“You don’t mean—?”
“No. I’m not a eunuch. But I am a virgin. The only twenty-five-year-old male virgin in New York, I’ll bet. Why did you have to stop Sappho, anyway?”
“I’m sorry. But look, you do have a problem. And that’s what Lovelights is for -- to help solve just such problems. Why don’t you let me try to help you?”
“Do you think you could?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it.” Penny stretched wearily and her breasts jutted out. Then, as if the movement had given her both inspiration and new energy, she turned briskly back to the matter at hand. “I’m sure of it,” she repeated.
“You know,” Balzac said, embracing her eagerly, “I think maybe you can help me. . . .”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“NOT THAT way I can’t!” Penny managed to struggle free of the eight arms Balzac seemed to have sprouted.
“Aw, come on!”
“No!” Penny retreated behind a desk. “Now, you just sit down there and let’s discuss this calmly. Without hands! That’s it. All right, now tell me what you think is responsible for your being a twenty-five-year-old male virgin.”
“Hugh Hefner.”
“What?”
“Hugh Hefner. The publisher of Playboy. He’s responsible.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“Well, you know that philosophy of his? The one he writes every month? All sort of saying that people should be uninhibited and sexually emancipated, and all that jazz? Well, I always read it. And I believe it. I mean, in my head, I’m a true believer.”
“But what’s wrong with that?” Penny didn’t quite understand what Balzac was driving at. “I’ve read it, too. It’s a pretty sound credo. A little smug and heavy-handed and Luce-ly written sometimes, but basically sound. I don’t see why that would keep you from—”
“Don’t you see? I wanted to be like that so desperately! Liberal and libertarian where sex is concerned. Freely partaking. Enjoying! Living! Really living! I wanted to live the rabbit’s life, toppling bunnies in the cabbage patch one after the other!”
“Well, what stopped you?”
“Myself, I guess. As a rabbity bed-hopper, I’m a complete dud. First of all, I can’t afford it. Maybe Hefner can, but I can’t. Second of all, I guess I’m just not urbane. Oh, I try, but I just can’t carry it off. If I go to light a girl’s cigarette, the pack of matches goes up in my hand—-just the way it did with my draft card. When I attempt sophisticated conversation, it comes out Spooner-isma, and half the time I end up getting my face slapped. As a dancer, I’ve got two left feet. And the few times I came close to making love to a girl, I got embarrassed and fumbled and blushed so much that the girl always backed out. One of them even told me she backed out because I made her feel like she was taking advantage of me.”
“Why do you suppose you react that way?”
“Well, part of it is the girls themselves. The ones I get to meet, I mean.”
“What’s wrong with them?” Penny asked.
“Nothing, really. Realistically, I mean. But you see, I sort of formed my whole concept of women—in a sexual sense, I mean—-from looking at the ones they have in Playboy. Every month, for ten years now, as soon as I get the latest issue, I turn to the gatefold and I look. I look and I look and I look. They’re really beautiful, those girls. And they’re flawless. You know what I mean? Flawless!”
“Yes? So?”
“So I never yet dated a girl who looked so good. Hefner — he has the cream of the crop, I suppose. But me, Balzac Hosenpfeffer, I get ordinary girls. You know, girls whose bosoms sag a little, or girls with hooked noses, or girls who sweat.”
“Everybody sweats sometimes.”
“Not the Playgirl of the Month! No, sir! Those girls never sweat. All you have to do is look at them to know. They never sweat! And they don’t have pimples either, or hair on their arms, or even a mole! They don’t talk like they came from Brooklyn, either. Just looking at them you know their diction’s perfect. Oh, if only I could meet a girl like that!” Balzac gave a heartfelt sigh.
“You’d probably be terribly disillusioned.”
“Why should I be? Hugh Hefner isn’t disillusioned. And he actually gets to meet those girls. All the time.”
“Your whole problem is that you’re trying to identify yourself with Hugh Hefner.”
“Well, why not? He’s got a million bucks and a lavish hutch he probably keeps filled with bunnies and the kind of uninhibited attitude every young man should have. Sure I like to identify with him. Who do you expect me to identify with? Albert Schweitzer?”
“He’s dead.”
“You’ve got a point there. I might as well identify with him for all the living I’ve been doing.”
“Why do you have to identify with anybody?” Penny pointed out. “Just be yourself. Be Balzac Hosenpfeffer.”
“I don’t want to be Balzac Hosenpfeffer! I want to be Hugh Hefner! I want to be urbane and witty and sexually uninhibited!” Balzac fell to his knees and pounded the floor with his fists. Then he rolled over and kicked his heels. “I want to have the most beautiful bunnies falling at my feet. I want to be Hugh Hefner!”
“Gee, you really are hooked,” Penny said.
“I want to be a bed rabbit!”
“Come on now! Take hold of yourself!”
“That’s all I ever do! And I’m tired of it!”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant get up from the floor.”
Balzac rose and sagged wearily into a chair. “You wouldn’t have a carrot around, would you?” he asked morosely.
“No. Why?”
“It helps me sublimate.”
“That’s exactly what you have to stop doing,” Penny told him firmly.
“Sure. But how?”
“Well, the first thing you have to do is cancel your subscription to Playboy.”
“What?” Balzac was shocked at such heresy. “But what will I read? What will I ogle?”
“Well, why not substitute Lovelights?”
“Gee, I don’t know . . .”
“It would be a start. Look I just happen to have a subscription blank here, and —“
“It might not be a bad idea,” Balzac interrupted. “But what if I’m drafted? I mean, the way I stand with the board now, there’s no telling—”
“But what has that got to do with it?”
“If I cancel my subscription to Playboy, where will I get a Playmate of the Month to paste in my foot locker?”
“You won’t. So what?”
“So what? So that could be taken as downright un-American, that’s what! And aside from that, how would I ever face my buddies if they caught me reading Lovelights instead of Playboy? And suppose I’m captured with a copy of Lovelights on me? Think of the propaganda the Commies could milk out of that! Effete American soldiers reading romance magazines. Decadent, capitalistic asexuality! Think what that could do to our image in the world!”
“Oh, I see, you want to be a conformist. Now what do you suppose Hugh Hefner would say to that?”
“Gee, I never thought-—”
“Don’t think. Be brave. Be different. Sign here.” Penny shoved the subscription blank under his nose. “There now,” she said when he’d signed it, don’t you feel better?”
“Hell yes, but-—”
“But what?”
“Well, I still have this this powerful, unfulfilled sex drive. I still have this awful feeling of frustration. What am I going to do about it?”
“We’ll fix that,” Penny told him soothingly. “You just go home now,” she said, leading him to the door, “and when you get there, you take a nice cold shower. As cold as you can stand it. And whenever you get that feeling, you take another cold shower. It isn’t Playgirls of the Month that you need, it’s cold showers.”