The Mailer Review/Volume 7, 2013/Love-Buds: Difference between revisions

{{MR07}}

{{byline|last=Mailer|first=Norman|url=https://prmlr.us/mr13mail|note=“Love-Buds,” a short story, was written in Mailer’s senior year at Harvard (1942–43) and it was never published. A transcription of the story follows the images. The Norman Mailer estate has graciously given permission to reprint the story. [[13.3|Images]] are courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |date=2013 |title=Love Buds |url= |journal=Mailer Review |volume=7 |issue= |pages=10–22 |doi= |access-date= }}</ref>}}

They were seventeen and they had never had a woman. All that summer at the hotel on the New Jersey seashore to which their parents had brought them, they talked about it, they made plans, they discussed the few girls they knew, and they cast about for some way to enter the state of manhood. They were not big boys, they were somewhat small even for seventeen, one short and inclined to be fat, one short and rather thin, and they were named respectively Harold and Lester; their nicknames, Al and Eppy.

What a relief! They hugged one another, they jumped up and down on the city street beneath the light of a street lamp, and roared with laughter at themselves and at each other. Soon, they were busy describing the thundering details of incapacity, each trying to defeat the other in the enormity of his failure. They laughed until they were weak, sensing the balm of such laughter, applying it in broad sweeps of unguent. As they walked back to their room, they swore with profound seriousness that never, never, would they tell on one another.

== Citation ==