exactly, but it was several months later, after I was regularly in the habit of getting novels from Miss Frost in our town’s public library—when I overheard my mean aunt Muriel talking about Miss Frost (to my mother) in that same tone of voice my grandmother had used. “And I suppose that she has not progressed from the ridiculous training bra?” (To which my mom merely shook her head.)
I would ask Richard Abbott about it, albeit indirectly. “What are training bras, Richard?” I asked him, seemingly out of the blue.
“Something you’re reading about, Bill?” Richard asked.
“No, I just wondered,” I told him.
“Well, Bill, training bras aren’t something I know a great deal about,” Richard began, “but I believe they are designed to be a young girl’s first bra.”
“Why training ?” I asked.
“Well, Bill,” Richard continued, “I guess the training part of the bra works like this. A girl whose breasts are newly forming wears a training bra so that her breasts begin to get the idea of what a bra is all about.”
“Oh,” I said. I was completely baffled; I couldn’t imagine why Miss Frost’s breasts needed to be trained at all, and the concept that breasts have ideas was also new and troubling to me. Yet my infatuation with Miss Frost had certainly shown me that my penis had ideas that seemed entirely separate from my own thoughts. And if penises could have ideas, it was not such a stretch (for a thirteen-year-old) to imagine that breasts could also think for themselves.
In the literature Miss Frost was presenting me with, at an ever increasing rate, I’d not yet encountered a novel from a penis’s point of view, or one where the ideas that a woman’s breasts have are somehowdisturbing to the woman herself—or to her family and friends. Yet such novels seemed possible, if only in the way that my ever having sex with Miss Frost also seemed (albeit remotely) possible.
W AS IT PRESCIENT OF Miss Frost to make me wait for Dickens—to work up to him, as it were? And the first Dickens she allowed me was not what I’ve called the “crucial” one; she made me wait for Great Expectations, too. I began, as many a Dickens reader has, with Oliver Twist, that young and Gothic novel—the hangman’s noose at Newgate casts its macabre shadow over several of the novel’s most memorable characters. One thing Dickens and Hardy have in common is the fatalistic belief that, particularly in the case of the young and innocent, the character with a good heart and unbudging integrity is at the greatest risk in a menacing world. (Miss Frost had the good sense to make me wait for Hardy, too. Thomas Hardy is not thirteen-year-old material.)
In the case of Oliver, I readily identified with the resilient orphan’s progress. The criminal, rat-infested alleys of Dickens’s London were excitingly far, far away from First Sister, Vermont, and I was more forgiving than Miss Frost, who criticized the early novel’s “creaky plot mechanism,” as she called it.
“Dickens’s inexperience as a novelist shows, ” Miss Frost pointed out to me.
At thirteen, going on fourteen, I wasn’t critical of inexperience. To me, Fagin was a lovable monster. Bill Sikes was purely terrifying—even his dog, Bull’s-eye, was evil. I was seduced, actually kissed, by the Artful Dodger in my dreams—no more winning or fluid a pickpocket ever existed. I cried when Sikes murdered the good-hearted Nancy, but I also cried when Sikes’s loyal Bull’s-eye leaps from the parapet for the dead man’s shoulders. (Bull’s-eye misses his mark; the dog falls to the street below, dashing out his brains.)
“Melodramatic, don’t you think?” Miss Frost asked me. “And Oliver cries too much; he is more of a cipher for Dickens’s abundant passion for damaged children than he is ever a fully fleshed-out character.” She told me that Dickens would write better of these themes, and of such children, in his more mature novels—most
I would ask Richard Abbott about it, albeit indirectly. “What are training bras, Richard?” I asked him, seemingly out of the blue.
“Something you’re reading about, Bill?” Richard asked.
“No, I just wondered,” I told him.
“Well, Bill, training bras aren’t something I know a great deal about,” Richard began, “but I believe they are designed to be a young girl’s first bra.”
“Why training ?” I asked.
“Well, Bill,” Richard continued, “I guess the training part of the bra works like this. A girl whose breasts are newly forming wears a training bra so that her breasts begin to get the idea of what a bra is all about.”
“Oh,” I said. I was completely baffled; I couldn’t imagine why Miss Frost’s breasts needed to be trained at all, and the concept that breasts have ideas was also new and troubling to me. Yet my infatuation with Miss Frost had certainly shown me that my penis had ideas that seemed entirely separate from my own thoughts. And if penises could have ideas, it was not such a stretch (for a thirteen-year-old) to imagine that breasts could also think for themselves.
In the literature Miss Frost was presenting me with, at an ever increasing rate, I’d not yet encountered a novel from a penis’s point of view, or one where the ideas that a woman’s breasts have are somehowdisturbing to the woman herself—or to her family and friends. Yet such novels seemed possible, if only in the way that my ever having sex with Miss Frost also seemed (albeit remotely) possible.
W AS IT PRESCIENT OF Miss Frost to make me wait for Dickens—to work up to him, as it were? And the first Dickens she allowed me was not what I’ve called the “crucial” one; she made me wait for Great Expectations, too. I began, as many a Dickens reader has, with Oliver Twist, that young and Gothic novel—the hangman’s noose at Newgate casts its macabre shadow over several of the novel’s most memorable characters. One thing Dickens and Hardy have in common is the fatalistic belief that, particularly in the case of the young and innocent, the character with a good heart and unbudging integrity is at the greatest risk in a menacing world. (Miss Frost had the good sense to make me wait for Hardy, too. Thomas Hardy is not thirteen-year-old material.)
In the case of Oliver, I readily identified with the resilient orphan’s progress. The criminal, rat-infested alleys of Dickens’s London were excitingly far, far away from First Sister, Vermont, and I was more forgiving than Miss Frost, who criticized the early novel’s “creaky plot mechanism,” as she called it.
“Dickens’s inexperience as a novelist shows, ” Miss Frost pointed out to me.
At thirteen, going on fourteen, I wasn’t critical of inexperience. To me, Fagin was a lovable monster. Bill Sikes was purely terrifying—even his dog, Bull’s-eye, was evil. I was seduced, actually kissed, by the Artful Dodger in my dreams—no more winning or fluid a pickpocket ever existed. I cried when Sikes murdered the good-hearted Nancy, but I also cried when Sikes’s loyal Bull’s-eye leaps from the parapet for the dead man’s shoulders. (Bull’s-eye misses his mark; the dog falls to the street below, dashing out his brains.)
“Melodramatic, don’t you think?” Miss Frost asked me. “And Oliver cries too much; he is more of a cipher for Dickens’s abundant passion for damaged children than he is ever a fully fleshed-out character.” She told me that Dickens would write better of these themes, and of such children, in his more mature novels—most
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