RELUCTANT PRESS

By this time Paula was seated and had ordered a LARGE scotch and ice. She stabbed at one of the pickled herrings.

I have a 'maggot' about sheer black stockings I have six pairs of my own: she crossed her legs and I stared like a voyeuristic bloody fool.

She 'took me in" at a glance.

"Let's take your mind off things. Tell me about literature and belles-lettres and stuff. I'm a 'barbarian', you know. Give me a reading list."

"Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov and Fred Hoyle," I replied with a grin.

You're teasing me, you know, and that isn't fair. Einstein didn't write fiction at least I don't think he did."

Somewhat abashed, I tried to make amends. "Austen, Bronte and Eliot might be a good beginning," I ventured.

"Do you you prefer woman writers?" she asked, looking at me closely.

"Not necessarily, they are just three that sprung to mind." "Ah, so." What she said sounded like 'Arse hole' which I probably deserved.

We talked about cabbages and kings for about twenty minutes.

Then she homed in on what could have possibly been her reason for coming in the first place. "Can I invite you to be be my guinea-pig? I can guarantee that in 14 days you'll have a skin as smooth as a baby's bum." (Clearly, she wasn't used to a large scotch!)

"Two questions, please. One, shouldn't you be doing this sort of thing on rhesus apes first? And two, what makes you think I WANT a skin as smooth as a baby's bum?"

--

"All right two answers; rhesus apes are all nasty and hairy and the cream is only designed for the species homo sapiens-sapiens."

JOYCE'S GIRLS

BY JOYCE

"Why do you have to say 'sapiens' twice? I thought we were all just homo sapiens."

"That's because we are extra special," she said, grinning broadly.

"Ah, so," said I, grinning back.

"You know, I have a sneaky feeling that you and I are going to get on pretty well. And if you are allowed to stare at in a clinical kind of my legs, then I can stare at your nose way, of course." She proceeded to appraise my conk 'clinically'.

·

I leered at her legs in return, a bit more openly this time. "If you are worried about the cream being carcinogenic, you don't have to, Doug, it is really quite safe, you know."

"Well, you're the doctor. To be brutally frank, my coarse skin does worry me a bit. I give you carte blanche to wave your magic wand." "Spoken like a woe-man," she said, after a moment's thought, but smiling broadly all the same. She rummaged in her bag and came to light with a jet black bottle about the size of a Pond's Cream jar. The music I had put on was Moussorgsky's "Night on a Bare Mountain" .

The whole scene seemed to hang together black bottles, mumbo-jumbo, weird music and an unattainable and devastatingly attractive woman in masterful control. Aargh!!!

"I want you to apply this, not too liberally, each night before you go to bed. A little goes a long way but remember, by using twice as much it won't make you twice as beautiful; it doesn't work that way."

"Then it must be just like shoe polish," I said mischievously. It had a faint smell of Innoxa and the appearance of iridescent marge.

"If it helps your skin it will help anyone's. The sales pitch will be aimed at women but there is no earthly reason why men shouldn't use it as well. One of the directors even suggested calling it 'Androgyny.' I think I rather approve of that," said Paula after a moment's reflection.

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