Woman Aroused | Page 5

to move in society or put on the ritz.
My folks liked the neighborhood and father considered the houses the
same as money in the bank. I was about seventeen then and raised like
a rich man's son. At Columbia I studied journalism because I had a
vague desire to write and mainly because the title "writer" was a lazy
catch-all that covered so many phases of life--most of them empty. By
merely calling himself a "writer" a man could get by with doing
nothing all his life, if he had an income. When I graduated college I

worked on a Bronx paper for a while as a copy boy, then played at
working in the old man's sales department. Pop was an intelligent man,
told me to enjoy myself, that money was meant to be spent. We lived
happily and well, had one motto: "Never touch the principal, live on the
interest."
The 1929 crash (it was actually two months before the crash) took my
father's cash, his business, the big house, and even took his and
mother's life shortly after. The garage was left only because nobody
wanted to buy it. With his last few bucks, raised by borrowing on his
insurance, we converted the garage into living quarters, and my folks
brooded there till they died within a few weeks of each other. They
were people who had risen from poverty and the loss of their security
broke their hearts. I got in public relations, became a small-time
"planter,"--a good-time Charley who made it his business to know
reporters and columnists and big shots, so I could almost guarantee a
story or a mention in a column in certain papers. But when I started
working for the oil company and had a steady salary, I renovated the
garage so I could rent out the upper floor and made the basement into
my private dance studio.
You see when we were still living on Washington Heights, my mother
decided I had to take dancing lessons because it was "the thing" for
polite kids to do. She sent me to a beautiful woman who claimed to
have been part of the original Diaghileff Ballet Russe company Otto
Kahn brought to America just before or after the first world war. She
was a nervous, stocky little woman with an amazingly strong and
limber body. Most of the time she jabbered so fast and her accent was
so intense, I couldn't make out what she was saying. But she claimed to
know or have known Fokine, Nijinsky, Matisse, Ravel, and Picasso...
although the names didn't mean a thing to me at fifteen. She talked of
the old Paris, what a dictator, snob, and genius Diaghileff was, as she
put me through the strict discipline of the classical ballet.
I was a tall, skinny kid, still scared some of my pals would find out I
was taking dancing lessons--and ballet at that. I had absolutely no
desire to study the dance, and even though my mother insisted, I would

certainly have given it up if my teacher hadn't seduced me the third
time I was in her studio. She thought nothing of it, would make love to
me in French, her voice gay and light, but of course it was a great
experience for me. I studied hard to be sure she would reward me with
her favors. In time I was quite pleased with the hard mus-cularness my
body began to take on.
The truth is I soon liked--and still like--dancing. By the time I was
eighteen the novelty of "Madame's" middle-aged body had worn off,
but I studied as hard as before. I soon realized that like opera, the
classic ballet is static, incoherent to us, reflecting only the past, the dull
glories of a dead era. It is bound by a bric-a-brac tradition completely
outdated. But in the modern dance I found my interpretation of life,
although even the modern dance is still hindered by many of the silly
old ballet traditions. I went in for tap dancing, went crazy over Martha
Graham, and even tried ballroom dancing. At one time I thought I was
a second Ted Shawn and while at Columbia, the stage bug bit me badly.
I couldn't be bothered with college musicals, and decided the best and
fastest way to get a break would be to become a chorus boy, where my
great dancing ability would surely stand out, stop the show.
One day I tried out for a Broadway show, certain it would only be a
few days before I would be the premier danseur. As I was waiting in
the wings for the try-out, I looked smugly at the chorus boys about me.
To limber up, I did a few turns, followed by an entrechat,