Free The Hite Report on Shere Hite by Shere Hite

These were refined manners. Women like my mother, sexual and demanding women, were not refined. Ladies were non-aggressive, and not in any way overtly sexual – because, you understand, one had to see their ‘other qualities’, not their bodies! It washard to always be respected as a lady, but if you were a nice girl, you would be. Perhaps this is why it astounded me later, just after university when, though I had written a very explicit research book on sex, anybody should see me as ‘obsessed with sex’.
    Of course, underneath my meek exterior were lurking all kinds of feelings – all the pent-up passionate emotions, lustful desires, wild imaginings and exaggerated dreams a seventeen-year-old girl can have. I wanted adventure and excitement, but was afraid to look anywhere for them but in history lessons, music and books.
    Coming from such a cloistered background, I expected the outside world to be magical and poetic, full of adventure. I was sure there was an enchanted world out there somewhere, and I was determined to find it. I felt strong and ready to enter it, and at the same time, unsure and easily intimidated. Who was I, after all? Who said I had any right to go out and take part in the big feast out there – others were ahead of me, others more sophisticated, smarter, better dressed, more at home in these worlds. But anyway, I wanted to try.
    My Aunt Cecile and my grandfather together made my university education possible. At first, I went to a state school; the cost, including room and board, was only about $5,000 per year. My grandfather had barely finished high school himself, but he was so clever, he supported all of us, with only his high school education. (He may even have left high school before he finished. I asked him once, and he was extremely vague.) School was a beautiful period of my life. I felt so free and wasgiven so many opportunities. During my first two years at the university, I was offered a feast of courses from which to choose. I remember looking at the huge catalogue of all the disciplines, and wanting to take them all. I did take a massive number of classes (it didn’t cost any more). I had been starved for information, theories and ideas, and here they were! I loved the work. For me it was sheer pleasure.

    In my heart of hearts, I was still in love with Rachmaninov and classical music. I wanted to study to become a great composer. Now I also loved Mahler, Wagner, Puccini, and especially Richard Strauss, even the earlier Viennese waltz tradition. But music was not to be my major, though it continued always to be my minor. My grandfather said he wanted to be sure I could always make a living. ‘Being a schoolteacher,’ he said, ‘You can take summers off, and retire well.’ He cared about me, and was thinking of my future. But of course, I didn’t want to study so I could have a safe life! I wanted an exciting life, a life of adventure, challenges, people, travel, places new to see. As it turned out, we could both be satisfied if history were my major, since I wanted to know everything I could about it, and, theoretically , one could teach it.
    I spent a whole year reading about Knossos, Crete and Sir Arthur Evans’ archaeological excavations. The class was led by a witty male professor who himself was an education to the mild and unsophisticated me. He was from somewhere I wasn’t sure (Egypt, perhaps?) andaltogether, quite exotic to my eyes. He didn’t even notice me, I was just a blurred shape in the middle of the class, but I was fascinated by him and the subjects he talked about. His own style, his speech and manners, transmitted very well the elegance and playfulness of that early civilization. He seemed to know every detail that could ever be known about Crete, and in fact, he looked like a chubby version of the people on the vases. His hair naturally waved in exactly the same tight black kink, glistening with some exotic