I Only Want a Sweetheart, not a Buddy

a lament for the passing of an american institution: the all-girl girl

"Women," said Goethe, "are silver dishes into which we put golden apples."

This remark, dropped casually at dinner, somewhere between the schnitzel and the strudel, on the night of October 22, 1828, may well be the most important the great philosopher-poet ever made. Fruit-filled as the image is, it speaks to us. It communicates a message for our times.

Though some may argue that women are golden dishes into which we put silver apples, or tin dishes into which we put brass persimmons or little lead kumquats, the fact remains that Woman's historic function is to be a "dish" – a function which she has frequently lost sight of during the past hundred-odd years. Having won the right to vote, smoke and wear short hair, she has all too often come to conceive of herself not as a dish, but as an apple – a buddy, pal, chum, colleague and somewhat chesty bowling companion.

Endowed by nature with certain delightfully obvious sexual characteristics, she has steadfastly refused to let them stand in the way of her ambition to either ride to hounds or run for office.

Nowhere is this lamentable determination to overcome her own charms more apparent that in that evolutionary sport, the Outdoor Girl. No longer content to sit on the sidelines and look fetchingly feminine with parasol and fan, she bounds down the fairways of masculine friendship swinging a set of registered clubs. As eager to share a duck blind as a divan, she brings to both a hail-fellow-well-met spirit that smacks as much of Abercrombie & Fitch as it does of Aphrodite and Eros. Suntanned, competent, frank and knowing, she approaches love as if it were a tennis match, and uses her come-hither look mainly to lure her male opponent closer to the net, in order to slam a return shot past his ear to the baseline.

But if the Outdoor, neo-tomboy type imagines that she can win her varsity W for Woman by playing a clean, hard game and holding up her end of the canoe on a six-mile portage, the fault is not hers alone. Behind every girl's downfall lies a man, and there has always been a muscle-bound minority of thwarted scoutmasters who will stop at nothing in their lust for heterosexual athletics and mixed camping. These fresh-air fiends lurk everywhere, and many an innocent, gaily attractive young maiden has been lured down the primrose path only to discover that it leads to the locker room, the showers or a weekend of moose hunting.

Clad in a bulky woolen shirt, bowed by the weight of some wanton deceiver's rucksack, she soon finds herself struggling to keep afloat in a foldboat, another fair victim of the sleeping-bag syndrome – that dread antisocial disease characterized by itchy long underwear, damp socks and a strong smell of citronella. Lying awake at night on her zippered pallet of mildewed kapok and sharp rocks, her femininity lost and her maidenhood still intact, she wonders perhaps – all too late – if there might not be a better way to strain a ligament and earn an aching back. As, indeed, there is.

It is comforting to think that some of these poor, wayward creatures might be redeemed, might repent of their virtuous outdoor ways and be restored to society. But experience would seem to prove otherwise. Though the indoor man may be moved to pity the fallen female, and seek to woo her gently back to the urban hearthside, statistics indicate that the rehabilitation rate is alarmingly low. Soak her in bubble bath, repair her sunbleached coiffure, and dress her as smartly as you will – it is only a matter of time before she learns to adapt her former depravity to the more subtle playgrounds of the Great Indoors. To all outward appearances a dish, she still aspires to be an apple – an intellectual chum.

Having visited a few art galleries, theatres and offbeat eateries, and done her homework in psychoanalysis, politics, cinema and jazz, she perches on the edge of ottoman or chair, waiting to snatch the conversational ball and make a touchdown with her vocal cords. Vivaciously retrieving the first fumble, she displays such a razzle-dazzle of opinion and wit that the male line crumbles, and only a seasoned tailback would attempt a forward pass.

Inevitably, some heroic penthouse tackle will volunteer to take her home. More hip to her hips than her hipness, he may even get himself invited up to her apartment, where she may decide to bestow upon him her greatest treasure – the key to her confidence. Over a friendly nightcap, her conversation will grow more and more revealing,until at last, clad only in the thinnest fabric of ideas, she seduces him into holding her opinions and permits him to probe the soft contours of her eager little mind.

In order to even broach the subject of amour, he will first find it necessary to get her attention (which may take weeks), and then proceed indirectly by way of the frontal lobes. If all goes well, and he plays his cards right, this may eventually turn the trick. But it seems a hell of a long way to go, just to dispose of a few golden apples.

Fortunately, however, all the feminine dishes have not been cracked in the process of being removed from the barrel of Victorian gentility and placed in the free-and-easy atmosphere of office, bachelor apartment and coeducational saloon. A sufficient number have survived to at least form a starter set for the light housekeeping of romantic amour, and to ensure that all our golden apples need not be assigned to bags.

To be sure, the all-girl girl is something of an anomaly in this day and age, a delectable throwback. During a period of almost universal education in the science and mechanics of sex, she persists in practicing the arts and keeping (concluded on page 75) Sweetheart (continued from page 57) alive the humanities.

No weather-beaten safari sidekick or mixed-doubles partner is she. Her playclothes are sheer whimsies, her seams are always straight, and her goal the highest and best – to cheer the victor, comfort the vanquished, and to give to both their just desserts.

Preferring to be a prize rather than to win one, her competition is confined to her own sex. More concerned with privileges than rights, she has never permitted a few belated civil liberties to transform her into a Susan B. Anthony Memorial Shrew. A true daughter of Eve, her capacity for apples is infinite. Her interests are your interests, and her conversation is always provocative in precisely the right way. Though she will never be a buddy, she will always be a sweetheart, a bewitching companion in arms.

Admittedly, such a woman is dangerous – as fraught with perils as she is loaded with appeal. For all her sculptured beauty and high-fired gloss, the feminine dish may yet contain a rose-covered-cottage design and a border of wedding bells. But in playing the goldenapple game, who wants safety?

As Goethe himself must have realized, the danger is half the fun. Old Johann was a dish collector from way back, and Wolfgang was his middle name. The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica – hardly a scandal sheet – lists no less than 11 major passions in Goethe's life, commencing with one Gretchen at the age of 15, and ending with "a young girl, Ulrike von Levetzow, whom he met at Marienbad" when he was 73.

His most enduring attachment was to Christiane Vulpius, who "gave him quietly, unobtrusively, without making demands on him, the comforts of a home." When she presented him with a son in 1789, Goethe briefly considered "legalizing his relations with Christiane, but this intention was not realized until 1806, when the invasion of Weimar by the French made him fear for both life and property."

That it took an entire army to force Goethe into marriage is strictly beside the point. The point is that even though he took a wife, he never saddled himself with a buddy-bride or a girl-about-Weimar chum. Right up until the very end, he always had a place to put his golden apples. Which is one thing that helped make the man so great.

Turning from Goethe's biography to his own thumb-worn address book, small wonder if our present-day philosopher-poet might not be moved to exclaim: "Comfort me with dishes, for I am sick of apples!"