There's Nothing Like Great Literature: Step 23

Although much of my time at John Muir Junior High has only limited impact on my memory a few developments took place during my short term in this institution for the pubescent. There was the growing fascination with appearance, largely due to a desire to attract the attention of girls whose sweaters were starting to take on new form. Another interest gaining strength with my peers and me was the sharing of passages from certain high quality literature. An example of this was West Side Story. Having already experienced the story with my friend Chuck at the Ritz Theater where we sat in the back and snapped our fingers as the Jets and Sharks prepared to rumble, it was shocking to find text which was more evocative than the images on the screen. In particular, what we discovered were words, phrases, and whole paragraphs devoted to descriptions of sex. Though our parents may have magazines that we found hidden under beds or on shelves in closets with glossy air-brushed images that made our palms sweat, we knew we could only let our imaginations run wild in the privacy of our homes while being careful to return these items to the exact position of secrecy from which we had retrieved them. On the other hand, books were a perfectly acceptable medium in the halls of a junior high school. In pre-highlighter days, a lot of red lines strategically placed on the page provided a discreet way to provoke curiosity, disgust, confusion and excitement simultaneously from the aforementioned girls of this noble institution. Nothing was quite as tantalizing as the secret agent hero created by Ian Fleming. Moving beyond the young romantic world Twain had given us with Huck and Tom and Becky, James Bond jumped off the page and into his Astin-Martin. His trademark martini that was stirred but never shaken for fear of bruising the ice found me turning pages with ever-greater rapidity in order to find the next Honey Ryder, Tatiana Romanova or Pussy Galore. When Dr. No appeared as a movie it did not provide the illicit images described in the book, but at the same time there was enough lust to convince us we wanted to see the rest of Mr. Fleming’s work transcribed to the screen. When the beautiful starlet Ursula Andress appeared as Honey our young minds had no difficulty converting her name and disposition to undress. We even caught the innuendo when Miss Moneypenny, Bond’s sultry colleague says, “Flattery will get you nowhere…but don’t stop trying.” Interestingly, we all felt it our patriotic duty to read the book President Kennedy had read, From Russia With Love, while we awaited its theatrical release next summer. As always your comments and stories are appreciated.