtubs were pounded furiously, women were evidently being goosed with pagan frenzy. Someone looked at the clock. A cry went up: "It's midnight!" And the lights were extinguished.

Charity lost no time in pulling me down to the couch. Her hands explored me. Her lips--but why go on? Suffice it to say that though the hard clear light of parental discipline flickered and almost died, by an extreme effort of will I was able to keep it burning.

"No," I said, although my voice was somewhat muffled under the circumstances, "we mustn't."

"Relax, doll," she whispered. "What's to stop us?"

"Decency!" I cried. "The proprieties! Roscoe is my closest friend!"

"Who is your closest what?" she inquired, but I wrenched myself free of her humid grasp and stumbled through the dark to the bedroom. There, after ousting an unduly energetic couple from my bed, I passed out.

• • •

Let me draw a curtain over the next day. It was passed in an agonizing convalescence too sordid to depict. I myself remember it only as a nightmare thing of ice bags and Alka Seltzer and deep remorse.

The day after that, however, I phoned Roscoe. After exchanging the usual hearty mundanities, I said, "Roscoe, old boy, I hope you won't think I was, uh, beating your time the other night."

His reply was enigmatic: "Huh?"

"I mean to say, that is, well I suppose it may have looked like I was (ha-ha) making a play for Charity or something, but--"

"So?"

"So believe me--nothing could be further from the truth. Friendship is, uh, I mean it's a kind of sacred, yes, that's it, a sacred covenant that should not, may, must not----"

"Will you kindly tell me what you're beating your gums about?"

I stated it as bluntly as I could, and Roscoe said, "Charity? My girl? Look, pal, I came to that shindig alone. You mean you didn't invite her?"

I fear I hung up without saying another word. So that was it. A party crasher. Simple. Happens every day. And just because she walked in at the same time Roscoe did, I assumed...

I am one year older now and a good deal wiser. Come New Year's Eve, there will be no Bach passacaglia and circle of dear friends for me. There will be a young lady, of dimensions and temperament as close to Charity's as possible. There will be martinis. And there will be me. I may begin my feeding her an olive. I may blow a tin horn, too. It's not inconceivable that I may pound a washtub if I can find one. And that isn't all. Life is short, you know. Time is fleeting. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and all that. I mean what the hell. There's a good chance I may even favor her with one bacchanalian goose at the stroke of twelve.