Memories of Another Day

by Jonathan Penton

Believe it or not, I recently read a Harold Robbins book for the first time. The book was Memories of Another Day, published in 1980, and set in the Vietnam era, USA. The back of the paperback reads, "After fifteen straight best sellers, Harold Robbins is quite simply the world's champion storyteller and Memories of Another Day is 'without a doubt…the best book Harold Robbins has written.' –United Press International." 

And it is a good book. It features the adventures of seventeen-year-old Jonathan Huggins, who is being both haunted and occasionally possessed by his recently dead father, Daniel Boone "Big Dan" Huggins. Big Dan, like all of us, made a few mistakes in his time, and is trying to use his angry, rebellious son to clear a few things up. 

Through massive flashbacks, Robbins tells the fascinating story of Big Dan, an exceptionally bright individual, physically and psychically powerful, who becomes a leader in the nation's organized labor movement. He begins in a coal mine in 1914, commits two murders, goes back to school, and is the bane of organized labor bureaucrats until deals with gangsters and a series of speeches put him at the top of his game. Great reading, all the way through. But I hope, dear reader, that you aren't reading me just to hear me fluff Robbins. My goal is to entertain you, and I'd like to do that with these three passages. The first one is set in 1916: 

She placed a hand on his crotch. Her fingers felt the hard through the crotch. Quickly she unbuttoned his fly. The rigid phallus, freed from its prison, sprang moistly into her hand. She pressed back the foreskin gently and looked down. 

The blood-filled glans seemed to be on the point of bursting. As she looked down, the orgasm shuddered through his body and the heavy white semen came shooting from him. 

"My God!" she whispered, her legs no longer able to support her. She sank to her knees before him, her own orgasms wracking her loins. Frantically, she pulled at her gown with her free hand, exposing her breasts. The semen spattered against her flesh. "Oh, my God!" 

The second passage is set around the early forties: 

"What do you want to talk about, then?" she asked. 

"You," he said. 

"What about me?" she asked. 

"I've been sitting here with a hard on from the moment you sat down," he said. "I want to fuck you." 

She caught her breath. A sudden light moisture broke out on her face and she flushed slightly. She stared at him. 

"Are you all right?" he asked. 

She moistened her dry lips with her tongue. "I just came." 

The third passage is set after Big Dan's death, after he's been possessing his son to talk to women. Jonathan asks: 

"Did I say anything else?" 

"Yes, but it was fuzzy. I didn't quite get it. It was something like, 'I'm not finished with you yet.' All I know is that it made me very horny. I went upstairs, took off all my clothes and lay on the bed naked and without doing anything to myself, just came and came until I was exhausted." 

In other words, Big Dan Huggins could give women orgasms with a single dirty sentence. With the idea of this possibility open to me, I had to seriously wonder if I'd been wasting a lot of time. 

I decided to give it a shot. I waited for my roommate to come home, and waited for her to sit down with a cigarette. When she did, I laid my book down on the coffee table and said, "I've been sitting here with a hard on from the moment you sat down. I want to fuck you." 

For a moment, she looked horribly confused and nervous. Then, something clued her in and she shouted, "WHAT?" 

"Did you come?" I asked. 

"WHAT?" 

"Just now. Did you come." 

"Jonathan, what the fuck are you talking about?" 

"Well, I've been reading this book, and it says you're supposed to come when I say that?" 

"Really?" she asked, in a heavy, sarcastic, but almost laughing tone. "What book was that?" 

"A Harold Robbins novel. Memories of Another Day." 

My roommate hasn't talked to me as much since then, which is actually a nice side effect, but not what I was looking for. I decided that perhaps it worked, but not on all women. I called up an old girlfriend. 

"I want to fuck you," I said. 

There was a sort of puzzled pause before she answered, "Right now?" 

"Did you come?" 

"Huh?" 

"Just now. Did you come." 

"No, should I have?" 

"Sorry to bother you." I hung up quickly and pondered how to proceed. Obviously, I was going to have to try this on several women. Wandering around downtown and telling women I wanted to fuck them seemed like a bad idea, so I grabbed a phone book and a handful of change and headed down to the closest payphone. After going through 35 cents seven times, I was no closer to a female's orgasm. I could only conclude that Big Dan had a talent I didn't. 

And why shouldn't he? After all, if his book is to be believed, he got a lot of pussy. Perhaps his great experience in telling women he wanted to fuck them helped him do it in a special way. But since the first of the three passages I read to you happened when he was about sixteen, one gets the impression that Big Dan was almost born with this talent. The orgasmic conversationalist. Now that how-to book could be a winner. I'd never pick up my copy of The Multiple-Orgasm Man again. 

Memories of Another Day is, at the core, a hero novel. Big Dan is a hero, in every way. With the principles of honesty, dignity, and filial love, he survives all confrontations and emerges stronger from all his trials. I like hero novels. We need ideals, and a novel is an excellent way to present them. There is room in contemporary literature for tortured and feeble protagonists, but there is plenty of room for heroes who successfully leave the world better than how they entered it. 

And American heroes always get the girl. It's one of our staples. They may fail in other things, but they always get the girl, even when the girl is a one-dimensional character, simply there to be gotten. 

It pervades our culture. Our entire value system is wrapped around it. Yes, women, straight men do brag about their conquests to each other. All of us. If he tells you otherwise, he's lying. So do gay men and lesbians. And, if the hallowed pages of Maxim are believed, so do straight women. 

Have you looked at the Internet newsgroup, rec.arts.poems, lately? This newsgroup has a couple of regulars who routinely insult and slander each other. By far, the worst insult they've come up with, the final equalizer, has always been "You're going to die alone." 

Ouch. 

Nevermind the fact that death is the ultimate alone, the one journey on which we leave not only our possessions and loved ones (and bodies), but all our entitlement, all of the status we acquire as the results of being rich, well-loved, or well-hung. Death is alone. It's what alone is all about. 

But even if that were not true, why is that the ultimate insult? To die alone? Is alone really the worst thing that can happen to a person? To be forever alone, sure, that would be a downer. But dying alone? Big Dan, great American hero as interpreted by Harold Robbins, never pursued company. He pursued integrity, honesty, and courage. He would gladly sacrifice any personal pleasure to do what he felt was right. Yet pussy followed him around like the proverbial stink on rice. 

Do I need to belabor this point? What the fuck kind of value system are we working with, exactly? We have allowed a natural fear of being alone to become so all-pervasive that we think aloneness is in some fundamental way bad. As in, it makes one less of a human being, or represents a personal failure on the alone person's part. 

And the hermits among us? Or even those of us who choose to be single? Well, we don't watch TV as much as the rest of you, so we aren't necessarily as up on cultural mores as you are. But every once in a while we'll read a Harold Robbins novel, and wonder what the fuck the rest of you are thinking.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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