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Friday, February 20, 2004
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PORTRAIT
I Once upon a time, and a very long time it was, Mr Harold Bloom - it is said - touched Miss Naomi Wolf's naughty bits. And this Bloom, a scholar, who touched Wolf's naughty bits, became old and ill and planned to retire from the world with many laurels upon his head. But at the last minute, Miss Wolf - who for twenty years forgot about the bits - woke up one morning and remembered. - He touched my naughty bits, she suddenly said aloud. - That act poisoned my life. I can never get my girlhood back, but I will sue for sexual harassment. So Wolf contacted Yale University, the school whereat the naughty bits were touched, but the people there told her it was too late: after Mr Bloom did that thing to her she had only two years time to tell the school about it. At the end of two years the whole thing vanished like smoke. Poof! - Poof! repeated Stephen, gazing at his father. - Poof! - That cannot be right, said Miss Wolf. - I suffer the trauma of that event every day of my life. I must do something to bring him to justice. For shame! some said to her. Mr Bloom is an old man with many white hairs upon his head. - What of it? she answered. - So was Klaus Barbie. - Would you for the love of God stop telling the child such stories? Aunt Dante suddenly said. - Stevie likes them, said his father mildly, and continued. - Mr Bloom said it was very vicious indeed for Miss Wolf to make such accusations against him, but there was little he could do for the wheels were turning. All the newspapers and magazines took up the story of the eminent much-respected professor who touched the naughty bits of a young student who only wished to show him her poetry. Miss Wolf went on the television - which Mr Bloom, reviling television, refused to do - and demonstrated what he had done to her. Wearing an earth-toned robe, she gestured with her lovely hand toward the bottom middle of her torso and descried with an elegant sweep of her arm the general trajectory of Mr Bloom's long-withdrawn offending hand. In her other hand she held her baby daughter. - I am not doing this for myself, she said. - I am doing it for my daughter and all daughters who come after, so that this sort of trauma need not be visited on future generations! Miss Oprah Winfrey wept, and the audience shook their fists at a large photograph of Mr Bloom which had been placed on a screen in front of them. Things looked very bad indeed for Mr Bloom. |