The S.L.A. ate my Homework...
Virginia Holman, author of the new book "Rescuing Patty Hearst" did a reading at Newtonville Books last night. Despite the sensational title, the book has nothing to do with Patty Hearst and is rather an account of Holman's mother and her battle with schizophrenia.
It was an excellent reading and all decent citizens are duly urged to rush out and buy this book with the utmost dispatch.
As for myself well....when I was eleven years old, Patty Hearst was my first true love.
I must've searched all over Arlington Massachusetts for poor Patty....it was those veiled California co-ed eyes of hers- -drove me nuts!
Ah but in the fullness of time the Federales caught her and I was muscled out of the rescuing-Patty-Hearst spotlight for good.
Just as well, by then I was becoming more realistic in my heterosexual proclivities....someone with dignity...someone like...Barbara Eden.
Years later I told this story in passing to a college girlfriend who had a well concealed streak of benign dementia.
The next weekend I found an audio tape on my doorstep with a list of "demands" she had recorded. All I remember is that demand #3 was "be more open with your emotions."
As if being queer for kidnapped newspaper heiresses wasn't perestroika for the ages!
I suppose I got lucky looking back, she could've done herself up as Genie or something. On the surface that sounds trashy and fun, but take it from Humble John, those scenes all end in total defeat and disarray.
Ah but it was all a long time ago and besides,
the wench is a matron of some sort in New Jersey.
JohnIAT@aol.com