The President's Errant Brother (Cont.)
Screen 3 of 3Obviously stimulated by alcohol consumed during the day and excited by his own blow-by-blow account of who did what to whom in bed that day, he needed no coaxing to tell the whole story.
"We always meet there at the Henry Clay in the mornings when her husband is at work," he said with a mischievous grin and raised eyebrows. "First, we each eat two raw eggs. She mixes hers with milk, but I just swallow mine whole in one gulp and then wash them down with hot coffee."
I had no idea what eating raw eggs had to do with going to bed with a woman, but I wasn't about to show my ignorance by asking him to explain the connection. He did anyway.
"You know, of course, that eating raw eggs--lots of them--makes you able to make love much longer and more often, several times a day if you like!" We nodded our heads in response just as though we really understood what he was talking about, and then he added, "or raw oysters will do just as well, but they're more expensive. Raw eggs and raw oysters are the best of all aphrodisiacs." (I made a quick note in my French-class notebook which was open before me on the desk to look up that word, which at first I thought was spelled, "afrodiziac.") After he paused a moment to take a deep draw on his cigarette, he proclaimed rather seriously, "My girl friend and I eat as many raw oysters and eggs as we can for several days before we get together for a love feast. This makes us really anxious to meet each other at the hotel. She says she loves her husband but that he just can't satisfy her. . ."
Well, I had never heard anything like this in all my life, and here I was trying to memorize the conjugation of some irregular French verbs at the same time "Bunny" was telling this spellbinding tale--a tale which somehow I was beginning to believe. What he was saying and the convincing way in which he was relating this bizarre story were very persuasive.
And yet I kept saying to myself, this just can't be! The president's brother--this "Bunny" we were listening to--a married man with grown children, making love to another man's wife in a hotel room in broad open daylight while her husband was at work--a modern day Lothario as my roommate at this respectable military school! And this thing about raw eggs! I decided right then I would have to check that out, sometime, somewhere, somehow. . .
While my roommates and I exchanged guarded looks of both astonishment and amusement, "Bunny" gave us quite willingly many more fascinating details about hiss day at the Henry Clay Hotel with the redhead. Our attempt at serious study for the remainder of that evening was not at all successful, in spit of our good intentions to be well prepared for a French test scheduled for the next day.
This initial revelation by "Bunny" was followed during the next few weeks by several more equally interesting stories about his red-headed girl friend. One of those accounts included his claim that her husband caught them once coming out of a hotel room together, but that nothing serious happened because the husband himself was just going into and adjoining room with a girl friend of his own! This unplanned, unscheduled and yet quite memorable part of my education at Kentucky Military Institute abruptly ended shortly before the Christmas holidays in 1928. One very cold afternoon in December when we returned to our barracks room after military drill, my roommates and I noticed that all of "Bunny's" belongings were gone-and so was he. Someone said he had just left on foot in the midst of a blowing snowstorm, carrying his suitcase and holding that thin topcoat close to his body
We never saw or heard of "Bunny" again, but after more than fifty years I still remember him well.
********** Chester C. Travelstead
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