Read Online Looking for Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker - Free Book Online

talk with Rachel about her book and these issues after this word.” A commercial for hair coloring came on the monitor overhead.
    The guy with the earphones crouching beneath the camera said, “Good, Shirl.” Shirl took another cigarette from a box on the table behind Rachel’s book and lit up. She was able to suck in almost half of it before the guy under the camera said, “Ten seconds.” She snuffed this one out, leaned forward slightly, and when the picture came on the monitor, it caught her profile looking seriously at Rachel.
    “Rachel,” she said, “do you think lesbians ought to be allowed to teach at a girls’ school?”
    “Quite the largest percentage,” Rachel said, “of child molestations are committed by heterosexual men. As I pointed out in my book, the incidence of child molestation by lesbians is so small as to be statistically meaningless.”
    “But what kind of role model would a lesbian provide?”
    “Whatever kind she was. We don’t ask other teachers about their sexual habits. We don’t prevent so-called frigid women from teaching children, or impotent men. Children do not, it seems to me, have much chance in public school to emulate the sexual habits of their teachers. And if the teacher’s sexual preference is so persuasive to his or her students, why aren’t gays made straight by exposure to heterosexual teachers?”
    “But might not the gay teacher subtly persuade his or her students toward a homosexual preference?”
    Rachel said, “I just answered that, Shirley.”
    Shirley smiled brilliantly. “In your book you allege frequent violations of civil rights in employment both by the government and the private sector. Many of the offenders are here in Massachusetts. Would you care to name some of them?”
    Rachel was beginning to look annoyed. “I named all of them in my book,” she said.
    “But,” Shirley said, “not all of our viewers have read it.”
    “Have you?” Rachel said.
    “I haven’t finished it yet,” Shirley said. “I’m sorry to say.” The guy crouching below the camera lens made a gesture with his hand, and Shirley said, “We’ll be right back with more interesting revelations from Rachel Wallace after this message.”
    I whispered to Linda Smith, who stood in neat tweeds beside me, “Shirley doesn’t listen to the answers.”
    “A lot of them don’t,” Linda said. “They’re busy looking ahead to the next question.”
    “And she hasn’t read the book.”
    Linda smiled and shook her head. “Almost none of them ever do. You can’t blame them. Sometimes you get several authors a week plus all the other stuff.”
    “The pressure must be fearful,” I said. “To spend your working life never knowing what you’re talking about.”
    “Lots of people do that,” Linda said. “I only hope Rachel doesn’t let her annoyance show. She’s a good interview, but she gets mad too easy.”
    “That’s because if
she
had been doing the interview, she’d have read the book first.”
    “Maybe,” Linda said, “but Shirley North has a lot of fans in the metropolitan area, and she can sell us some books. The bridge club types love her.”
    A commercial for pantyhose concluded with a model holding out the crotch to show the ventilated panel, then Shirley came back on.
    “In your book, Rachel, you characterize lesbianism as an alternative way of loving. Should everyone try it?”
    “Everyone should do what she wants to do,” Rachel said. “Obviously people to whom the idea is not attractive should stay straight. My argument is, and has been, that those who do find that alternative desirable should not be victimized for that preference. It does no one any harm at all.”
    “Is it against God’s law?”
    “It would be arrogant of me to tell you God’s law. I’ll leave that to the people who think they have God’s ear. All I can say is that I’ve had no sign that He disapproves.”
    “How about the argument that it is unnatural?”
    “Same