In Praise of Older Women: The Amorous Recollections of Andras Vajda by Stephen Vizinczey

Author:Stephen Vizinczey [Vizinczey, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Hungarian Literature, Erotica, Humour, Fiction
ISBN: 0226858863
Publisher: Ballantine Books Inc
Published: 1965-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

11 - On Virgins

O purity, painful and pleading!

—Barry Pain

A few weeks ago, one of my students wrote an article in The Saskatoon Undergraduate, proclaiming that he couldn’t care less whether a girl was a virgin or not. His statement caused a furore both on and off the campus. There were stiff editorials about it in the newspapers, and our kind-hearted dean made a valiant attempt to create the impression that he was going to expel the boy. For a while even my own job was in jeopardy, because it was assumed that my lectures had helped to corrupt the young man. At the emergency faculty meeting, one of my elderly colleagues pointed out, waving an imaginary Red Ensign in his fist, that I wore Italian pullovers to my classes and flouted morality in my atrocious accent. To protect myself, I felt compelled to write a letter to the editor of The Undergraduate. “I was recently shocked,” I wrote, “by your music critic’s unwarranted personal statement that he saw no difference between a girl who was a virgin and one who was not. I can find no words strong enough to condemn his undiscriminating attitude. It seems to me that irreproachable young women, who have kept themselves immaculate through heaven knows how many tempting skirmishes, deserve special consideration and respect. If your critic can’t appreciate their virtue, he would do well to leave them alone. There are already too many young men as it is who are willing and eager to engage in all sorts of wild attempts to seduce a pure girl, without any thought of the dreadful retribution they are bound to bring upon themselves.”

I’ve heard nothing further about the matter, so I suppose that I may complete my recollections in peace.

Back in my own student days at the University of Budapest, I knew a young actress named Mici, a redhead with long legs and arms. We used to say hello to each other for two years before we got any closer. She was supposed to be talented, and was pretty in a febrile sort of way—but too obvious to inspire curiosity. I knew her only from the marxism-leninism classes which the students of the College of Theatre and Film Arts attended with us. Yet I felt I knew her well enough, if only by sight and sound. She was fond of shouting obscene words, she wore unusually short skirts, and a different man was waiting for her after class every second week. During this time I had affairs with a few girls of my own age, and they taught me that no girl, however intelligent and warm-hearted, can possibly know or feel half as much at twenty as she will at thirty-five. Still, I wasn’t afraid of a young face any more, and if I kept away from Mici, it was because I saw nothing attractive about her.

I changed my mind on a Friday evening in November. It was a red-letter Friday for me, for I could take a girl home for the night.

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