I discovered a complete set of Erasmus, the Renaissance humanist who championed personal freedom. Perhaps he had addressed the subject? A few seldom quoted lines made me put aside his works and cross him off my reading list. Erasmus chastised "these broken down women, these walking corpses, stinking bodies surrounded by the reek of the charnel house. Sometimes they display their flaccid breasts and sometimes they try to stimulate their lovers vigor with quavering yelps." What had made this clergyman erupt like Vesuvius over ripened women obtaining sexual satisfaction? I wondered.

Disgusted with misogyny, I turned to a 19^th century author closer to my own time and point of view. Margaret Fuller, the early feminist, shared my fascination with Rome where she found the romance denied her in Boston. Her outspoken intelligence shocked her contemporaries. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, deploring Fuller's socialist beliefs, called her an "out and out red."

The mature spinster caused consternation among the American community in Rome by having the child of an Italian ten years her junior. Friends doubted that she had married Count Ossoli, and Fuller kept back the proof. The Boston Brahmins, irate that she had given into her "strong and coarse nature," censored her for indulging her late blooming sensuality.

Ironically, they lost their opportunity to snub her. She was drowned at sea, almost within sight of America's shore. While thumbing through a biography of Fuller, I discovered a letter written to a friend before she sailed, evincing neither regret nor repentance—rather trumpeting her paganism. "We have had much joy together," reminisced Fuller. "I do not know whether he (Ossoli) will always love me so well for I am the elder and the difference will become in a few years more perceptible than now. You are a Christian. I never pretended to be except in dabs and sparkles here and there."

Between forty and fifty I reached the pinnacle of my own bacchanthood. My poems recreate nights during which I danced to the piped tune of the wine god on city pavements, remote beaches and myriad locations amenable to revelry. I wouldn't trade these experiences for all the sables in Russia. Maturity has become a badge of honor rather than a blemish to camouflage.

Lovers have added spice—occasionally Dionysiac rapture. Animal rights activists would snub me if I wore fawn skins. I'd be arrested if I draped snakes in my hair. Nevertheless, fellow bacchantes, both male and female, recognize me by telltale signs: skin aglow with moonbeams, a winged walk reminiscent of the goddess Diana's, an initiated glance that could stare down the priests of Baal.

Meanwhile, I keep my conventional friends. Marilyn, a chum dating back to high school days and a jazz buff, cultivates the unisex look. She makes fun of my flashy clothes and spiky hairdos. Some weeks ago, we treated ourselves to a 1940's style big band at a popular jazz club. Seated at the bar chatting, Marilyn noticed a fellow in his thirties several stools down staring in our direction.

The stranger was seated next to a woman his own age, but seldom looked at her. "Why is that man making eyes at us?" inquired Marilyn mystified. "So what if he is," I shot back. "We're attractive!" Marilyn, swaying to the rhythmic sound which brought Lindy Hoppers to their feet, looked as though she could not believe my naivete. At intermission she lectured me and the drift went: "Now don't start that carpe diem stuff, or trot out banalities like old wine tastes better. Save the cliches Bella, face it, we live in a youth culture."