From: E. Lloyd Olson
Subject: 39 Things (LONG!!)
Originator: icsu0237@ming.cs.montana.edu
Reply-To: geo0588@trex.oscs.montana.edu
Organization: Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 01:17:26 GMT


At Last!!  The perfect opportunity to post the e-copy I just made of
"Let Me Count the Ways (39)" by Roy Blount, Jr., from his book of
essays, *Not Exactly What I Had In Mind*.  I took out the introductory
pages, as they seemed less important and the file was long enough anyhow.
So, here it is:
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                   LET ME COUNT THE WAYS (39)
                       by Roy Blount, Jr.
                    (condensed for bandwidth)

     So okay.  Here are the 39 things that make a woman sexy:

     1.  If she has barbecue sauce on her mouth.
     2.  If she looks like she will do anything.  That she wants
to.  That isn't faithless, trashy, or painful.
     3.  You'd be hard put to say exactly where one part of her
body leaves off and the next begins.  You can put your hand on her
waist and it feels like all of her is going to pass through there
eventually.
     4.  If her name is Rita.  Think about it.  Rita Hayworth, Rita
Morene, Rita Gam, Lovely Rita Meter Maid, Rita in the movie
*Educating Rita*.  And, what the heck (say you're a congressman or
something), Rita Jenrette.
     5.  I'm going to skip over a few obvious ones here.
     6.  If she can make gravy.
     7.  If she appears to have a lot of sense.  You know what I
mean?  Maybe what I mean is, if she knows what I mean.  But no,
it's more than that.  You look at her and before you even get to
know her you feel a certain gratitude, a certain peace.  You feel
that she is not going to spring some kind of unfairly inexplicable
notion on you that you will never make any sense out of and that
will wind up being your fault.  you feel that she knows where the
keys are.  You feel that the two of you could give each other
little looks to the effect that ah, yeah, *unh*, that's life.
     8.  If she appears not to have a lick of sense.
     9.  Some intriguing combination of a lot and not a lick.
     10.  If she is securely hooked up with a good friend of yours. 
With such a woman you can kid around and bump hips and even take a
nip at each other's neck, in plain view or *not* in plain view, all
the while feeling very good about knowing (a) that neither of you
is going to do anything disloyal to your friend, and (b) that you
will never have to get in an argument with this woman over why
neither of you knows where they keys are.  Then too, your friend
might die.
     11.  By the same token, sort of:  If she is a good friend of
the woman you are securely hooked up with.  Here again you can bump
around guiltlessly, and in this case you are favoring the woman you
are securely hooked up with by showing her friend that the woman
you are securely hooked up with is not securely hooked up with some
schlump.
     12.  Lips.
     13.  If she is not too thin and not too rich.  "You can never
be too thin or too rich" is the most self-serving remark of recent
times except for "That camera doesn't lie" (Ronald Reagan).  You
can be so thin that you haven't got any sugar on you.  (As a
southern American white man, I am resigned to accepting blame for
just about anything, but not by God anorexia.)  And you can be so
rich that nobody ever tells you that everybody thinks you are
silly.
     14.  If her attitude toward her own physical presence is,
"Hey, for whatever anybody else may think it's worth, I *got* it. 
And I can shake it.  And if you're not interested who asked you?" 
Why in the world do women say things like, "Oh, I'm too droopy in
the hiney and got hardly any chest and my legs are just *sticks*"? 
Unless they manage to say it provocatively.  Sparkle goes a long
way.
     15.  If she looks shapely in shapeless clothes.
     16.  If her hair looks like it looks naturally good without
thousands of dollars' worth of treatments.
     17.  If she is naked as a jaybird.  Okay, call me old-
fashioned.
     18.  If she is a good sport but doesn't take any shit.  (I
realize this is a fine line.)
     19.  Fine lines.  I mean, fine in simultaneously the sense of
"exquisite" and "she's so fine."  Not brittle lines.  Flexible fine
lines.  (See 3, above.)
     20.  If she's barefooted.  ("Barefoot" is cute, but
"barefooted" is more down-to-earth.)  It may be objected that this
was covered by point 17, above, "naked as a jaybird," but it
wasn't.  "Barefooted" focuses on the whole matter of padding
around.  Ever listen to a woman's bare feet padding around
upstairs?  (Not slapping, not stomping, not dragging, but padding. 
Around.)
     21.  A sweetly robust way of laughing.  And of sneezing.
     22.  I am going to skip over some more obvious ones here.
     23.  If she can have a good rowdy time engaging in dialectic. 
Doesn't want to be thesis continually nor indefatigably antithesis,
but like to mix it up with you and come out with something fresh.
     24.  There's a lot in how she pets a dog.
     25.  Good hands, generally.
     26.  When she's wet.  Ideally with sweat, or with something
else (gravy, for instance) involving an element of slickum. 
Swimming-pool or saltwater wetness is not fluid enough:  the hand
catches on it.
     27.  If she'd like to go run out into any available body of
water right now, though.
     28.  If she looks like she is built for dancing but would just
as soon kid around.
     29.  If there is nothing on God's green earth that would
convince her to become a Republican.  If she's already Republican,
if she was raised that way, well, I don't have to know everything. 
I guess.
     30.  If she is slightly cross-eyed.  Maybe I'm kinky.  Maybe
I don't like to be focused on too intensely.  I don't know.  But
you know how Karen Black's eyes, and Lauren Hutton's, and to a
lesser extent Ellen Barkin's, seem just out of true?
     31.  If she looks like she could go like Valerie Brisco-Hooks
if she weren't so languorous.
     32.  If she's just naturally got coloring all over.
     33.  Or, on the other hand, if she's so pellucid beneath her
clothes that it's like the beginning of time under there.
     34.  If she responds with informed warmth to at least ten of
the following names:  Dwight Gooden, Robert Montgomery, Patsy
Cline, Earl Long, Christopher Smart, Willis Reed, Candy Barr, Les
Paul, Judy Holliday, Dock Ellis, Cole Younger, Oliver St. John
Gogarty, Mr. Kitzel, Grace Paley, Maynard G. Krebs, Nellie Fox,
Myles Na Gopaleen, Mary Worth, Claudette Colbert, Grundoon, Zora
Neale Hurston, Butch Thompson, Jeanette MacDonald, Keela the
Outcast Indian Maiden, L. C. Greenwood, and Joel McCrea.
     35.  One of those T-shirts with the big, big armholes.  You
know what I mean?  You keep hoping the flag will come along and
she'll salute?  Of course I realize that from a respect-for-women
point of view those shirts are worn only for purposes of mobility
and air-conditioning.  Uh-huh.
     36.  If her slip is showing.  Remember slips?  Whatever
happened to slips?  It's such a great term?  slip.  Not to frou-
frou, not too stern.
     37.  Heart.  My friend Jane Bell (see point 10, above), her
husband, several other congenial people, and I were out lurching
around happily one night in Nashville, having breakfast in a place
with a greasy floor at 3:00 A.M.  I mention the floor because Jane
slipped on it and fell flat on her face.  Jane has elegant,
delicate features.  One of her front teeth broke right half in two
on a diagonal line.  All of a sudden Jane was snaggletoothed.  It
was a revelation!  She looked wonderful!  Not that there were any
flies on her before, by any means;  she always looked *lovely*; 
but, I don't know, now she looked exotic, in a very down-home kind
of way.  A little bit evil, somehow;  certainly a little bit
trashy;  all because of that slantwise gap in the middle of her
mouth, which illumined the refinement of her features thereabout. 
We kept telling her how great she looked.  But the admirable thing
was how well she took it.  Many women -- and Jane is admittedly not
the most absolutely laid-back person in America, even when her
teeth are even -- would have cried, or fumed, or pouted, or blamed
someone, or insisted on going home.  Jane just went right along
with the course of the evening.  Accepted compliments, did not
demand commiseration, looked *louche* on request, and even joined
in the discussion of topics quite unrelated to her mouth.  We were
back at her house around six, and when I got up a few hours later
I found, with some regret, that she had already been to a dentist
(rustled up by her husband on a Sunday morning) who had restored
her to simple elegance.  And she was ready for brunch. 
Incidentally, I want to say something now that for some reason I
have never told Jane to her face:  pound for pound, she can hold
more gin without getting bleary than anybody else I know.
     38.  If you've been together through a lot of ups and downs. 
And there was always a firm bounce on the bottom.
     39.  If she eats *all*, every bit, of the meat off her chicken
bones.

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	 I would have to say I agree with most of Blount's criteria;
you may interpret as you wish.  I remain,
                              -Yrs. in Fear & Loathing,
                                 E. Lloyd Olson, Esq.

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|  E. Lloyd Olson, Esq., Freeholder  |   geo0588@trex.oscs.montana.edu   |
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