Chapter II: Male Wallflowers

Having pretty well made an oaf of myself among the ladies in the first half of this tome, it is best that I start on that strange manifestation known as the male wallflower.

Let us suppose for this half of the argument that I am just about the cleverest little girl alive. Let us suppose that I have not only brains but an extraordinary amount of beauty.

I began in the first half, in the guise of a young man, by telling the girls to take a bath. The same applies here. Of course, you don’t need to trouble yourself with perfumes and all that balderdash. If you are old enough, be sure to shave and powder your face with an almost odorless powder.

The ladies, if you just will wrest my girlish secrets from me, you big handsome brute, like nothing better than the strong masculine odors of Ivory soap, clean linen and tobacco smoke. If you smell of these you are safe with me and with most other young ladies. I mean you are unsafe.

As to the urgent detail of a bath. My dear, I once knew a young man whom I had always liked very much and who attended all the dances I did. One night he was so rushed that he was unable to get his usual bath. Totally unaware of his bodily odor he came to the dance as he was. Of course, he had attended to the other details of dressing for that particular dance but without having taken a bath first. The result was horrible.

During one of the intermissions several of us girls remarked upon the phenomenon among ourselves. We agreed after a very slight discussion that we would much prefer that the young man came late and bathed than on time and unbathed. Most girls are lenient about such things, so there is no excuse for your not taking a bath before you go to a dance.

Let us say that you have come to take me to a dance from my mother’s house. You are at present in the parlor with my mother and my aunt who lives with us. You suppose that I am not concerned about how you treat those individuals. You are mistaken; I am vitally concerned about that.

You may not know it, but my mother and my aunt are very good judges of young men, and older men too for that matter. They were popular girls in their youth and they know what’s what about you and every other man alive, bar none. My mother has never claimed to care a snap of her finger for women; she is a man’s woman. She is much happier in the society of men than anywhere else.

My father tells me that when first married he was amazed at the number of young men that used to come to visit him in their home. While he was relating certain little anecdotes about this and other details of his early and somewhat harrowed married life, I looked at mother and she actually winked at me. Rest assured then that I come of a race of charmers. Be careful how you treat my mother and especially my aunt. That dear lady has had no fewer than three husbands. Alas, all of them are under ground. And now old Judge Balsam is trying to get her. Ha!

Let us say that you are in the parlor with my mother and my aunt at the same time. They are appraising you with practiced eyes. What shall you do?

Begin to talk. Say something. Anything will do. But avoid mentioning me or my youth. A real, honest-to-goodness woman never likes to be reminded that she is the mother or the aunt of anything or even the wife, for that matter. If you are clever, and it is to be hoped that you are just such a young man, you will have guessed already that the best thing to do is to make a conquest of one or both of them right on the spot.

Really I won’t mind because I know perfectly well that they haven’t a chance against me. So go ahead, spill your line on the elders. It will be awfully good practice and you know by now that you will have to be pretty smooth around me to get anywhere at all.

Appeal to their femininity first. Don’t tell them that they are remarkably well preserved nor let them think that you would call them my sisters. They know that that’s not true at all. I have you stumped, haven’t I? Well, Pinkey (you have red hair), you’re right where I want you. Let them throw the first brick.

They may begin by trying to place you to their satisfaction somewhere in the universe. If you are wise you will mention only your male acquaintances and relations. If you mention any ladies, mention them with an implied slur in your voice and possibly a slight curl to your lip as if you were saying, “But you know her type.” That carries you far. You will find by the use of this simple technique that you have literally placed yourself as close as possible to them in the universe.

Next they will begin on you and now is your chance to make them flatter you and when they flatter you, why then, you flatter them and they are yours and that’s all there is to winning an aunt or a mother.

“Yes,” you say, “that’s all very good advice but what earthly good is it to me when I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And I say, “O, you men, are so funny, you never seem to understand the most logical things.” You will probably look quite dazed now and wonder where and when I used any logic or even any continuity in my advice.

That, dear lad, is the secret of secrets. Woman, if you are really interested, is a paradox.

But now comes your greatest test. When I come upon the scene, you must forget my mother and my aunt and center your entire attention upon me. Your eyes and your whole being should say:

And when you come upon the scene
I drown in my adrenaline.

“But you are advising me to do something you warned me against just a moment ago,” you will cry.

“O, but I’m not, cher. I’m just telling you to let my mother and aunt know that I am another attractive woman and that if they expect to get anywhere with you they will have me to contend with. That will please them in a rather round about way too. They will feel that since they can’t get you, at least one of their strain has the latent ability to do so.”

That sounds like so much foolishness but let me tell you that no woman on earth, unless she is something else besides a perfectly normal and respectable woman, thinks that she, under proper conditions, cannot get any man. The word respectable causes you to wonder, doesn’t it? Don’t let it. We are just as human as you are and certainly more aware.

We have said goodby to my aunt and mother and have at last departed for the dance. It might be wise at this point to tell you just what a young lady expects of a young man in that matter of expenditures.

This is our first date, let us say, and therefore you should know just what sort of layout will please me most. Something neat but not gaudy!

In the first place if you are a young lawyer or doctor or a very promising newspaperman, please know that I do not expect you to go to any great expense on my account. Of course, some women like to feel that you would spend your last cent on them but you can easily give that impression without actually doing so. Don’t think for a minute that I’ll have anything to do with you if you are at all pecksniffian about what you spend on me. I always like to feel that you are doing your noble best and I want you to understand that I appreciate it.

Since we are going to a dance together; and, let us say, that the dance is about four blocks from my home; there is no reason why you should come for me in a taxi or even bring your own car if you have one. Really, girls in good health don’t mind walking if for no other reason than that it makes for pretty legs and nice carriage.

Of course, if the dance is all the way across town and it entails too much of an expense to come for me in a taxi, why we’ll go on a street car but I don’t like to and you might as well know right now that I’d rather have you ragged in a taxi than dressed within an inch of your life afoot. Anyway we girls don’t like for men to be, ostensibly, peacocks.

If you have a car of your own that makes everything different. I really don’t mind what make it is or how rakish it may look. In fact I rather like riding on a warm spring night in one of those clever little contraptions that college boys have, with the queer, crazy labels all over them. They show your ingenuity.

Let us say that you have one of those new Ford Coupes with or without a rumble seat and that we have started at last. If you don’t know me very well, which you don’t, be careful to put me in my seat first and then walk around to the other side of the car and get in yourself. I’ll like that. It will show me that you know your stuff.

Well, here we go. What shall we talk about now? The time has come, as Lewis Carroll and the walrus said, to speak of many things. What shall they be?

Now is the time to find out just what you have picked for the evening’s entertainment.

Pretend I’m a flapper first. Now there are flappers and flappers, but what I really mean by a flapper is somebody who does an excessive amount of flapping. Which is saying what? Merely this. That I cavort about with cute little kittenish ways and deliver myself of thousands of witticisms that mean nothing whatsoever but which get over nobly with the fellows. I may be the baby type with cute little perky mannerisms and the cleverest possible line of baby talk or near baby talk. The early American baby talk which was widespread during the great vogue of the Newlyweds and Snookems who, strangely, were the ancestors of Maggie and Jiggs, is now greatly demoded. The present baby talk girls are child prodigies who use the biggest of all possible words on whatever occasion and in the most unique places. To hear one of them you would think that their high school dictionaries were written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“Pwesus, you just simply ossified me Tuesday last with your lubrications anent the b.f.” What does that mean? It means, “Precious, you just simply surprised me last Tuesday with your talk about your present sweetheart.”

If I am one of these just stand by and let me have the air all to myself. I’ll like you better and you may be vastly entertained by my strange and unheard of use of the English language, so called.

You might start by asking whether or not I’ve read the latest fictional atrocity by van Stotenbottle and since van Stotenbottle appeals so to my type you are liable to get the most choice bit of literary criticism that has ever come your way. With my type very little you can do makes me like you more or less.

But suppose I am not that type. Let’s suppose I am a very beautiful but haughty maiden immaculate and cold. Let us say that you have ascertained this from the attitude of my mother and aunt toward you. Don’t be afraid of me, old dear, I’m really not nearly so terrible as I seem. Would I have given you a date if you hadn’t seemed quite attractive to me? Not on your life. Don’t get the silly idea that I am anything other than just a plain ordinary woman behind a rather chilly mask.

What is to be said to such a creature? You can and probably will say several things very unpleasant to me before you actually find out what I want to hear about. That can be avoided by your not saying them and going immediately to the things that I like and am really interested in.

I want to know first just who you are. I want for reasons of my own, to discover whether your ancestors came over in the steerage, by student cabin or how; and I want to know when they did it and why they moved from the old country. Was it from pressure or preference? Were they really nice people forced to weather pioneer life or whom?

You must know just why there is a northern branch of the van Stotenbottles and a southern branch. Was there a rift in the ancestral lute? Or was it only because of certain economic conditions that your family was forced to move from New York to Ohio, from Ohio to Missouri and from Missouri to Utah? To satisfy me completely you must know just what females were picked up by the most honorable Dutch van Stotenbottles in their hitherings and yonings over the surface of this earth. You should make me respect your line so deeply that my only remaining regret is that my name is not Miss Adam so that it may seem more respectable and more antique than your own.

For your further edification let us say that I am a business woman of the most successful type. I have been the branch manager for one of the larger and more reputable insurance firms for no less than three years. I have come to this position by sheer acumen and a whole lot of perseverance. It has not made me at all masculine; no more than being a modiste or a chef would make a man effeminate. I know, old dear, that your preconceived ideas of a business woman are that she must be almost half male to get along in the world of finance and men. Why should she be? That is just another bit of your vanity cropping out. It hurts your pride that women, who have led harbored lives for centuries, should suddenly burst forth and become such eminent successes as they are.

Very well, I am a young business woman and I am a very tired young business woman. I want some sort of diversion and you had better give it to me or I’ll dead sure find some other young man who will.

What shall we talk about? Why we can talk about my dress. We can tell each other little anecdotes about all sorts of things. It really doesn’t matter what because I can take care of myself. I haven’t worked among men all my life for nothing. They can’t scare me but I have been known to hurt them.

Let us suppose that we have chosen to talk in a very high-minded sort of way about certain sex manifestations throughout the human race. Don’t think that I am giving you any house and become familiar. I’m liable to slap you down. Mentally my type is very free but biologically our integrity is irreproachably intact.

If I am the intellectual type you have hit another problem quite as tenacious as the other three. I am the easiest of all the types to distinguish but the hardest of the lot to handle with cleverness and finesse.

I indicate myself by a series of nicely worded epigrams and perhaps a brief review of every article in the current _Vanity Fair_. Be sure you know what is in the current issue because I never go back a month for a single idea. I am the angel of the new. I laugh loudly at your taste for Washington Irving.

And when I do that you may rest tranquil that I am pretty young and pretty light and pretty. It should be no great problem for you to make me wonder at your intellect if you like Washington Irving.

The things I like to talk about are not so myriad as they might be. Don’t let my long sentences about Maillot and Picasso frighten you. Please get the idea that if you pooh-pooh them, saying that they are after all quite old fashioned, that I will think that you are going just a little beyond my depth and that you must be a perfect wonder. I will seem to be quite bored by what you have to say but I will go home after we have had this date together and try to discover whence came all of your esoteric information. I will even have had to look up a great many words that you used.

Behind my high brow you may find me to be a woman of no little ability in various lines. Very often I am a wonderful petter and can hold my liquor very gracefully.

Having determined to become an intellectual I have with unusual zest decided to find out in a very cursory manner about several varieties of life. If you have any new bit I would be delighted to learn about it.

AT THE DANCE

Let us pop back to your room now and tell you what things are worn by the young men at the various dances.

If you live in a large city and are connected socially with a very formal crowd say in New Orleans, New York, Charleston or San Francisco, to the formal evening dance you should wear full evening dress.

That, however, is not a hard and fast rule. The most acceptable costume at present is the dinner jacket for almost every occasion. (Foreigners deplore our calling it a tuxedo.) It is the proper costume at any formal gathering attended by the younger generation.

Young people have generally made hash of the formal ideas of their elders and this is just another manifestation of their desire to be comfortable at the cost of convention.

Informal evening wear is as flexible as a garter snake. In college towns young people attend the dances in everything from business suits to sport costumes. The best thing to wear in any case wherever you are going is a tuxedo and then, come what may, you will always have the assurance of being properly dressed.

At a private dance you can use your own judgment unless, of course, you have been informed by some means or other that it is to be formal.

Very well, let us suppose that you have consulted some older person about the details of dress and that we are at last at the dance.

It is now time for us to discuss the various types of male wallflower that are present.

1. THE TERRIBLE DANCER

This type of wallflower can be divided into any number. Bad dancing has a habit of manifesting itself in so many ways that it is difficult to say just what is wrong with each one.

Some young men seem to be totally unaware of the fact that the beats in music should be considered. Take my friend Horace, for example. He seems, when you watch him dancing, to know a great many steps but why is it that the girls all avoid dancing with him. The reason is quite simple. He does not know anything about timing himself to the music. I can dance with him because I went to the trouble to find out that he is exactly a half beat behind the orchestra. His is a very common case and was in the beginning caused by his indifference to his foot work. Dancing he considered a conversational medium. When he awoke to the fact that he was not dancing with the more interesting girls he began to learn new steps immediately. The result was that his former indifference played him false.

And there is Lupine. Lupine could be such a good dancer if he were not so acrobatic. It seems to be his pet delight to try the latest dancing tricks on all the girls. Of course, they know he’s a good dancer but they don’t like to be made foolish by his wild activities.

George, there, is really quite smooth but he doesn’t hold one in the right place or very firmly. If you must dance you should learn that to hold a girl by the base of her spine is not only uncomfortable but highly impracticable. The better dancers usually take a firm grip across the middle of a girl’s back.

Orville is not a good dancer because he not only takes short steps greatly out of time but he invariably steps on one’s toes not less than fifteen times during the course of a dance. Girls have ways of discouraging all of these. The best method we use is by stiffening. In fact, with these men we have a habit of becoming atrocious dancers ourselves.

2. THE ROUGH-NECK

The main characteristic of the rough-neck is loudness. Everything about him is loud, even his clothes.

Harry, there, is one of them. He is really not such a terrible fellow but just note him for a moment and you will see what it is that makes him unpopular.

That suit, for example. Of course, this is an informal dance, but why did he have to wear a suit made of orange tweed? And his necktie! Look at it! Most atrocious! Of course the cloth and the cut of that suit are quite nice, taken separately. That’s Harry’s main fault, he wants the most modish suits that he can find. He wants it plainly understood that he is here.

And his dancing: have you ever witnessed such an abomination? Down the hall he goes pushing some poor unsuspecting girl before him, laughing and talking at the top of his voice. He sees somebody halfway across the hall and re-exerts his voice to greet them.

You may think he is drunk. He isn’t. That manner is natural. As for drinking, Harry never drinks and only smokes when he is not in training, and he is in training most of the time.

The men like him immensely outside, but notice how they resent his good-humored pinching and back-slapping in here.

The only cure for this type of wallflower is an intense love affair with some clever little girl who can make something other than a big ham out of him.

3. THE OBVIOUS INTELLECTUAL

Oswald, there, is a sad case. He knows too much and that, you know, is very dangerous. He always wears his hair that way. It would be such nice hair if it were properly cared for. His clothing is quite modest too, but look how sloppy it is. Really he is a nice fellow, though. You will find if you talk to him for any length of time that he really hasn’t much time for this sort of thing but thinks he must do it for relaxation.

That is where he makes his first sad mistake. All of us resent people who throw themselves into play because they think they should. Their sense of well being tells them that they must do it; they must, they must. We want people who do this sort of thing because they really enjoy doing it. Spontaneity is everything to the pleasures of life.

But that is not the only thing that Oswald does to insult. He insists on bringing his laboratory with him. He is a firm believer in bio-chemistry and looks at each girl while dancing with her as if she were some sort of elementary plant or animal organism. When some flapper or other becomes quite ecstatic over a strain of music or a nice looking fellow (the latter is bad technique on her part) he will invariably tell her that her reaction had nothing to do with her soul at all but was just chemical. I forgot to say that Oswald has probably informed her before that she is nothing but a sort of animated test tube and that all this stuff she has been saying about her thrills and her spirit and her soul are utter hooey.

Need I explain to you why it is that we don’t like to dance with Oswald. Of course, he is amusing for a while but when you get past that part of him and find that he is really a very bad dancer, where are you and what have you?

Of course, we don’t mind hobbies being aired in public. We have those ourselves. And there is another thing, if you can talk quite amusingly about your work, that’s fine, but if you cannot, let there be silence.

4. THE DRUNK

Drinking at dances in this day and age is quite common in spite of prohibition and the Methodist ministry. I suppose there is hardly a young man here tonight including yourself who has not had a little something. I will give you this much credit, old dear; you do hold it quite well.

He is easily distinguished. He is drunk. He is disheveled. Of course, there are some young men like you who can hold excessive amounts of liquor without actually getting drunk.

I once knew a young man who said that he got so tired of watching the silly young drunks cavort about at dances that he decided to give them a classic example to strive toward. Something, he promised, that would make them pale with envy and shame them into sobriety.

It all happened at a dress ball. Let us say that my friend’s name was Horace Walpole van Stotenbottle. Indeed he is an old friend of ours so we should certainly feel familiar with him.

Horace had gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare his costume which was, in the end, very simple. He went to the dance as the head of John the Baptist on a salver. The costume was so very cleverly designed that one seemed to see a tray about five feet and a half from the ground with a long black scarf floating in the air under it. On the tray was the head with a long red beard, and a silver halo. The tray on which the head lay and the long black cloth depending from it were spattered with crimson duco and the head was garnished with parsley.

Underneath the black drapery Horace had put on a very tight fitting turkish costume, a small bolero and almost transparent trousers. To hold the bolero together he had taken a bit of false hair and pinned it across his chest. Around his neck he had a long golden cloth to keep the tray from cutting him. Thus decked out he went to the dance.

At the very entrance people began to remark the originality of the costume and many because he attracted their attention offered him drinks. Others took up the cry, “Watch the head of John come to life,” and putting bottles to his lips would let out wild huzzas. This became quite a game for a while. Of course, it was Horace’s idea to get himself thoroughly soused or he would have stopped their merry little pastime soon after the second or third drink. After the eighteenth or nineteenth drink he began to be hilarious. He soon discovered that his cheap tin tray was quite uncomfortable so he took it off, bound the golden scarf about his head, pulled off some of his beard and presto he was a Persian prince with hair on his chest.

From then on he got happier and happier and finally feeling the utter futility of dancing decided to join the orchestra and generally lead festivities. He mounted to the little platform at one end of the hall and began to direct the activities of the entire room. Becoming quite heated in his activities he divested himself of his bolero after some young squirt had appropriated the false hair from his chest. This same young squirt was found in Child’s several hours later trying to mix the same false hair with shredded wheat.

Somehow or other Horace next got hold of a music rack and was trying to lead the orchestra with it when it broke. He soon discovered by the trial and error method that none of them would stand up under his harsh treatment. It was not until he stepped through the drum, however, that he was evicted. Since several rather well known ladies were sponsoring the affair the police had been shooed to another part of town.

On the street, Horace found himself quite furious. He went stalking off home in a high dudgeon and a daze. At home he found a friend playing his Victrola. Encouraged by his friend to change his costume and go back to the dance he took off the turkish trousers and, spying his green linen bed spread, threw it about him and thus decked in green sandles and a bed spread and, I forgot, a wide green sash about his middle he returned to the dance. On the way back, however, he somehow lost the sash. The doorman admitted him without question and he proceeded to the platform once more and standing there in full view of everybody threw aside the green coverlet. “See my new costume,” he howled to the astonished crowd and then looking down and seeing his actual condition pulled the spread back around him and tried to leave the dance entirely. But he was intercepted by no fewer than fifteen persons intent on seeing his costume again.

Finally he got out. The rest of the story is quite short. He flagged a street car with the spread and somebody on it grabbed the waving spread as the car whizzed by. Horace not entirely bereft of common sense clambered up a lamp post and perched upon the arm until everybody had gone from the dance; then he descended and slipped silently to rest.

Now that was one of the most classic drunks I ever heard of. It is wise then, unless you are able to pull one as complete, to drink only moderately on all occasions. Besides, drunkenness is quite vulgar and certainly in bad taste. If people had not had the bad taste to get drunk before prohibition days we would never have had prohibition. (Please recall reader that that is speaking through the mouth and mind of a woman.)

Your safest bet then is to be moderate in your drinking if you would keep yourself from being pariah to the social world.

5. THE LEWD DANCER

And that youth over there doing the intimate dancing in the corner, do you see him? He is a very naughty fellow. He attracts attention by the gyrations of his hips and the avid appearance of his face.

Girls as a rule don’t like to dance with that sort of young man because he makes them generally uncomfortable. He may be an unusually good dancer but he seems to have lost all control. The best thing for him to do would be to get rid of his emotional excess at some other time and in another place.

6. THE BASHFUL YOUTH

Being a very wise young lady I could give you a long dissertation on the various causes of bashfulness, but being a very wise young lady I will only tell you a few of the outward manifestations.

Let us suppose that you were once a bashful person and have decided to give me the requisite information instead of my giving it to you.

_What You Said of Bashfulness_

You said that bashfulness is mostly youth and when it lasts past adolescence it is a sure sign of arrested development. Please understand, you said, that it is not at all bad to be just the least bit bashful. Most of the greater minds have been behind the most bashful faces in the universe.

It takes a very small thing to make a boy become a bashful young animal. Usually he is quite sensitive. That is his heritage or his childhood training; I will not attempt to say which, because we are going into a long dissertation on the relative values and importance of heredity and environment.

Let us say that he has been born with very active sensory nerves and that lack of sufficient practice or co-ordination has made him most awkward.

We have already said that his sensory reactions are very acute and that he understands the most hidden, even the most veiled jibe delivered in his direction by one of his more fortunate contemporaries. We will say that the contemporary is one of those youths who from babyhood concentrates on his muscular activity and that his movements even at the age of fifteen are facile and fluid. Like as not our bashful fellow, while he has swum and played outdoors a great deal, has been more concerned about his mind and what was going on in it. You will find, too, that this youth is far more sexually aware than his facile little enemy.

His is a fire that burns slowly. Probably at twenty-five people will be amazed at his extreme youth. He is the type of young person who attracts people by his vital appearance and who disappoints them later because he is so simple. You will find him using words of one syllable mostly and those very sparingly. I am telling you what he is liable to be, not what he is now. He may become one of the best dancers possible or he may develop his conversational abilities so that he is not only brilliant and scintillating but sought after. He is usually acute enough to see just what things please the greater number of people and then proceed to cloak himself in a perfect disguise to guard his sensitive nature against the ravages of his more active but less understanding contemporaries.

You wonder how I know so much about that sort of young man? It is quite a simple matter. I am he. But you also wonder what it is that I cloak myself with? It is my dilettante exterior. Despite all my insouciance I really have convinced myself that I have a rare understanding. And I am skeptical of that. Sometimes one’s shell becomes so thick that there is scarcely any kernel at all.

The only possible assistance that can be given to this sort of youth is a lot of understanding and sympathy in the earlier stages of his boyhood when that awkwardness is so rampant.

7. THE HUNGRY-EYED

But now I want to talk again. I want to tell you what a young lady has discovered in her own halting way about the hungry-eyed man. Let us say that John, there, is the perfect example. John, as you know, stands on the sidelines at every dance and looks at the girls with a wishful look.

My diagnosis is that John was at one time one of those bashful youths you have just been talking about but he took the wrong tack; he specialized on something that made him unpopular with the girls as well as the men. Probably he chose, because of some hurt, to deny himself the society of women entirely only to discover when he reached the full flush of manhood that he was not as roundly developed as he might be.

Having discovered this he went about remedying the fault but he overdid it. He emphasized his sensuality. That was too bad.

He did not know that in the clever little game of life that the maidens do not like to be made conscious of that side of their natures. They think that it is animalistic and quite unrefined. More’s the pity. Theirs the fault, not his.

And now that he has failed to cure himself, John has taken to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He has become the great blond beast seeking whom he may devour. All the girls are aware and being aware of this avoid him most assiduously.

The only possible remedy for this is a little more understanding than he has acquired. He should know that men are no more wonderful animals than women. In fact, we are the same animal but unlike the worm we were divided so long ago that we have forgotten it.