Two Seven Seven: Threads 11

A few more stories from my archives, from memories of long ago loves...

The girl in these notes was a co-ed at McGill in those days, a fiercely bright and lovely blonde girl, Polish and French, who styled herself on line after Nabokov's Ginny McCoo. She liked the idea, of being "the alternative nymphet", the alternative story in "Lolita". We both liked that idea, mind you. I wrote her part of a short story once, about Nabokov's Ginny McCoo at nineteen, a co-ed at Barnard at the start of the 1950s, a girl with a cane and the trace of a limp, a girl studying French lit and seeking out her own older lover. Ginny--- my Ginny ---loved that and told me that we must write a novel-length version of it some day.

I don't know where she is these days, my Miss Ginny. When last I heard from her, she was preparing to defend her doctoral thesis--- on the idea of exile in the works of Nabokov and Mavis Gallant ---and thinking of running off to Vancouver or London. I miss her desperately.

I once wrote her to tell her about a girl I saw on a bus here, a girl I sighed over one summertime Saturday morning. Miss Ginny replied to say that

Darling,

I did find the description of the girl on the bus (Deepest South, tanned legs, iPod) incredibly erotic. I think I may have replaced the bus setting with a train. That's very Japanese, isn't it? The other passengers read their papers, airport fiction paperbacks etc while you seduce the Deepest South girl. I have visualized this in my head. It's unbearably erotic. The iPod figures in this as well. Why would a Deepest South girl be so alluring? It's an abstract thing I can't put into words but there is the divide between us...she's miniskirts or shorts and Baby Tees and Mall Shopping and slightly vacant. There's something about the long, slender, darkly tanned legs. Perhaps it's the carefree nature of youth. In the Deepest South, girls still prize tans. Elsewhere, this would be slightly vulgar perhaps. But these girls still cultivate tans with baby oil. I think so, anyways. It's like smoking - there's a carefree decadence about it that only the youthful can enjoy.

That next winter she sent me a wonderful email one morning:

On your recommendation, I went to class panty-free a few days ago. Not denim (too cold in the Ice Block That Is Canuckia) - I wore wool checked (boy's style) trousers... although I must  admit I was terribly worried that the zipper might come down when I was least expecting it.

And that, I assure you, was a wonderful thing to find  before I went off to my office.

I once wrote her to ask

If you and I were ever out for drinks or at a party, and I tended to address you not just as "darling" (my usual form of address to lovely companions) but as "darling incestuous sibling" in a languid 1920s voice...how would you respond? 

Her reply was simple enough:

I think that would be a fun party trick...we would certainly scandalize our fellow party goers. There's a beautiful scene in a film by Bertolucci (Novacento, I think) in which the decadent 20s socialite rides a white horse in a forest named "Cocaine" - gift from her rich and decadent uncle.

Miss Ginny loved the idea of being transformed into a beautiful boy and being swept away by a very wealthy, literate, and wicked older man. She wrote me about that one night--

I've always been boyish, darling...one evening you will have to cut off my long locks and give me an impromptu pixie cut. Turn me into a Beautiful Boy for you. I'll wear a neck tie and a school boy's shorts, if you like.

I've always liked slender, lithe, lovely girls in neckties and Borsalinos and man-tailored jackets. How could I not like playing gender games with Miss Ginny?

She used to sign her letters and emails to me as "Your Incestuous Sibling" or "Your Euro-Film Correspondent". She would lie back in my arms and watch 1960s French and East European films with me. I do hope, very much hope, that she's Dr. Ginny these days, wherever she might be.