The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

by Max Shulman

  I frowned, but plunged ahead. “Here’s an example of Contradictory Premises: If God can do anything, can He make a stone so heavy that He won’t be able to lift it?”

  “Of course,” she replied promptly.

  “But if He can do anything, He can lift the stone,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, then I guess He can’t make the stone.”

  “But He can do anything,” I reminded her.

  She scratched her pretty, empty head. “I’m all confused,” she admitted.

  “Of course you are. Because when the premises of an argument contradict each other, there can be no argument. If there is an irresistible force, there can be no immovable object. If there is an immovable object, there can be no irresistible force. Get it?”

  “Tell me some more of this keen stuff,” she said eagerly.

  I consulted my watch. “I think we’d better call it a night. I’ll take you home now, and you go over all the things you’ve learned. We’ll have another session tomorrow night.”

  I deposited her at the girls’ dormitory, where she assured me that she had had a perfectly terrif evening, and I went glumly home to my room. Petey lay snoring in his bed, the raccoon coat huddled like a great hairy beast at his feet. For a moment I considered waking him and telling him that he could have his girl back. It seemed clear that my project was doomed to failure. The girl simply had a logic-proof head.

  But then I reconsidered. I had wasted one evening; I might as well waste another. Who knew? Maybe somewhere in the extinct crater of her mind a few embers still smoldered. Maybe somehow I could fan them into flame. Admittedly it was not a prospect fraught with hope, but I decided to give it one more try.

  Seated under the oak the next evening I said, “Our first fallacy tonight is called Ad Misericordiam.”

  She quivered with delight.

  “Listen closely,” I said. “A man applies for a job. When the boss asks him what his qualifications are, he replies that he has a wife and six children at home, the wife is a helpless cripple, the children have nothing to eat, no clothes to wear, no shoes on their feet, there are no beds in the house, no coal in the cellar, and winter is coming.”

  A tear rolled down each of Polly’s pink cheeks. “Oh, this is awful, awful,” she sobbed.

  “Yes, it’s awful,” I agreed, “but it’s no argument. The man never answered the boss’s question about his qualifications. Instead he appealed to the boss’s sympathy. He committed the fallacy of Ad Misericordiam. Do you understand?”

  “Have you got a handkerchief?” she blubbered.

  I handed her a handkerchief and tried to keep from screaming while she wiped her eyes. “Next,” I said in a carefully controlled tone, “we will discuss False Analogy. Here is an example: Students should be allowed to look at their textbooks during examinations. After all, surgeons have X rays to guide them during an operation, lawyers have briefs to guide them during a trial, carpenters have blueprints to guide them when they are building a house. Why, then, shouldn’t students be allowed to look at their textbooks during an examination?”

  “There now,” she said enthusiastically, “is the most marvy idea I’ve heard in years.”

  “Polly,” I said testily, “the argument is all wrong. Doctors, lawyers, and carpenters aren’t taking a test to see how much they have learned, but students are. The situations are altogether different, and you can’t make an analogy between them.”

  “I still think it’s a good idea,” said Polly.

  “Nuts,” I muttered. Doggedly I pressed on. “Next we’ll try Hypothesis Contrary to Fact.”

  “Sounds yummy,” was Polly’s reaction.

  “Listen: If Madame Curie had not happened to leave a photographic plate in a drawer with a chunk of pitchblende, the world today would not know about radium.”

  “True, true,” said Polly, nodding her head. “Did you see the movie? Oh, it just knocked me out. That Walter Pidgeon is so dreamy. I mean he fractures me.”

  “If you can forget Mr. Pidgeon for a moment,” I said coldly, “I would like to point out that the statement is a fallacy. Maybe Madame Curie would have discovered radium at some later date. Maybe somebody else would have discovered it. Maybe any number of things would have happened. You can’t start with a hypothesis that is not true and then draw any supportable conclusions from it.”

  “They ought to put Walter Pidgeon in more pictures,” said Polly. “I hardly ever see him any more.”

  One more chance, I decided. But just one more. There is a limit to what flesh and blood can bear. “The next fallacy is called Poisoning the Well.”

  “How cute!” she gurgled.

  “Two men are having a debate. The first one gets up and says, ‘My opponent is a notorious liar. You can’t believe a word that he is going to say.’ … Now, Polly, think. Think hard. What’s wrong?”

  I watched her closely as she knit her creamy brow in concentration. Suddenly a glimmer of intelligence—the first I had seen—came into her eyes. “It’s not fair,” she said with indignation. “It’s not a bit fair. What chance has the second man got if the first man calls him a liar before he even begins talking?”

  “Right!” I cried exultantly. “One hundred per cent right. It’s not fair. The first man has poisoned the well before anybody could drink from it. He has hamstrung his opponent before he could even start.… Polly, I’m proud of you.”

  “Pshaw,” she murmured, blushing with pleasure.

  “You see, my dear, these things aren’t so hard. All you have to do is concentrate. Think—examine—evaluate. Come now, let’s review everything we have learned.”

  “Fire away,” she said with an airy wave of her hand.

  Heartened by the knowledge that Polly was not altogether a cretin, I began a long, patient review of all I had told her. Over and over and over again I cited instances, pointed out flaws, kept hammering away without letup. It was like digging a tunnel. At first everything was work, sweat, and darkness. I had no idea when I would reach the light, or even if I would. But I persisted. I pounded and clawed and scraped, and finally I was rewarded. I saw a chink of light. And then the chink got bigger and the sun came pouring in and all was bright.

  Five grueling nights this took, but it was worth it. I had made a logician out of Polly; I had taught her to think. My job was done. She was worthy of me at last. She was a fit wife for me, a proper hostess for my many mansions, a suitable mother for my well-heeled children.

  It must not be thought that I was without love for this girl. Quite the contrary. Just as Pygmalion loved the perfect woman he had fashioned, so I loved mine. I decided to acquaint her with my feelings at our very next meeting. The time had come to change our relationship from academic to romantic.

  “Polly,” I said when next we sat beneath our oak, “tonight we will not discuss fallacies.”

  “Aw, gee,” she said, disappointed.

  “My dear,” I said, favoring her with a smile, “we have now spent five evenings together. We have gotten along splendidly. It is clear that we are well matched.”

  “Hasty Generalization,” she repeated. “How can you say that we are well matched on the basis of only five dates?”

  I chuckled with amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons well. “My dear,” I said, patting her hand in a tolerant manner, “five dates is plenty. After all, you don’t have to eat a whole cake to know that it’s good.”

  “False Analogy,” said Polly promptly. “I’m not a cake. I’m a girl.”

  I chuckled with somewhat less amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons perhaps too well. I decided to change tactics. Obviously the best approach was a simple, strong, direct declaration of love. I paused for a moment while my massive brain chose the proper words. Then I began:

  “Polly, I love you. You are the whole world to me, and the moon and the stars and the constellations of outer space. Please, my darling, say that you will go steady with me, for if you wi
ll not, life will be meaningless. I will languish. I will refuse my meals. I will wander the face of the earth, a shambling, hollow-eyed hulk.”

  There, I thought, folding my arms, that ought to do it.

  “Ad Misericordiam,” said Polly.

  I ground my teeth. I was not Pygmalion; I was Frankenstein, and my monster had me by the throat. Frantically I fought back the tide of panic surging through me. At all costs I had to keep cool.

  “Well, Polly,” I said, forcing a smile, “you certainly have learned your fallacies.”

  “You’re darn right,” she said with a vigorous nod.

  “And who taught them to you, Polly?”

  “You did.”

  “That’s right. So you do owe me something, don’t you, my dear? If I hadn’t come along you never would have learned about fallacies.”

  “Hypothesis Contrary to Fact,” she said instantly.

  I dashed perspiration from my brow. “Polly,” I croaked, “you mustn’t take all these things so literally. I mean this is just classroom stuff. You know that the things you learn in school don’t have anything to do with life.”

  “Dicto Simpliciter,” she said, wagging her finger at me playfully.

  That did it. I leaped to my feet, bellowing like a bull. “Will you or will you not go steady with me?”

  “I will not,” she replied.

  “Why not?” I demanded.

  “Because this afternoon I promised Petey Bellows that I would go steady with him.”

  I reeled back, overcome with the infamy of it. After he promised, after he made a deal, after he shook my hand! “The rat!” I shrieked, kicking up great chunks of turf. “You can’t go with him, Polly. He’s a liar. He’s a cheat. He’s a rat.”

  “Poisoning the Well,” said Polly, “and stop shouting. I think shouting must be a fallacy too.”

  With an immense effort of will, I modulated my voice. “All right,” I said. “You’re a logician. Let’s look at this thing logically. How could you choose Petey Bellows over me? Look at me—a brilliant student, a tremendous intellectual, a man with an assured future. Look at Petey—a knothead, a jitterbug, a guy who’ll never know where his next meal is coming from. Can you give me one logical reason why you should go steady with Petey Bellows?”

  “I certainly can,” declared Polly. “He’s got a raccoon coat.”

  The Sugar Bowl

  My pretty girl was like a melody, but she wouldn’t play for a nickel. In fact, I believe she was only dimly aware that nickels were being minted. Coins of such lowly denomination were outside her ken; folding money, on the other hand, she understood intimately. Everything she liked ran into staggering figures. If I took her to a movie, it could not be at a soberly priced neighborhood house; it had to be at a plushy downtown theater, and moreover, we had to sit in the loges. For her after-theater snack she scorned the lowly hamburger; nothing less than a lobster salad would do. Nor would she ride in a streetcar; it had to be a taxi. Nor eat at a drugstore; it had to be a café with a headwaiter named Pierre. Nor dance to a jukebox; it had to be a live orchestra of no fewer than sixteen pieces.

  Her tastes were nothing short of ruinous to me. I was a member of the most underprivileged class in the world—the freshman class. I received from my cruel father an allowance that, if carefully husbanded, would provide me with three tiny meals a day and a quarter for Saturday nights. A girl like Thalia Menninger (for that was her name) was wildly beyond my means. Why then, you may ask, did I cling to her?

  If you could but see her, you would not need to ask. One look at her expensive hair, her costly eyes, her exorbitant skin, her overpriced torso, her bankrupting legs, and you would understand. You would cry, even as I, “Hang the expense! I got to have this dame!”

  So I borrowed. I borrowed from Paul. Then I borrowed from Peter, but not to pay Paul. Paul remained unpaid, as did Sam and Bill and Ed and everybody else I could persuade to lend me money. By the middle of the semester my credit rating was so low that it would have brought a blush to the cheeks of Dun and Bradstreet themselves.

  One day—I had a date with Thalia that evening—I went around to everybody I knew to try to borrow a few dollars. They all said no. They also said other things, too painful to repeat here, but the gist was that my credit was as exhausted as credit can get. So when I went to pick up Thalia at the girls’ dormitory that night, I was entirely without funds.

  No, that is not quite accurate. I did have one dollar. It was not, however, a spending dollar. It was a silver dollar with a bullet hole in the center, given to me by my grandfather on his deathbed. He had made me promise to keep it always. This dollar, he had told me, had saved his life during the Spanish-American War. This had seemed odd to me, since Grandpa had spent the Spanish-American War as a recruiting sergeant in Omaha, but one does not argue with an old gentleman in his last hours, so I had made the required pledge. Now, having given my word, I naturally could not break it.

  I sat nervously in the lounge of the girls’ dormitory, waiting for Thalia to come downstairs and nursing a pale hope that she would consent to devote this evening to a long walk. The hope went a-glimmering as soon as she appeared. She was wearing the least probable walking costume I have ever seen. Her dress was a froth of diaphanous ruffles; her shoes were little rhinestoned dainties with soles as thin as onion-skin and heels four inches high.

  “Hi, Dobie,” she chirped. “Let’s go dancing. I feel so desperately much like dancing tonight. Don’t you?”

  “No,” I said truthfully.

  “Come on, Dobie. We’ve got to get in training for the prom.”

  “The prom?” I said fearfully.

  “The Freshman Prom. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about it. It’s a week from tonight. Oh, what a desperately wonderful affair it’s going to be—Harry James and a grand march and everybody goes formal. Isn’t that desperate?”

  I ran my finger around the inside of my collar. “Do you happen to know,” I whispered hoarsely, “how much tickets cost?”

  “Only ten dollars a couple.”

  A moan escaped my lips.

  She looked at me sharply. “What’s the matter, Dobie?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “We are going to the prom, aren’t we?”

  “Sure, Thalia, sure—that is, if it’s possible.”

  “What do you mean—if it’s possible? Listen, Dobie, I don’t intend to miss a desperately wonderful affair like the prom.”

  “We’ll go,” I assured her. “Don’t worry.” Somehow, somewhere, I would borrow the money.

  “Good,” said Thalia. “Now where will we dance tonight? The Trocadero? The Idle Hour? The Persian Palms?”

  “How about going for a walk instead?” I said, blinking my eyes hopefully.

  “A walk?” she gasped, as though I had suggested robbing a poor box.

  “Good exercise,” I said casually. “Builds the wind. Believe me, Thalia, in the troubled times we live in, there’s nothing quite so important as a good wind.”

  “Dobie, don’t be so desperately ridiculous. Come on now. Let’s go dancing.”

  “The fact is,” I mumbled, digging my toe into the rug, “I’m a little short of money right now. It’s only temporary, of course.”

  Her eyes widened with outrage. “How could you ask me on a date when you didn’t have any money?” she demanded.

  “Aw, Thalia, don’t be mad. I thought you might like to go for a nice long walk.”

  “What do you think I am—a mailman?” she retorted hotly.

  “Aw, Thalia—”

  “How long are you going to be broke?”

  “Not long. Not long at all.”

  “Are you going to be able to buy tickets for the Freshman Prom?” she asked, fixing me with a piercing glare.

  “Sure, sure,” I said with what I hoped would be a reassuring chuckle, but it turned out to be a hysterical giggle.

  “Listen, Dobie, I’ve had other offers. Please say so if you can’t ra
ise the money.”

  A bolt of fear stabbed into my heart. “Thalia,” I cried in anguish, “you wouldn’t go with anybody but me, would you? I thought we had an understanding.”

  “My understanding,” she said coldly, “was that you were going to take me out and show me a good time. That does not include long walks. Now when are you going to buy the tickets for the prom?”

  “Tomorrow,” I promised in desperation.

  “Very well. Meet me in the library at three o’clock. If you don’t have the tickets then, I’m going to accept another date. Now go.” She pointed a peremptory forefinger at the door.

  I shambled out of the dormitory, cursing her for a heartless golddigger and myself for an idiot. Why didn’t I give her up? All right, so she was beautiful. So she had hair like fine-spun gold. So she had eyes that were fire and ice, lips that were a succulent red challenge, clavicles that arched classically, a flawlessly bifurcated bosom, a waist that first tapered and then billowed with precisely the proper abundance, legs that age could not wither nor custom stale.

  I sighed. My question was answered. That is why I did not give her up: the hair, the eyes, the lips, the clavicles, and all the other above-mentioned members. Reason enough, you would agree if you knew Thalia.

  As I walked miserably away from the dormitory, a girl came running up behind me and grabbed my arm. An unnerving sight she was. Her black hair stood out like a bramblebush. Her untidy dress seemed to be fashioned of a material closely resembling burlap. On her feet she wore ragged objects made of rope and canvas. “Yes?” I said uneasily.

  “My name is Fannie Jordan,” she said. “You excite me.”

  This intelligence failed to fill me with delight. “That’s nice,” I mumbled and tried to wrest my arm from her grasp.

  Her pressure increased. “I was in the lounge while you were arguing with Thalia. Obviously she is the wrong girl for you. I am the right girl. Let’s go steady.”

  I looked at her askance. “Isn’t this rather sudden?”

  She shrugged. “Why go through the stupid ritual of courtship? Are we people or whooping cranes?”