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 “You have proof of this? You have something in writing?” Click-click.

 “Well, no. But—”

 All my “Buts” did no good. The conversation heated up to the point where I dived across the desk for Maldemerde’s throat. That did no good either. He pushed a button; and before I could even have the satisfaction of mussing up the little crud, four husky dock-wallopers came through the door, pulled me off him, and threw me off the premises on my keister.

 I went back to the Lascivia and got my baggage. I headed for the nearest hock shop. I sold the luggage and the clothing.

 Next stop was a lawyer I knew. No help there. I had nothing in writing. I had no witnesses. I was S.O.L.15 !

 With the hock shop money, I bought a one-way air-line ticket to Nassau. When I got there, I hitchhiked over the causeway to Paradise Island. Leila greeted me with the same terms as before.

 “You can stay here if you do exactly what I want when I want and how I want!”

 Women’s Lib! Still, beggars can’t be choosers. I agreed.

 “What’s that you’ve got there?” I noticed two small objects in the palm of her hand. .

 “Symbols from the slave days of women, before they freed themselves,” my Arabian mistress told me.

 I stared at the pasties.

 “On your knees!” Leila commanded.

 Click-click!

Notes

[←1 ]

 Yar is an expression in ship-speak that means being shipshape. It’s also an expression of attitude that projects quiet, competent seamanship.

[←2 ]

 Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century.

Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), made her a household name. An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, the book offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as womanhood and femininity, arguing that women are forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfill male fantasies of what being a woman entails.

Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She has been described as "a seminal influence on second-wave feminism", and is best known for her book Sexual Politics (1970). Journalist Liza Featherstone attributes previously unimaginable "legal abortion, greater professional equality between the sexes, and a sexual freedom" being made possible partially due to Millett's efforts.

[←3 ]

 See Here’s your O.R.G.Y.

[←4 ]

 In the Quran, the houris are called "companions", described as being "restraining in their glances" (chaste), with "modest gazes", "wide and beautiful/lovely eyes",[ "eyes like pearls", and "full-breasted". The word itself occurs always in the plural. A popular misconception (endorsed by Ted Mark) stems from some Quran adjectives associated with the word houri to denote "a girl whose shoulder and chest are becoming prominent" or "are budding", hence, many commentators see in it an allusion to some sort of youthful "female companions' who would entertain the (presumably male) occupants of paradise ...

[←5 ]

 Điện Biên, sometimes called Dienbien Phu , is a city in the northwestern region of Vietnam. It is the capital of Điện Biên Province. The city is best known for the important Battle of Điện Biên Phủ which was fought between the Việt Minh (led by General Võ Nguyên Giáp), and the French Union (led by General Henri Navarre, successor to General Raoul Salan). The siege of the French garrison lasted fifty-seven days, from 17:30, 13 March to 17:30, 7 May 1954.

[←6 ]

 Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo (June 19, 1902 – November 5, 1977) was a Canadian-American bandleader and violinist of Italian descent. He formed the Royal Canadians in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert, and Victor, and other musicians from his hometown. They billed themselves as creating "the sweetest music this side of Heaven". Even after Lombardo's death, the band's New Year's specials continued for two more years on CBS. The Royal Canadians' recording of the traditional song "Auld Lang Syne" still plays as the first song of the new year in Times Square.

[←7 ]

 Probable reference to Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932), an American biologist, best known for his warnings about the consequences of population growth and limited resources. Ehrlich became well known for his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb, which asserted that the world's human population would soon increase to the point where mass starvation ensued. Among the solutions he suggested in that book was population control, to be used in his opinion if voluntary methods were to fail. He was one of the initiators of the group Zero Population Growth (renamed Population Connection) in 1968. Ehrlich has been heavily criticized for his opinions.

[←8 ]

 Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (popularly known as Fanny Hill, an anglicisation of the Latin mons veneris, mound of Venus) is an erotic novel by English novelist John Cleland first published in London in 1748. Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London, it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel". It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.

[←9 ]

 Possible reference to the movie “Darling”, 1965, by John Schlesinger with Julie Christie and Rock Hudson.

[←10 ]

 Citizen Kane is a 1941 American mystery drama film by Orson Welles, its producer, co-screenwriter, director and star. The picture was Welles's first feature film. Nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles. Considered by many critics, filmmakers, and fans to be the greatest film of all time.

[←11 ]

 The Last Picture Show is a 1971 American drama film directed and co-written by Peter Bogdanovich, adapted from a semi-autobiographical 1966 novel The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry. Largely because of the skinny-dipping party scene, the film was banned in Phoenix, Arizona, when the city attorney notified a drive-in theater manager that the film violated a state obscenity statute. Eventually, a federal court decided that the film was not obscene.[

[←12 ]

 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC) is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, with 90 million customers in over 60 countries. The firm was founded on March 24, 1868.

[←13 ]

 Ralph Nader (born February 27, 1934)[ is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney, noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism and government reform causes. He first came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of the bestselling book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers that became known as one of the most important journalistic pieces of the 20th century. Nader led a group of volunteer law students—dubbed "Nader's Raiders"—in a groundbreaking investigation of the Federal Trade Commission, leading directly to that agency's overhaul and reform. In the 1970s, Nader established a number of advocacy and watchdog groups including the Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Auto Safety, and Public Citizen.