The Dud Avocado (New York Review Books Classics)

by Elaine Dundy

Here was all the gaiety and glory and sparkle I knew was going to be life if I could just grasp it.

A rowdy bunch on the whole, they were most of them so violently individualistic as to be practically interchangeable.

I thought of sex and sin; of my body and all the men in the world who would never sleep with it.

Was I fulfilling my childhood dreams? Well, I’d certainly stayed out late and eaten what I liked.

To find someone to giggle with I place just below finding someone to flirt with and just above the ability to knit.

Frequently, walking down the streets in Paris alone, I’ve suddenly come upon myself in a store window grinning foolishly away at the thought that no one in the world knew where I was at just that moment.

Makes me want to urp.

Great use of urp

They kept coming up to me and asking me for books and things. I thought it was maybe because I didn’t wear hats and at first I was merely annoyed. Then I became frightened. I somehow became obsessed with the idea that the reason they kept mistaking me for a librarian was because that’s what I really was meant to be, and instinctively they knew it.

I’m going to have it dyed silvery blonde, very pale, very subdued, because of my great sorrow.

The streets and I looked at each other. “You again!” we jeered. They were too full of memories. Larry was right. What was the use of remembering? If it was unpleasant, it was unpleasant. If it was pleasant, it was over.