Flammable delicacies

I burnt my bra on the 13th of March, 1971. I was fifty-two years old.

It was not a political statement, more of a drunken prank. I'm not sure but I think most of the whole bra-burning legend is largely urban myth. It is fact that at the original protest, held outside the nineteen-sixty-eight Miss America beauty pageant, the 'freedom bin' of bra's, make-up, hairspray and the like were never set alight due to a lack of a fire permit. It is possible of course that the mythology of bra-burning stems from the fact that the removal and destruction of undergarments was an offshoot of the feminist movement that the largely male media felt that they could work with. It has certainly entered the folklore of the West and is seen by many as an important step in the history of the 'women's lib' movement. The same people almost always neatly ignore the fact that women are still routinely sexually harassed in the workplace and systematically receive less pay for doing the same work as men.

Back to my bra; the burning took place at a house-party situated in a part of San Francisco that I probably wouldn't have ventured into had I not been mapping it. The area was what would now be referred to as being 'shabby chic'. Dogs paced it's backstreets and the green and yellow paint was peeling off the walls of the wooden buildings. The house belonged to an imposing hippy dropout called Fat Barb. The bra belonged to me and was of the English Rose range made by Daintifyt Brassiere Co. Ltd. A bloody awful thing that used to cut into my sides. Barb and I poured lighter fluid into her bath, popped my bra into the liquid, and then chucked a scented candle at it from a safe distance. "Now you're liberated Miss Limey" Barb cackled. I'm afraid we had both had a little too much Wild Turkey bourbon.

I spent the night in the arms of Chuck Mike, who claimed he shared a flat with Gregory Corso. The apartment he took me too was certainly covered with notebooks and odd scraps of paper all covered with hastily scrawled verse but I'm afraid Corso was a no show. Actually I was pretty sure at the time that Corso was living in New York but I had taken a shine to Chuck with his slate grey eyes and crow-black beard. Plus, to be brutally honest, with my bra gone my nipples were being rubbed to buggery by my starched blouse and I was glad of the opportunity to take it off.

I am well aware that compared to the kiss and tell stories one sees today my little confessions are rather charmingly small-fry but I still blush pink writing them. Not with embarrassment but with a joyful pride that I lived a life worth living and with a glimmer of silly excitement at 'spilling the beans' about myself at such a late date.

Delightfully it turned out that Chuck's tales of Corso were only an exaggeration of the truth. They were friends, and later that week he took me to see Corso read at a little bar behind a Chinese restaurant. The atmosphere was electric as he spoke:

"Think like a clock with no time to tell.
Hear the knell of your thoughts and wonder the bell.
Leave your sights of life nor comprehend fear.
-Death is not anywhere near."

After he finished he told us all that no one could leave until everyone had read something. Of course many of those there considered themselves writers and had their own little notebooks filled with meandering rhyme. I sat quietly, trying to blend into the background, rather hoping I could avoid saying anything, but to no avail. Reluctantly, and last of all, I was led to the stage where I stood nervously clutching my handbag (so very 'square'. I must have been the only woman there who even owned a handbag!) when I realised that in it was a booklet a friend had given me as a present a few weeks earlier. A few other people had read found poetry so I decided, in as matter-of-fact tone of voice as possible, to read the booklet - Supplement No. 3 to First Aid: Civil Defense.

And so I began:

Chapter 1

Nuclear Warfare

1 There are four main kinds of injury resulting from the detonation of nuclear weapons and casualties may suffer from any combination of the effects. They are:

(i) temporary blindness caused by the intense light;
(ii) burns from light and heat radiation or from fires:
(iii) blast injuries:
(iv) radiation sickness

At first there were a few whoops and jeers, the odd laugh at the ludicrous prose and inconceivable advice but the booklet eventually overpowered us all. The relentlessness of the horrors that we all knew we were in no way safe from could not help to subdue. There were chapters on the movement and labelling of casualties, trucks of anonymous sufferers with marks on their foreheads to ascertain quick sorting; a T for the application of a tourniquet, M for morphine, a C on those contaminated or suspected of having been contaminated with persistent gas... A chapter on "essential home nursing"; a futile list of treatment for the effected which preposterously assumes that there will be 'unaffected' available to provide the care.

As I finished the last paragraph (which includes perhaps histories most incredible understatement, the phrase "in the conditions of living that would follow the explosion of a hydrogen bomb a great deal of adjustment and improvisation would be necessary in all things") the crowd started to get up and, sometimes in pairs or small groups but mostly singly, we dispersed into the early morning most of lost in thought. Wondering exactly how far our newly fought freedoms would get us in the indiscriminate aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.

Oh dear, I seem to have ended on something of a bum note again. I would love to stick around and rewrite it all but I'm afraid I'm off to meet (Cynical) Ben for a late breakfast in Cup and a trip to the art gallery to watch a bit of Bach.