![]() ![]() It was from that incident that I learned the meaning of “Peeping Tom.” However, the term goes back much farther in history, to the legend of Lady Godiva. At the least, it saved me from having to endure the ugly looks-and I do mean cut-off-your-balls ugly-that those embarrassed misses shot at the offenders each time they passed in the echoing hallways. I don’t remember what disciplinary actions followed, but I do recall thanking my lucky stars that I had not been invited to take part in this pubescent prank. ![]() Even before the young ladies caught bare-assed and red-faced could formally complain (along with their mothers) about such indignities, our very proper female principal had identified the guilty parties and called them on the carpet. I don’t know how long they remained unseen, but once discovered, their presence set off shrieks that threatened to shatter glass throughout that level of the school. While others were busy in class, they scampered to the top of that vehicle and slowly lifted their wide eyes above the windowsill. During the spring of my seventh-grade year (or maybe it was eighth grade), a group of boys from my class decided to take advantage of a maintenance truck that had been parked idly beneath the high windows of the girl’s gymnasium locker. It’s one of the stories I remember best from my early education. ![]()
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![]() No wonder she dared to proclaim to a Boston newspaper critic, who imagined he was hoisting her on her own petard, “Yeah, I think I’ll be remembered. 1 spot on The New York Times’s best-seller list. Not only did she write Valley of the Dolls (1966)-registered in The Guinness Book of World Records in the 1970s as the best-selling novel of all time (30 million copies sold)-she also became, with her next two novels, The Love Machine (1969) and Once Is Not Enough (1973), the first author ever to have three consecutive books catapult to the No. In her 12 remaining years-the tumor was malignant and a full mastectomy was performed the day after Christmas-Susann more than made good on her dream. I can’t die without leaving something-something big. ![]() on December 25, 1962, Jacqueline Susann-a fading TV actress with an unemployed husband, an autistic son in a mental hospital, and a lump in her right breast-began to scribble in a notebook. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() For almost 100 years, this queer duo has reliably reappeared in American culture, altering the course of homosexuality’s public perception. Leopold and Loeb - boy geniuses heirs to Jewish fortunes egghead intellectuals convenient examples of Modernism’s effete, ethnic and degenerate manliness - were also, worst of all, lovers. For that, something far fouler was necessary.įortunately for the rapt American public, the strange relationship between the two accused murderers provided just that. Monstrous, tragic and especially “perverse,” per the language of the time, Franks’ murder was, on its own, still not the stuff of which the “Crime of the Century” could be made. On May 21st of that year, the Chicago teenagers kidnapped 14-year-old Bobby Franks, bludgeoned him with a chisel until he died, undressed him, melted his face and circumcised his penis with hydrochloric acid and then dumped him in a culvert in a swamp. When Nathan “Babe” Leopold, 19, and Richard “Dickie” Loeb, 18, were put on trial in 1924, it was ostensibly because they committed a murder that was as heinous as it was unusual. ![]() ![]() ![]()
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