Connecticut Voices; Blanche McCrary Boyd Reads from "The Revolution of Little Girls"

You can just start writing reading. We'll do you know. Yes. I think. OK so if I make a mistake I should just stop print from the chart of the top of the paragraph or or do the next. That's part of the ergo. Or if it's ones that yeah I'm ok. Good. Good evening I'm Hugh Ogden and I'm Vinnie Sinar. Welcome to Connecticut voices readings from the work of Connecticut writers. Tonight Blanche McCrary Boyd will read a chapter from her novel The revolution of little girls published by can often 1991 and issued in paperback this summer. Blanche McQuery Boyd lives in Stonington and teaches at Connecticut College in New London. She's the author of two other novels and a book of essays the revolution a little girl says her first novel in 10 years.

This is the third chapter of my novel the revolution of little girls. This chapter was published in a somewhat different version in 1909 in the voice Literary Supplement and then was re issued in Best American Short Stories 89. When my mother read this chapter she said Honey I don't understand why you have to write in the first person. And I said well mom if I wrote this in the third person nobody would believe it. Fiction is very hard to take the rap for sometimes and people always think my fiction is true. So hey I really didn't do this. After my freshman year at Duke University I went to summer school at Harvard because of the Boston Strangler. My mother didn't want me to go. I just hate to think of you like that with your face all purple and your tongue hanging out. Why can't you be a normal girl and get a tan. The dean at Duke probably wouldn't

have wanted me to go to Harvard either and Duke I was viewed as a troublemaker partly because of hypnosis in high school. I had learned how to hypnotize people by accident. I looked deep into my eyes I said to my sister Marie one night when we'd been watching an evil hypnotist in a bee movie on television. I said this with great conviction and Marie looked at me as if it were a joke. Then something peculiar happened. She seemed to drift toward my eyes. I'm going to count to five I whispered. And when I get to five you'll be in a deep trance I whispered because I was afraid. There was a current between us as certain as the electricity in a door bell had once touched. Marie's eyelids fluttered as I canot to 5 her eyes closed. Can you bark I asked. Yes she said. Will you do it. Yes be a dog than bark. But her eyes remained closed but Marie's lips

pulled back from her teeth and she began to make a little dipping noises. I recognized our neighbor's Chihuahua. I counted backwards from five and more you woke up. I don't think we ought to tell mama or and doodles about this I said. During my senior year in high school I developed a different technique no longer hypnotizing through eye contact which scared me too much. But with a lighted cigarette in a semi dark room making people bark remained my favorite trick. Sometimes I told them what kind of dog to be and other times I allowed them to choose a German Shepherd Lhasa Apso whatever. I knew I shouldn't be doing hypnosis especially at parties but it do get made me popular and feared. College Cost me authority problems right from the beginning there were rules against women wearing pants to classes or to the dining room and rules against wearing curlers

in public. There was even a suggestion that women shouldn't smoke cigarettes standing up. Soon there was a new regulation concerning hypnosis. The Dean summons came right after a second semester began for my audience with her. I wore a madras wraparound skirt a Gantt button down shirt and a cardigan that had leather patches on the elbows. I even more a panty girdle and hose. She would see that I was a normal healthy young woman not a troublemaker. Dean Pottle looked at least 40 years old. Her hair was brown and she was wearing a brown tailored suit. Her skin revealed that she once had a mild case of acne. She was smoking a cigarette and seemed quite friendly as she invited me to sit down across from her. Ellen she said comfortingly we have had a report that you went to Dr. Hill years class in the medical school wearing nothing but a bathing suit and carrying a bottle of champagne on a silver

tray. I tried to think of how best to reply. I'm not in the medical school dean Pottle so I didn't think the regular rules would apply. Anyway it was the whole year's birthday and some of his students asked me to deliver the champagne. It seemed harmless enough. I would never have agreed to do it if I'd known the class was at 8:30 in the morning. I can assure you of that when she said nothing I elaborated. I wore my trench coat over my bathing suit until I got to the door of the classroom and I put it right back on as soon as I gave him the champagne. Her eyes were less affable the same trench coat you've been wearing to your regular classes. I nodded. Is it true you've been wearing your trench coat to classes with nothing under it. It certainly is not true Dean Pottle. I were a slip in a bra. I even wear hose. Ellen you do know about the dress code don't you. I'm within the dress code Dean Pato. It just says you can't wear pants. It doesn't say you have to wear skirts. Also

a slip is a kind of skirt isn't it. The Dean was trying to look stern but I began to suspect that she might like me. Do you think of yourself as an unusual girl Ellen. I nodded miserably. Listen Dean Pottle Would you mind if I smoke too. I'm pretty nervous. Go ahead she said. You have a tendency to bend the rules a bit don't you think. I lit a Winston. I don't know. Let's start with the hypnosis. There was no rule against hypnosis. The Dean took a final meditative drag on her own cigarette and crushed it out in a brown glass ashtray. Anyway there's not much to it I said to hypnosis. I saw it on TV one night. I say corny stuff like look only at the tip of my cigarette. Your eyelids are getting heavy. Most people are just dying to go into a trance. The dean was staring at the smoke curling slowly from my cigarette. Hello I

said. With effort she looked up at me. When she didn't speak I continued. I tell them look at the glowing ember of the cigarette and let your mind relax. The dean looked right back at my cigarette. She seemed like a nice enough person she probably thought the rules were dumb too. Your eyelids were closed by themselves. Her eyelids lowered quietly like dancers bowing. Slowly I counted to 10. That's good. You're feeling very good. Just rest now. A manila folder with my name on it was lying on her desk in it where my college application I board scores and a handwritten report on the hypnosis incidents. The conclusion said that I had difficulty accepting discipline and was on academic probation for poor grades. I replaced the folder and said in my most soothing voice when you wake up you'll feel great. You won't have any memory of this trance no memory of it at all. You'll think

Ellen Burns is a nice interesting girl with no problems not your head if you understand me. The Dean nodded. I was curious to know what kind of dog she might be but someone could walk in and I wanted to put this unexpected opportunity to good use. Several acquaintances of mine were going to Harvard for the summer. When you wake up I'm going to ask you about recommending me for summer school and you're going to think that Harvard's a wonderful idea in spite of my academic record. You'll say that Harvard is bound to help me with my authority problems. Do you understand. She nodded again. I counted slowly backwards from ten to one and said Wake up now. The Dean's eyes opened. I feel great. You're a wonderful girl Ellen. With no serious problems I put out my cigarette and her brown glass ashtray. Dean Pottle I wanted to ask you about going to

Harvard this summer. I had made several unsuccessful attempts to lose my virginity at Duke and Harvard had begun to seem like a possible solution. My roommate at Duke was named Darlene Darlene was an angular good looking girl with sharp cheekbones and black hair cut in a smooth pageboy that swayed when she moved. She had been coaching me on the loss of my virginity in high school. I had read an article that said sperm could swim right through your underpants. So whenever I got close to intercourse with a boy I imagined microscopic tadpole swimming desperately through cotton fibers the size of the columns at St. hand. And I was distracted by other thoughts jerm swim back and forth between mouths the tongue is a muscle and disappears down the back of the throat. So what is it attached to. I want to be normal I kept saying to Darlene I want to lose my normal virginity. Normally

I fixed you up with Dunn she said. He doesn't have any experience either. You can learn together. Darlene How could that be a good idea. Trust me she said. It's a good idea. So Darlene arranged for this boy named Don to take me to dinner at a restaurant called chicken in the rough. The restaurant's logo was a long legged chicken in a tam o'shanter swinging a golf club sitting in one of the dark red booths. I felt as if I were in a dentist's waiting room. Don was melancholy with dark dramatic looks his thick black eyebrows moved when he chewed when he bit into a chicken leg. I pointed at the tiny string of meat hanging from the bone. That's a ligament done in the fourth grade they told us that you could see what ligaments were when you ate fried chicken. He looked uncertain. I only eat white meat I said. Why are you telling me this.

Once the top of my mouth started getting loose I said I could actually move the skin with my tongue. So I went to the dentist and said the roof of my mouth is rotting off. I have a terrible disease. He looked in my mouth and said Do you eat soup. So I said Of course I eat soup. Do you drink coffee. Yes I drink coffee. Well he said you're drinking it too hot. I was kind of disappointed you know. I thought I had some rare disease. Don put down his chicken leg. I don't know what Darlene said to you but we don't have to do anything. We really don't. Could we drink some beer I said. So while the chicken and fried potatoes congealed in their grease and the salad wilted in its pool of dressing done I drank a pitcher of beer. Then I began to relax. Don was a good enough looking boy although he lacked the wildness that I found compelling in Darlene's boyfriend who had taken the mike away from the singer of a black blues band at a fraternity party and sung in original version of put your head on my shoulder

called Put your legs around my shoulders. Don had been raised by his grandmother in Greensboro North Carolina when he graduated. He wanted to be a newspaper reporter in a small Southern town. He said his grandmother's lifelong wish was to meet Lawrence Welk and someday Don hope to arrange that for her. I have to go to the bathroom I said. In the bathroom I confronted the most serious obstacle to the loss of my virginity under my skirt I was wearing a panty girdle. I hadn't really meant to wear the girdle but when I was dressing I kept hearing my mother's voice saying any woman looks better in a girdle. So I put it on experimentally and it felt so secure so bracing that I left it on. Now I didn't know what to do about it. I considered taking it off but it was too bulky for the pocket of my trench coat. What I did have in the pocket of my trench coat was a nor formed badge and also positon that

Darlene had given me to insert just before intercourse. It was supposed to lubricate me a word that made me feel like a car. But when was just before intercourse. After I peed I inserted the Suppose a Tory and pulled the girdle back into place feeling deeply relieved. The girl meant that I couldn't make love with this a positon he meant that I sincerely wanted to. On the way out a chicken in the rough I stopped at the bar in the front room and downed a double shot of bourbon neat. I never met anybody like you Don said. I'm absolutely normal I said feeling a rush of love for the shot glass. I'm normal for me really. The November night was inky blue the air clean and brisk. Don put his arm around me as we walked the bourbon warmed my blood and the melting nor form made me feel odd. I stopped on the street and kissed him on the mouth. The way I thought someone in a movie might.

Yes. Soon we were in the dormitory parking lot leaning against a stranger's empty car still kissing cinematically. Then we were in the back seat of the same car half lying down just when the kissing was getting boring. Don put his hand up my skirt. I had never had anyone's hand up my skirt before. His fingers moved tentatively up my legs. My God what's this he said encountering the girdle. I wanted to explain but I was too dizzy. His hand wandered around the flesh of my thigh then moved inward and upward. The Dissolve nor form was all over the crotch of the girdle. My God you're with he said. I tried to hold still. Okay he mumbled sliding two fingers awkwardly up the leg of the panty girdle. When he touched me something flashed in my head and my hips pushed hard against his hand. Oh my God oh my God he said pulling his hand free. I'll take it off I said. No

problem here I can take it off. Don was still crouched over his hand. His fingers glistened in the darkness. A lump appeared behind his knuckle and swelled while I watched. It's it's growing I said. It's sprained he said. I became famous almost overnight. Don tell no one about the girdle but he did admit to Darlene's boyfriend that his injury was sort of sexual sort of sexual Darlene's boyfriend said. What is sort of sexual. Don's hand was not sprained. He had broken a blood vessel behind his knuckle. Overnight the blood spread under his skin turning it Puffy and greenish. By the end of the week his hand had turned black with a dark red palm. Boys I'd never heard of called me at the dorm and Don followed me to several classes. We'll try it again he said. We've got to try it again. He looked vulnerable stunned

by Love extending his black hand. I never wanted to see Don again in my whole life so I felt relieved when my mother telephone and said Why don't you fly home this weekend and get measured for your hand-sewn human hair wig. She met me at the airport in Charleston just before midnight on a Friday. She was wearing purple Toreador pants a gold I'm a shirt golem a slippers a stroller length mink coat and large dark glasses. I don't want anyone to recognize me she whispered looking uneasily around the deserted airport. That's why I have on these glasses. For a year my mother had been addicted to diet pills and bars she would say in a sing song voice. I was a different person before I found AM bars the AM stands for amphetamine and the bar stands for barbiturate the amphetamine speeds you up and the barbiturate slows you down. You don't have any appetite

but you're not nervous before my mother found diet pills. She did not speak in italics and exclamations and she was not wiring and loud before she found diet pills. She was heavy and depressed. Now she like to scrub the tiles in the bathroom with a tooth brush and she had fired the maid because she said it felt so good to push the bakin cleaner around and polish the silverware herself. She liked to get down between the tines of the forks. It takes patience she said and I have lots of patience. Her arms vibrated as she embraced me. Doesn't it look real she whispered. Isn't it a standing. She patted her French twist her hair was so smoothly arranged that no false scalp showed but the elegant Twist looked odd. My mother's real hair is naturally curly. The next day I was staring at myself in the beauticians mirror. Thank you mama.

Like Mama's wig and doodles wig and my sister Marie's wig my wig was set in a French twist. The four of us were standing around the beauty parlor. We had the monolithic look of a gang. The French twist gang Marie said quietly meeting my eyes in the mirror. Marie had grown tall and fragile a natural blonde with a sweet smile and a quiet manner. She was three years younger than me and Doodles was married to my mother's brother Royce for whom my little brother Royce had been named. We all look alike in these wigs Toodle said. But I'm the inflated version doodles didn't care for the diet pills because she said they made her heart hurt. Duels was built square like a refrigerator. She would announce cheerfully she wheeze loudly almost all of the time. There's just not much room for error in there.

Marie had once remarked after my wig fitting. We went shopping and I bought a garter belt. I'm not wearing girls anymore mama. I'm just not. No matter what the wig not only changed how I looked. It changed how I felt about myself. When I got back to school boys stopped pursuing me. Perhaps they no longer recognize the Black Hand girl I abandoned not only hypnosis but parties and my study habits improved by the time I got to Harvard. I had been taken off of academic probation Dean Pottle later claimed that her confidence in me had turned me around. I met Nicky summers on a sticky Saturday night in a drug store in Harvard Square where I was buying a new copy of Peyton Place because the pages of my copy were falling out. He was buying a book called thinking about the

unthinkable which I assumed was pornographic but turned out to be about nuclear war. My copy of Peyton Place was worn out because in the long afternoons in my apartment in Back Bay while my roommate Dottie plant was out waitressing I had discovered masturbation when I was wearing the wig I dressed like a duke sorority girl and studied calmly. But when I was not wearing the wig a certain wildness seemed to overtake me. Anything goes I sang one night and danced around the apartment as if I were in a musical comedy. So I tried to wear my French twist almost every day and I was making very good grades Beanpot always going to be proud. My wig got gummy with dirt and I had to give it up for six days to have it professionally cleaned without the wig. I began to wear a white lipstick. I comb my hair out straight and drank scotch on the rocks while

I study. Sometimes I dressed in a black jersey in tight black jeans and imagine that I was a beatnik like the ones I'd seen in Time magazine. I was in Cambridge Massachusetts I reasoned and no one in North or South Carolina need ever know that I was behaving this way. Sexually I began to experiment. I read the sex scenes in Peyton Place and drifted into them like hypnosis. My old teddy bear clutched tight between my legs. I felt bad about my teddy bear who was not holding up well under this assault. But as long as I didn't touch myself I was sure I couldn't be doing anything wrong. And then one afternoon when it was too hot in the apartment to where a lot of clothes my wildness overcame my scruples I bled. And it wasn't my period as the word masturbation finally occurred to me. I realized that I had deflowered myself. My wig would be available on

Monday on Saturday night since I was ruined anyway. I went to a drugstore in Harvard Square in my white lipstick black jersey and tight black jeans to buy a new copy of Peyton Place. I was standing furtively behind the paperback rack when this boy wearing Levis that looked as if they hadn't been washed in two weeks said are you from down home. He had an unmistakable Southern drawl. I didn't answer of course or even look up my mother's warnings about the Boston Strangler had made a vivid impression on me so vivid in fact that when I tried to swear off Peyton Place long fantasies about the Boston Strangler had drifted in to replace it. Southerners look different he continued. We walk different or something that the Boston Strangler was a Southerner seemed unlikely. So I looked him full in the face. Where are you from I said Texas. He had a nice

smile and crooked teeth. His hair was Jenny and he wore glasses. Texas isn't the south I said. Texas is the West. If I hadn't agreed to go drink beer with Mickey summers I wouldn't have told him funny stories about my family and if he hadn't laughed so much at these stories I wouldn't have drunk so much. And if I hadn't drunk so much I wouldn't have ended up back at my apartment with him and have Dottie planned had been home I wouldn't have ended up on the sofa with him and if he hadn't been lying with his skinny hips jammed against my tight black jeans I wouldn't have drifted into Peyton Place. Your nipples are as hard as diamonds. The Irresistible man whispered. Do it to me the woman whispered back and he unbuttoned my shirt and kept his hand over my breast. Diamonds I shouted and we both began to shudder. I was extremely embarrassed and kept my eyes shut tight. Hey he kept saying.

Hey. But not as if he expected any response. I was breathing as if I had been running well and he whispered. You had an orgasm. I certainly did not. I was trying not to cry. Wow I never gave a girl an orgasm. Hey. Wow. When Nikki arrived at my apartment for our first real date the next Monday night he had cut his hair and shape so close his jaw looked raw and scraped. We were going to dinner at a restaurant where he promised the menu would be written in French and he was wearing a suit and tie and on his feet were grown up lace up men's shoes in his hand was a bouquet of daisies. I had picked up my wig from the cleaners. I was wearing a blue sheath dress my garter belt hose and high heels your hair looks great that way Nickie said. We stared dumbly at each other

like people who have fallen in love. Thank you for listening to Blanche McCrary Boyd read from her novel The revolution of little girls Blanche Boyd's books as well as other books on Connecticut voices are available at your local bookstore and library. Technical assistance for the program was provided by Gordon Shelob next week. David McCain will read from his memoir spellbound growing up in God's country. We hope you will join us again next Saturday evening at 8 o'clock. For another program of Connecticut voices.