- Rex Stout (1886 - 1975), American author of Nero Wolfe
Being Accused Of Your Own Murder
Is No Way To Impress A Lady
Part 1:
Names (except mine) have been changed to:
[a] protect the innocent,
[b] avoid lawsuits and
[c] prevent knuckled objects from flattening my nose cartilage.
I suffer from a horrid affliction which has warped my sex life forever. 'Tis neither a physical disease nor mental ailment but one more akin to a psychic sickness. A curse, if you will. It has been called many things (some colorfully pornographic) but I refer to it as "first-datitis". Simply put, anyone stricken with this malady will have nothing but horrendous first dates... resulting, obviously, in no successive encounters. Since this problem affects only the individual asking for the date, until recently it was a male-only syndrome. But, with the advent of women's lib, more and more females are coming under its ominously maladroit cloud.
This affliction has multiple variables that, if combined, will dramatically increase its disaster quotient. They are: How much you emotionally care for your date TIMES how much you want to impress her/him TIMES how prestigious the function is you are about to attend. If you're going to pick up a drunken cheap tootsie/stud at a bar for a BigMac and then afterwards, hopefully, score some embarrassingly perverted but totally satisfying sex, you will probably only lose your pocket comb... and gain a case of crabs. If, on the other hand, you're taking the gorgeous woman you've loved from afar to your college prom dance, you can... like I was... be charged as an accessory after the fact in your own murder.
Missouri Southern College was brand new when I first stumbled through its hallowed... and hollowed halls. Originally a two-year junior college, in 1967 it moved into its freshly constructed buildings at its new location and became a four-year institute. Designed for modern education, the classrooms were well lit with central heating and air conditioning. All labs, be they for science or language, had the latest equipment. When the new fine arts building became cramped, a wing was added. Even today, something is always under construction. Even the word "State" has been crammed into the college's title. The students have the feeling that the campus was growing with them. Of being symbolic of them. Clean, casual... with huge empty spaces similar to their thinking patterns.
What else can you expect? MSC... or, as it now is, MSSC... is located in Joplin, Missouri. This is the town the Beverly Hillbillies considered "The Big City." Where Bonnie & Clyde shot the stuffings out of the local police department and escaped amid a classic hail of gunfire. When intellect is pondered, does Joplin, Missouri ever come to mind?
On this ongoing down slide, all this newness also lent itself to a definite lack of tradition. No fraternities nor sororities. No nearby rambling old dwellings to house them, either. Just grazing cattle in vacant fields. (Again, comparable to the student body and their mental acuities.) A true grass-roots beginning.
One Einstein once had the inspiration of buying used mobile homes and interconnecting them to form a modular frat house. The idea was nixed. Who wanted to reside in a house another motley gang could tip over? If cows hated to be tipped over in the middle of the night, surely MSSC students would also.
A thought I had, Toga Day, was also soundly rejected. The administration didn't care if the faculty and pupils wore ducky-imprinted bed sheets or poison ivy in their hair. Even F.D.R. had a toga party for the White House staff. The objections came from the business students (who were afraid that such a liberal/reactionary/anarchic event would blot their future careers forever) and the jocks (who realized, to their dismay, it would force them to wash their bed linens more than once a semester).
This dearth of activities magnified the importance of what few social events we did have. Thus, the senior prom assumed the stature of a coronation. Art students vainly searched for clothing not speckled with paint. Jocks were forced to buy socks. Business majors wore their sportiest dark suits with vests and, if they were daring, a necktie with a pattern. Being an ex-business student who had wised up and changed my major to art, I already owned a black suit and, thanks to a mishap with an artist's palette, an exceedingly colorful tie. All I needed was a date, some beautiful slow-witted girl who hadn't heard about my earlier traumatic first encounters.
Then fate dropped Marilyn into my lap.
Marilyn! Sensuous yet sleek Marilyn. Like her namesakes, she had the hair, eyes and moves of Monroe and the figure and face of Chambers. Ever since my gonads awoke during puberty, I had this mental image of my perfect woman, from the way she spoke to the dark fleck in the iris of her right gray-green eye. The first time I was introduced to Marilyn, I was agog. It was her! It was as if I had been in love with her not only for all of my life but for innumerable reincarnations before, always wanting but never winning her affections.
Naturally, she considered me a pencil-necked geek.
Years later, I would be told that I really had lived passed lives and, yes, I had met Marilyn in one of them... where, yes, she dumped me just before I was crushed to death by a beer wagon. She's always had that effect on me. In this life, I fell out of an airplane... but, luckily, a nameless jump instructor strapped me into a parachute before the plane took off.
I mentally placed her upon a pedestal of virginal purity and goodness. My worshiping of her blinded me to her faults. The fact that she hung out with guys named Bruiser and The Skull (who had some remarkable tattoos of human dismemberment) did not deter me. Nor did those stories of what she did in the back alley behind a pool hall discourage me... even though I did see her, on a bet, swallow a hot dog whole... bun and all.
Three weeks before prom night, I summoned all my courage and, with the boldness of the Cowardly Lion, asked her to be my date at that momentous occasion. Marilyn said yes! Since she had no escort for the big event (her latest boy friend had broken parole and had been sent back to prison that morning), what other choice did she have?
I rushed right out and ordered the best orchid money could buy. It was going to be a night to remember..... like when Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire.
