A radiant new capitalist, I commuted to New Jersey six days a week from Greenwich Village and shared an office with Freda Kordhauser. She was a tall woman, deliberate in movement, with big breasts, big hips, and unexpectedly slim legs. Her hair was Indian-black and long. When it was coiled into a glossy knot, and when she wore powder and lipstick, she had a kind of ugly-woman attractiveness. On her bad days, her hair and clothes seemed to be all loose ends, and the sallow skin on her large face, always faintly mottled, would flame with red markings. On my first day at work I thought she was rather repellent. She must have thought the same thing about me. Taking me around to introduce me to my colleagues, she was wearily polite, but once, when I acknowledged an introduction by bobbing and smiling, she said, "Out here, it isn't really necessary to curtsy."

--from "Proletariat with Duncan Phyfe Legs" (1951)