When Helen Furr Got Gay With Harold Moos

A Narrative Written in the Now Popular Manner of Gertrude Stein

IN VANITY FAIR

WHEN Georgine Skeen went away to stay two months with her brother, and left Helen Furr at the place they living when they living when they had been so gay there together, Helen Furr went on being gay there. She was quite gay and a little more gay than she had been when she and Georgine Skeen had been gay there together. This was because she received visits regularly from Harold Moos. Harold Moos was not a gay man but he was a very dark man, and a very heavy man and a very bald man, and of all the regularly dark men and the regularly heavy men and the regularly bald men who sat regularly there then with Helen Furr, Harold Moos was the darkest man and heaviest man and the baldest man who sat regularly there with her.

Harold Moos was living regularly in the same place where Helen Furr and Georgine Skeen were living when they were being gay there. Harold was cultivating painting still-life, which was very heavy cultivating then. He was not at all gay, because he was cultivating still-life. It was not very gay still-life, it was not even such gay still-life as he was cultivating when he first sat regularly with Miss Skeen and Miss Furr when they were living regularly there then. The still-life which Harold Moos cultivated was quite pleasant when he first regularly cultivated it.

It was melons!

AND it was just a shade gay when he was first painting it in that place where Helen Furr was being gay in all the big and little ways she had of being gay, but when he had been painting it three or four weeks it was not so gay as it had been when he was first painting it. It did not have such a gay smell as when he was first painting it there then. When Harold Moos' stilllife did not smell so very gay he would go and sit regularly with the dark men and the heavy men and the bald men who sat with Helen Furr while she was being gay alone while Georgine Skeen had gone away to stay two months with her brother. Helen Furr was very gay whenever Harold Moos came to sit regularly with her.

She was always gay when dark men or heavy men or bald men, or men that were heavy and not so dark and bald, sat regularly with her, but she was more gay when Harold Moos sat regularly with her than when other dark and heavy and bald men sat with her, and she was very much more gay than she had been when Georgine Skeen was living there then.

HELEN FURR knew all the big ways of being gay and all the little ways of being gay and she was gav in all the ways that dark men and heavy men and bald men, who sit regularly with girls, like in girls who are being gay. She knew all the old ways of being gay, and she thought up lots of new ways of being gay and particularly ways that Harold Moos would like to see her use in being gay. When Harold Moos, who was not at all gay, would come to sit regularly with her in the place where she was living, she would go up behind him and put her hands over his eyes and say "Guess who this is!" and would be very gay there then.

And she would be gay in talking babytalk to him then, and she would be gay with a Southern accent and be very gay then, and she would pull Harold Moos' chair away from him when he would be sitting down and would be very gay regularly in all the big and little ways there are of being gay with dark and heavy and bald men like Harold Moos.

And she would straighten his tie and be very gay then, and she would pick threads off his coat and be very gay then and she was often being gay in putting on his hat, and always being gay in knocking it off.

ONE day, when Helen Furr was being gay and Harold Moos was feeling very dark and very heavy and very bald and not at all gay they were married regularly there then. Harold Moos, who was not gay then, thought Helen Furr would not be so gay when they were married regularly, but she went on being gay in all the big and little ways she had of being gay with dark and heavy and bald men before she had married Harold Moos. She could not think up any new way of being gay, so she kept on being gay in her old ways. Every day she would be gay in going up behind Harold Moos and putting her hands over his eyes and saying "Guess who this is!", and she would be gay in baby-talk then, and she would be gay in lisping then, and she would straighten his tie, being gay, and she would pick white threads off the collar of his coat, being gay.

But she could not think up any new way of being gay.

ONE day, when they had been married regularly for a year, she again went up behind Harold Moos and put her hands over his eyes, saying "Guess who this is!". Then Harold Moos, who was not feeling regularly gay, said to Helen Furr: "I have been thinking up a way of making you less gay and of making myself more regularly gay and in a wholly new way; and, with that end in view, I hereby hit you three times regularly on the head with this walking stick—One!!?x, Two x?!, Three ? x ! — and, now that I have regularly brained you, I already feel a little more gay; but, in order to make myself regularly extraordinarily gay, I am going out to subscribe regularly to the gayest magazine in the world, which (if you had not been knocked regularly senseless) you would know is Vanity Fair."

K. D.