Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 21:43:18 -0400 From: Ellen Myers Subject: Mr Meister's mini-essay Mr Fant et al: Attached. Actually, Howard was able to find it first. This was, oh, about a year ago, when he was regularly skinny-dipping in the Hudson... This, however, was along the lines of a bolt from the blue, and I think we all felt it at the time. (Where is Simon these days, Marie? I know he got into this conversation too, and it somehow got tangled up with his quoting Molly Bloom.) _____________________________________________________ Dear Mr. Berlow, A gentleman ALWAYS asks, first. He asks when he knows in advance that the answer will be, 'yes', because that moment is rare, fleeting, exquisite and suspended in time while she answers. And because the tone, the very sound, of her 'yes' will express the depth of her feelings so clearly. Years later, he may have forgotten much. But he will remember the sound of her 'yes', the taste of the silence created by her pause, how he could not breathe until she spoke, and of the true nakedness the question and answer create, before the fact. It's an aesthetic thing, a savoring when others might choose to gobble. And, a gentleman asks when he knows that the answer will be, 'no', because by this he flatters with honesty, places himself in a position of vulnerability before her, reinforces the fact of her control over the outcome, and implies that the depth of her desire must match his, else the result be merely his rutting. "Body language" is only the means by which a gentleman knows in advance which answer he will receive. Howard Meister Channeling Cary Grant on the Hudson