That May-December Madness

There used to be a time when an Old Boys' banquet consisted of rare roast beef, booze and cigars, with a frisky young chick busting out of a cardboard cake for dessert.

But lately that's all been changed.

What with low-protein diets, moderate smoking, and the insidious ineffectiveness of 86-proof bourbon, the Forty-Plus set is just as likely to top off the calory count with a small helping of prune whip and a large dose of after-dinner statistics on the Problems of Aging.

My advice to the senior members is to put the cuties back in the cakes and quit worrying. Judging from the way the Older Man has been making out in the popular arts, the real problems of aging are not overweight, retirement or bursitis, but how to cope with all the nubile young dolls who are ready and eager to leap into their mellow old laps and help make life's afternoon an action-packed matinee of dalliance and delight.

Not long ago, for instance, we were treated to film versions of two Broadway hits featuring a couple of venerable lover boys whose mature charms worked like catnip and cantharides on such semi-youthful types as Kim Novak and Mitzi Gaynor. In South Pacific, little Nellie Forbush – who admits to being as normal as blueberry pie – finds herself so smitten by the silver-thatched suavity of Emile De Becque that it's all she can do to make it from one music-cue to the next. And this despite the fact that Emile is old enough to be her father, has a café-espresso accent, and two Polynesian offspring who keep singing this one damned song in French: Dites Moi Pour-quoi, already.

Of course, old man De Becque had a Rodgers-and-Hammerstein score and a lot of lush scenery going for him. But how can one explain the attraction that Fredric (continued on page 46) May-December Madness (continued from page 35) March held for Kim Novak in Middle of the Night? The Bronx is a far haul from Bali Ha'i, and there are no bougainvillaea in bloom on Bruckner Boulevard. What's more, this was a plain old black-and-white talkie in which nobody sang. Even the ads stood up and shouted at you. Like that one where Kim, in a black slip and off-the-bosom peignoir, lets fly with:

". . . If I stopped to think all the time, do you think I'd be here now, going away like a little tramp for a weekend with a man three times my age!"

Another ad yelped, like a Chayefsky heroine shouting down the air-shaft: "NEVER BEFORE HAS A MOTION PICTURE TALKED THIS WAY, THIS FRANK, THIS TRUE BEFORE!" And, in the picture below, there was Novak again, telling Fredric March about her unhappy marriage to a Younger Man:

". . . Try to understand, Jerry, everybody else we knew were getting married so George and I got married. I guess we just got tired necking in the back of his car. We'd watch television, and around eleven o'clock we'd both march into the bedroom as if it were the gas chamber. . . ."

Since the picture hit town during a heat wave, and too much air conditioning gives me sniffles, I unfortunately didn't get to see it. But from the snatches of story-board in the ads, I gathered that things would be different when Kim married Fredric. For one thing, they'd probably march into the bedroom around nine-thirty, at the latest, because Fredric would need his sleep. In the stills, he looked as though he would have a hard time staying awake until Ed Sullivan was over.

In one form or another the May-December theme runs through a number of other recent movies. Allowing for idiosyncracies of plot and differences of character, we find it in Gigi, Love Is My Profession, Ask Any Girl, Love in the Afternoon, But Not for Me, The Blue Angel, and possibly even a few of the Mr. Magoo cartoons. Since a similar summer-winter quality is bound to be suggested whenever an ancient idol such as Gable, Grant, Astaire or Niven plays opposite a young girl, the list could no doubt be extended indefinitely. But some sort of cinematic milestone must have been reached when Middle of the Night opened in New York on the same day as Stefanie, a West German import featuring a sixteen-year-old heroine with a passion for male antiques.

"To be sure, the bouncy young Sabine Sinjen is mighty cute to look at," the New York Times critic reported from a front-line seat. "However, once she gets a suave hand-kiss from a visiting Argentine, played by Carlos Thompson, the fireworks begin. Roaring like a hungry lioness, she stalks the poor guy unmercifully."

Though this Volkswagen vamp sounds pretty hard to beat for go-power and mileage, "the idea of an adolescent whose obsession for an older man nearly unhinges her quarry and family isn't exactly new to the screen," the review reminds us. And neither, we might add, is it new to literature. For all the banning and breathless scanning that attended the publication of Lolita, the book was unusual mainly in that it put the shoe of obsession on the Older Man's foot, and lowered the girl's draft age.

Considering that she had scarcely out-grown the plastic-bag menace when old Humbert Humbert first kissed her salty little eyeball, Lolita would seem to be as much a case for Dr. Spock as Dr. Freud. But the more hopelessly analytical critics have insisted upon tracing her literary origins to such ill-mated bedfellows as Aristophanes, Krafft-Ebing, Balzac, Scott Fitzgerald, Lewis Carroll, Jim Thurber and Chuck Dickens. Time magazine even saw symptoms of the Lolita syndrome in Little Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks.

But the critics still seem to have missed the author's primary accomplishment – that he succeeded in writing a book about sex with which no sexually normal person could possibly identify. It was for this reason, perhaps, that in less than ten months' time the reading public began to ditch the Bubblegum Bovary in favor of such relatively on-beat divertisements as Dr. Zhivago, Only in the Daisies, Please Don't Eat America and Lady Loverly's Chatter.

And no wonder.

The Lady's "too female" figure, coupled with her unexpurgated familiarity with huts and horse blankets, made her far more suited to the rigors of fictional motel life than any nine-year-old could ever hope to be. Certainly no normal-as-blueberry-pie adult could be expected to take much interest in a femme fatale "standing four feet ten in one sock," with the 27-23-29 proportions of a sack of Pablum.

Most amazing is the fact that some critics managed to interpret Lolita as "a cutting exposé of chronic American adolescence and shabby materialism" and "a joke on our national cant about youth."

Surely these must be taken as unintentional spoofs on the American critic's chronic sense of cultural inferiority – especially during a year when the "Rose Ballet" scandals were pirouetting all over the front pages of the French press. These, you will recall, were the private little kiddie entertainments in which a corps of naked nymphets were alleged to have performed a variety of erotic pas de deux (et trois, et quatre, et cetera) for and with some rather highly placed elders in French politics.

It would be unfair to assume, however, that such fancy footwork is typical of our little French cousins, or that the City of Light is aglow with joie de jail-bait. To the contrary, we have it on the authority of no less a writer than Sagan that the birthplace of Bardot, Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade is as normal as crepes suzette.

"Lord knows I don't usually care for young girls," declares Uncle Luc, the kindly old roué in A Certain Smile, which nicely typifies Miss Sagan's novels.

Granted, the remark is made apropos a proposition that Dominique, the sullen young Sorbonne student, join him in a bit of extracurricular bedmaking. But by this time Dominique has already passed her physical, and is earnestly working toward a mistress' degree under the tutelage of Luc's gloomy young nephew, Bertrand.

To make matters even more convenient, Dominique is intrigued by le groom de her boyfriend's tante from the very first time they meet.

" 'Luc,' said Bertrand, 'I've brought a friend, Dominique. . . . Dominique, this is my Uncle Luc, the great traveler.'

"I was agreeably surprised and said to myself: 'Quite presentable, this uncle.' He had gray eyes and a tired somewhat sad expression. In his way, he was actually good-looking."

Tired expressions notwithstanding, Uncle Luc is a seasoned traveler, and quick to spot the possibility of lodgings for the night. The minute nephew Bertrand leaves the table to get a pack of cigarettes, he seizes her hand in midair. "In the space of a split second," Dominique realizes: " 'I like him. He's a bit old, and I like him.'

"Luc had a slow voice and large hands," she explains. "I thought to myself: 'He's just the kind that seduces little girls like me.' "

Though it takes a good hunk of the book to make this flash of feminine pre-cognition come true, Luc's slow voice and large hands are seldom idle. Once he gets Dominique alone in the garden, he starts cutting up like a cross between Hormone Harry and the original Mr. Monkey-glands.

"I don't want just to sleep with you," he tells her later. "I want us to live together, to share a holiday."

In other words, he wants to sleep with her for at least a week. "I'd introduce you to the sea," he promises with the easy assurance of a man who went to school with old King Neptune, "to money and the freedom it brings. We'd (continued on page 90)

May-December Madness (continued from page 46) be much less bored. There you have it."

"I like the idea very well," Dominique replies. And, a couple of chapters later we find them in Cannes, happily enjoying the facilities of a no-questions-asked hotel. With an ear to the paper-thin wall of page 88 in our mauve-pink reprint, we hear Uncle's slow voice urging her to: " 'Take off those pajamas, silly. You'll rumple them. How can you be cold on a night like this? Are you ill?' "

Luckily for Luc, she isn't. She is simply much less bored. As "the literary heroine of two continents" reports from inside Dominique: "He took me in his arms, carefully removed my pajamas, rolled them up in a ball and threw them on the floor. I remarked that they would be rumpled, just the same. He began to laugh gently. All his gestures were incredibly gentle. Deliberately he kissed my mouth and shoulders, and went right on talking.

"'You smell of warm grass. Do you like this room? Otherwise we'll go somewhere else. Cannes is a rather pleasant place. . . .'

"I answered 'Yes, yes,' in a strangled voice, wishing it were tomorrow morning. It was only when he drew away from me a little and put his hand on my hip that I began to feel stirred. He caressed me, and I kissed his neck, his body, everything I could touch of this shadow profiled against the nocturnal sky. Finally he ... "

But, zut alors! There goes our telephone! What a time for Paulette to call, just to inquire if we have found the top to her bikini! It is over a week, she reminds us, and her presence on the beach has caused four drownings. The manager – beast of a man – approaches her in the halls with proper suggestions! Please to look again. She is embarrass!

Poor Paulette!

Poor, poor Dominique! Her holiday is too soon over.

Having introduced her to the sea, the day finally comes when Uncle Luc has to go home to his wife, and Dominique to Paris. "I took to long walks," she tells us, "and to thinking with detachment and a very vague interest of the coming academic year. Perhaps I might find something to study that was better suited to me than law, since Luc had promised to introduce me to one of his friends who was a newspaper editor. ..."

It is with a certain smile that we can already detect in her a certain literary bent – journalism now, perhaps, and the writing of best-sellers later. At nineteen, say, when she has had time to develop and mature.

One thing is for sure. The time she spent with Luc has not been wasted, since an affair with an Older Man would seem every bit as essential to a girl's writing success as the ability to type with two fingers and understand the first three pages of Strunk's Elements of Style – more, in fact. Some girls have been known to skip Strunk altogether, while others have written quite successfully in eyebrow pencil on bits of old Kleenex. But few have managed to get by without doing a little significant sack duty with a man in his middle years.

Occasionally the Older Man and the career overlap, as in the case of Allison MacKenzie, the budding young novelist in Peyton Place and Return to Peyton Place, who was fortunate in being able to serve her literary apprenticeship under her agent, Bradley Holmes. This is by far the most sensible and convenient method. At least, in the opinion of most middle-aged literary agents.

Bradley, of course, was eminently qualified, we learned in Peyton Place: "forty years old, dark haired and powerfully built." His office "was full of light and warmth the morning when Allison went there for the first time, and it smelled of expensive carpeting, and crushed cigarette ends, and of books in leather bindings.

" 'Sit down, Miss MacKenzie,' said Bradley Holmes. 'I must confess that I am rather surprised. I hadn't expected someone so young.'

"Young was a word which Brad used often, in one form or another, in all his conversations with Allison.

"'I am so much older,' he would say.

"Or: 'I've lived so much longer.'

"Or: 'You have a surprisingly discerning eye, for one so young.'

"And many, many times, he said, 'Here is a charming young man whom I think you will enjoy.'"

Allison, however, was having none of that bop. She had already met an older man whom she knew she would enjoy, and his initials were Bradley Holmes. For the benefit of those who only saw the movie, we had best explain that their relationship didn't begin to approach a climax until the day Allison finished her first novel.

". . . It was eight-thirty in the morning and she had been up all night writing and at last she wrote the two beautiful words The End. She arched her neck and moved her shoulders, feeling the pain of weariness and strain, and then she glanced at the clock and lit a cigarette. It was almost nine o'clock and she could call Bradley Holmes at his office.

" 'Oh, Brad,' she said as soon as she heard his voice, 'I'm finished with it.'

" 'Wonderful!' he said. 'Why don't you bring it around on Monday?'

" 'On Monday!' cried Allison. 'But Brad, I thought we could have dinner and read it over together later.'

" 'That would be nice,' Brad had said, 'but I'm leaving early this afternoon to go up to Connecticut.'

" 'Oh?' Allison asked. 'Are you going alone?'

"'Yes.'

"'Brad.' Allison was silent for what seemed a long moment. 'Brad?'

"'Yes?'

"'Take me with you.'

"He was silent for a long time in his turn. 'All right,' he said at last. 'I'll pick you up at about four.'

"'I'll be ready.'

"'And Allison.'

"'Yes, Brad?'

"'Leave the manuscript at home. We can talk it over if you like, but I've had a helluva hard week. I'd like to rest this weekend.'"

As might be expected, it turned out to be a helluva hard weekend, and old Brad didn't get much rest, but the change probably did them both a lot of good. Alone in the wilds of the Nutmeg State, it wasn't long before Uncle Bradley was helping Allison off with her maidenhood, while the rocky glens of Fairfield softly echoed her "moaning, animal sounds" and "odd, mingled cry of pain and pleasure."

"By Sunday morning she had been able to walk nude in front of Brad, and feel his eyes probing her, without feeling either shame or fear. She had arched her back, and lifted her heavy hair off her neck, and pressed her breasts against his face, and gloried in his swift reaction to her."

By Sunday night, her reaction to Bradley was equally swift, when, driving back to New York, he let it drop that he was married and had two non-Poly-nesian offspring. From the description in the book, we gather that the poor kid felt as if she had just been pushed into the pool with all her clothes on. But by the time we reached those "two beautiful words, THE END," we had a sneaking suspicion that Allison was somehow going to work that weekend into the closing chapters of a pretty sensational best-seller, someday. And old Uncle Brad would be on hand to negotiate the movie sale.

It's a similar kettle of sure-fire seduction when the Older Man happens to be a writer and his little snookums aspires to be nothing more than a lay reader. This variation, labeled the "September-Song Switch" on my Howdy-Doody Plot Wheel, is generally used by male novelists, and is characterized by the Older Man's efforts to keep cool and hold Baby off at book length. While the story elements probably date back to some early cuneiform Rock-of-the-Month-Club selection, the classic example in the pre-Sagan, post-Toasties era is undoubtedly Aldous Huxley's brave old-world novella, After the Fireworks.

"'Take me, Miles,'" pants young Pamela Tarn, when she at last succeeds in pinning Miles Fanning, the frightfully urbane novelist, against the back seat of a Roman cab. "'Take me. If you want me. . . .'

"Fanning tried to protest, to disengage himself, gently, from her embrace.

"'But I want you to take me, Miles,' she insisted. 'I want you. . . .' She kissed him again; she pressed herself against his hard body. 'I want you, Miles. Even if it is stupid and mad,' she added in another little spurt of desperation, making answer to the expression on his face, to the words she wouldn't permit him to utter. 'And it isn't. I mean, love isn't stupid or mad. And even if it were, I don't care. Yes, I want to be stupid and mad. Even if it were to kill me. So take me, Miles.' She kissed him again. 'Take me.'"

Though Fanning manages to hold out for a few more pages, and tries to write her a letter in which he reminds her of "what a terrible army with banners" she is, with her eyes, her laughter, and her "impertinent breasts" – though he begs her to consider the thirty-year difference in their ages – Pamela pursues him with the single-minded frenzy of a sex-mad lox fighting its way upstream to spawn, and the Inevitable finally happens.

"'There, sit down,' came his voice. She obeyed; a low divan received her. 'Lean back.' She let herself fall onto pillows. . . ."

In the three decades since Miles Fanning first joined Pamela Tarn between the hard covers of Brief Candles, a regular Rotary of middle-aged gents has huffed and puffed through forests of printed wood pulp with a posse of other impassioned young things hot on their well-worn tails. But in this wondrous jet age of smooth-working zippers and quick-cooking wild oats, events happen much more rapidly. Consider, for instance, the speed with which Andy Wells abandons the struggle to Sally Pierce, the blonde and blue-eyed Rad-cliffe girl, in Hollis Alpert's rundown on the same thermal theme: The Summer Lovers.

"'Andy,' she said, keeping her face close to his. 'Please kiss me. I've never been kissed in the fog.'

"'Is this an experiment?' he asked.

"'No,' she said, her voice breathless. 'We're off limits, but kiss me.'

"'I don't understand,' he said, a little breathless himself, and put his fingers under her chin, making her look at him, and kissed her forehead.

"'Is that the way you kiss?' she asked.

"'No,' he said, suddenly giving up whatever the struggle was with himself he had been engaged in, and with the release of a kind of tension feeling lightheaded and happy. He felt her face against his, and he was delighted to have it there, so close to him. Her lips slackened and went open. It was a youthful kiss, full of yearnings, and it reminded him of sessions long ago in parked cars."

And, in less time than it takes to say "The Summer Lovers is the sensationally revealing novel of what goes on among the sophisticated elite at a fashionable summer colony," Sally is whispering, "Do that, do that," and they break out of her little blue Austin-Healey to set up an impromptu beach party.

"'Tell me one thing,' he said. 'Are you a virgin?'

"'Not really.'

"'What does that mean?'

"'It means I'm not really a virgin. Please don't wait any longer, Andy. I want this to happen.'

"'You're absolutely sure?'

"'Yes, I'm sure. Please, Andy.'

"Then, whatever she was saying became incoherent, and he wondered if the sounds she made were sounds of sobbing. Through it all it seemed to him his mind remained brilliantly clear, as though every second of it must be remembered for a long time to come.

"'Yes,' she sighed, 'yes.'

"An astonishingly sexy little girl, he thought, as he shook the sand out of the blanket and methodically folded it. He brushed sand from his clothes, and saw Sally doing the same to her skirt. They walked back to the car, their arms around each other.

"'Are you all right?' he asked.

"'Yes, I'm fine.'

"'Are you sure you wanted this to happen?'

"'Yes, I did,' she said. 'Now I feel much, much better. . . .'"

I felt pretty OK, too, as I got up and shook the sand out of my swimming trunks. Because, truth to tell, I happened to be reading The Summer Lovers on the very same beach where Sally had finally convinced old Andy that she wanted this to happen.

It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon, and there were no little blue Austin-Healeys around, but the quaint old Long Island resort town was identical with the one the author had so flimsily disguised under the unlikely name of East Nines.

To me it had always been Eights Hampton, and I had been summering in the next village for less years than I now care to count. "Hot Beaches, Pounding Surf, Crowded, Passionate Nights," was the way the book blurb put it. And if my nights hadn't been exactly swarming with off-limit Radcliffe girls, I figured it must be because of my lingering youthfulness.

Literarywise, I felt I might make it. While I wasn't writing a book, like Andy Wells or Miles Fanning, I had done a bit of scribbling in my time, and was two years behind in my dues to the Authors Guild. Surely that must count for something, I reasoned. If I wasn't eligible for an Austin-Healey and a sandy blanket, I should at least qualify for a Simca and a damp beach towel – if I could only lick the age element.

I was seriously considering drawing a few wrinkles on my face and touching my hair up with shoe-white, when, much to my delight, I espied the silvery glint of three gray temple hairs in my shaving mirror one morning! Here, at last, was my passport to what Time had so temptingly described as "Sun, Sea, Sand, Susceptibility . . . Hot Days and Per-fervid Nights!"

Humming the original-cast album of Gigi with a Chevalier accent, I tossed my library copy of Huxley in the back seat and headed for Eights Hampton – ostensibly to return the book, but actually to alert the younger set to my new-found maturity with a long walk down Main Street.

Swinging into the parking lot behind the supermarket where the sophisticated elite of this fashionable summer colony came to trade in their empty tonic bottles and squeeze the hell out of tomatoes and melons, I could sense all about me the presence of "women whose only standard is their sexual power over men, and men who yield too readily to the drugged atmosphere of heat and luxury and idleness."

As I cut across the perfervid pavement toward the street, a heat-drugged sybarite in black Bermuda shorts and red, high-rise socks brushed gaily by, arm in arm with a feckless young thing who couldn't have been a day over fifty-eight. Sleek-hipped young matrons with flashing eyes nasally implored Stee-phen to share his Tootsie Roll with little Barbara. A bearded artist type bearing a small box of Fig Newtons stalked a semi-abstract brunette carrying a Rinso carton loaded with chocolate milk, Fri-tos, hamburger buns, pink toilet tissue, charcoal briquets and a copy of TV Guide. Through it all my mind remained brilliantly clear, as though every second of it must be remembered for a long time to come.

And then I saw her – a bronze-limbed blonde in pale-green shorts and a bulky-knit cardigan that could scarcely conceal the impertinence of her young figure. She was standing in the doorway of the lighting company, and when our eyes met, her lips slackened and went open in a yawn. It was a youthful yawn, full of yearnings, and reminded me of sessions long ago in parked cars.

"Say, hey," she said with an odd, mingled cry, as I came abreast of her with tilted temple and an interesting Herbert Marshall limp. "Would you like to take a cnance?"

"In an Austin-Healey?" I asked in a slow voice.

"No, on a new Pontiac," she added in a sudden spurt of desperation, making answer to the expression on my face, to the words she wouldn't permit me to utter. "A real ginchy little four-door. With radio and heater."

"I don't understand," I said. "Is this an experiment?"

"No, silly, it's a raffle!" she said, pressing the book of tickets in my face and glorying in my swift reaction. "Take one. Please, take one! I know you think it's stupid and mad, but it isn't. Not really. It's for the Elks Club. Please, take one. I only have two left. Take one. Please?"

"Tell me one thing," I said "Are you an Elk?"

"Not really."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm not really an Elk. Take one. Please? I've almost finished the book."

"Wonderful!" I said. "Why don't you bring it around on Monday, and we can talk it over. I've had a helluva hard week."

"On Monday!" she cried. "Monday will be too late. Please don't wait any longer."

"I'm so much older," I reminded her, suddenly giving up whatever the struggle was with myself I had been engaged in, and with the release of a kind of tension feeling lightheaded and happy. "Are you sure you want this to happen?"

"Sure, I'm sure. Please, huh?"

I began to laugh gently. All my movements were incredibly gentle. I relieved her of her chance book and carefully removed the cap from her pen, and went right on talking.

"You smell of hot beaches and pounding surf. Do you like this town? Otherwise we'll go someplace else. Patchogue is a rather pleasant place. . . ."

Then, whatever she was saying became incoherent, and I wondered if the sounds she made were the sounds of swearing.

"Yes," she sighed, "yes."

An astonishingly businesslike little girl, I thought, as I shook some ink out of the nib and methodically wrote my name and address. I brushed a few blots from my clothes, and saw that she was doing the same to her shorts. Then she collected a buck from me, rumpled it into a ball, and walked back to her car.

"Are you all right?" I asked, as she climbed in and slammed the door.

"Yes, I'm fine."

I was silent for what seemed a long moment.

"I'm leaving early this afternoon to go up to Connecticut," I said, a little breathlessly. "Alone."

"I can believe it," she said, as the motor turned over with a moaning, animal sound. "It makes me feel much, much better!"

The library was full of light and warmth. The librarian had a large voice and slow hands. She smelled of warm books and inexpensive carpeting. In the space of a split second I thought to myself: "I like her. She's a bit old, and I like her."

Wandering through the stacks, pondering a choice between Black Beauty and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, I began thinking with detachment and a very vague interest of the coming tax year. Perhaps I might find something that was better suited to me than writing. My agent had promised to introduce me to one of his friends who was looking for someone to play piano in a warehouse. . . Or was it a warehouse? No matter. I still had several years to wait before I could start collecting my Old-Age Benefits, and playing piano might help to pass the time. Those warehouse cats might really dig me, and I'd be much less bored. . .