I went to a whorehouse in Tijuana with some more experienced undergraduates in the summer of 1955. It cost $5. I didn't catch anything, but I didn't have much fun either.

ObSongs:

About 40 years ago I struck up a conversation in a psychiatrist's waiting room with a lady who turned out to be that kind. We didn't do business, but I took her out for dinner afterward. I chanced to quote the lines

If I am forsaken, I'll not be forsworn,
And he's surely mistaken if he thinks that I'll mourn.
I'll get myself up in some right high degree
And pass as light by him as he can by me.

She asked me to write them down. I reached for my pen, and she handed it to me -- she was, as she had previously informed me, an accomplished pickpocket. A lot of women like that song.

*

For some time now, I have had the idea of fitting "French Lisette: A Ballad of Maida Vale", by William Plomer, to the tune of "Go to Sea Once More", which has a similar plot. The poem is in the right meter but would take some adjusting, especially to make the refrain singable. It ends:

Of the old technique one need scarcely speak,
But oh, in the quest for Romance,
'Tis folly abounding in strange surrounding
To be divorced from one's pants.