true.I roamed the streets of New Orleans in 1984 this is what I beheld: dark dreary industrial world that I »d gone to sleep on had burnt itself out finally, and the old bourgeois prudery and conformity had lost their hold on the American mind.were adventurous and erotic again the way they «d been in the old days, before the great middle-class revolutions of the late 1700s. They even looked the way they had in those times.men didn »t wear the Sam Spade uniform of shirt, tie, gray suit, and gray hat any longer. Once again, they costumed themselves in velvet and silk and brilliant colors if they felt like it. They did not have to clip their hair like Roman soldiers anymore; they wore it any length they desired.the women - ah, the women were glorious, naked in the spring warmth as they «d been under the Egyptian pharaohs, in skimpy short skirts and tunic like dresses, or wearing men» s pants and shirts skintight over their curvaceous bodies if they pleased. They painted, and decked themselves out in gold and silver, even to walk to the grocery store. Or they went fresh scrubbed and without ornament - it didn't matter. They curled their hair like Marie Antoinette or cut it off or let it blow free.
It doesn t bother me, I don t want to seem disloyal, but it wasn t the big dream, you know. It was just a wish.
For the first time in history, perhaps, they were as strong and as interesting as men.these were the common people of America. Not just the rich who've always achieved a certain androgyny, a certain joie de vivre that the middle-class revolutionaries called decadence in the past.
