Free Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal

and learned a good deal about her from the owner of the Ninth Avenue Delicatessen where each of us had an account, ours too seldom paid on time. Fortunately, I am no longer susceptible to the charm of the female body. Not that a straightforward invitation from the young Lana Turner or the young Ava Gardner might not, as they say out here, "turn me on," but luckily for me there is no longer a young Lana Turner or Ava Gardner and so my lust has taken a different and quite spectacular form since Myron's death. Rusty has been avoiding me ever since the day of his humiliation. He has even taken to cutting Posture class, which is a serious matter. This morning as I was on my way to Empathy II (held in the auditorium because of the students' desire to be taught by me: the other teachers are mad with envy!), I bumped into Rusty--literally collided with him at the turning of a corridor. I dropped my briefcase, which he swiftly retrieved. "I'm sorry, Miss Myra." He handed me the briefcase at arm's length as though it contained a ticking bomb. "You really should watch where you're going." I was severe and he gulped like Gary Cooper, his attractiveness greatly enhanced by a total inability to look me in the eye. "You've missed two Posture classes in a row. That's very serious, Rusty. Very, very serious. You know how Uncle Buck dislikes that, and how it is bound to count against your final grade." "But I been real busy, Miss Myra. Working, see..." "The garage?" "No, with these friends, helping to start this business. Anyway, next week I'll be back in class and that's for sure, Miss Myra." He looked at me with such frightened sincerity that it was all I could do to keep my hands off him right then and there. Gone was the easy masculine arrogance that had characterized him in our early relations. Now he was jittery and profoundly hostile, and all because of me! Though the corridor was airconditioned to a polar temperature (like so many fat men Buck suffers from heat), a bead of sweat appearing at the tip of one sideburn reminded me to say, "I still have the T-shirt you left in my office." Bright red at this reference to his humiliation, he said that he was sorry to be so forgetful and that, if it was all right, he would come around sometime and retrieve the garment. Then the bell rang for class and we parted. I watched him a moment as he ran down the corridor, the buttocks that once I had beheld in all their innocent naked glory covered now by thick corduory. Soon I shall have occasion to examine them again, at leisure, as his education continues, impelling each of us inexorably toward the last degree. The class went well until Buck decided to look in. I tolerated his presence. But then when he became critical of me I was forced to take a stern line with him. In fact, after he made a direct challenge to my authority, I struck him. All in all, it was a most satisfying thing to do and it will be some time before that keg of lard dares to cross me again. Afterwards, in the faculty room (wall-to-wall champagne-beige carpeting, piped-in music, and a color television set), two of my colleagues joined me for coffee from the mechanical dispenser. Apparently "everyone" has heard that there was some sort of contretemps between me and the president of the Academy. But I assured them that Uncle Buck and I could never quarrel about anything. "Oh, perhaps a disagreement or two about how far one should go in telling the students whether or not they really do have talent." Unfortunately both my colleagues share the Buck Loner philosophy. One of them is a Negro queen named Irving Amadeus. A recent convert to the Bahai religion, he lives entirely on organic foods raised in a series of pots in the backyard of a large house at Van Nuys which he shares with a number of fellow cultists. There are, incidentally, nine Negro teachers but only seven Negro students. Though I suspect that Buck dislikes our dusky cousins, he has done his best to integrate the school at