superiority. As usual, he wore a sport shirt with two missing buttons. Today, however, a T-shirt hid the chest from view. Faded blue jeans and desert boots completed the costume, and--as I have already noted--it is costumes that the young men now wear as they act out their simpleminded roles, hopefully constructing a fantasy world in order to avoid confronting the fact that to be a man in a society of machines is to be an expendable, soft auxiliary to what is useful and hard. Today there is nothing left for the old-fashioned male to do, no ritual testing of his manhood through initiation or personal contest, no physical struggle to survive or mate. Nothing is left him but to put on clothes reminiscent of a different time; only in travesty can he act out the classic hero who was a law unto himself, moving at ease through a landscape filled with admiring women. Mercifully, that age is finished. MarIon Brando was the last of the traditional heroes and, significantly, even he was invariably beaten up in the last reel, victim of a society that has no place for the ancient ideal of manhood. Since Brando, there has been nothing except the epicene O'Toole, the distracted Mastroianni, and the cheerfully incompetent Belmondo. The roof has fallen in on the male and we now live at the dawn of the age of Woman Triumphant, of Myra Breckinridge! I began pleasantly, disarmingly. "Not long ago MaryAnn told me that I have a tendency to pick on you, Rusty..." "You sure do... "Don't interrupt, please." I was stern but pleasant, like Eve Arden. "If I have, it's because I'm trying to help you. I think you have great potential talent. How great I can't decide just yet, but unless you learn to walk properly there's not a chance in this world of your ever being a major star." The reference to his talent pleased him; the prophecy alarmed him. "Hell, Miss Myra, I don't walk that bad." "I'm afraid you do. And look at the way you're leaning to one side right now. You look like you're about to fall out of the chair." He straightened up and crossed his legs. "That better?" The hint of a sneer in his voice excited me. He must be built up in order that his fall be the more terrible. "Yes. Now I realize that you have a physical problem. Mary-Ann told me about your back." "I broke four ribs and even so finished the last half." He was inordinately proud; no doubt about it, a confident young man. "Very admirable. Now I want you to stand up and walk first toward the door and then back here to me." I could hear him murmur "Oh, shit" under his breath as he lumbered to his feet. Slowly he walked, or rather slouched, to the door and then returned and stood defiantly in front of me, thumbs hooked in his belt. I noted for the first time how large and strong his hands are, hairless with unusually long thumbs. O.K.? he asked. "Not O.K." I studied him a moment. He was so close to me that my eyes were on a level with his belt buckle. "Now, Rusty, I noticed the other night that your problem seems to go away when you dance. So, just as an exercise, I want you to do one of those stationary dances--I don't know what they're called. You know, like the one you were doing at the party." "Dance? Here? Now?" He looked puzzled. "But there's no music." "To be precise there never is music with those dances, just electronic noise. Nothing compared to the big sound of Glenn Miller. Anyway, all you need is a beat. You can keep time by snapping your fingers." "I feel silly." He scowled and looked suddenly dangerous, but I knew what I was about. "Go ahead. We haven't got all day. Start." I snapped my fingers. Halfheartedly he did the same and slowly began to gyrate his hips. I found the effect almost unbearably erotic. To have him all to myself, just three feet away, his pelvis revolving sexily. For some minutes he continued to gyrate, the snapping of fingers growing less and less precise as his hands grew sweaty. I then instructed him to turn around so that I could observe him from the
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