Lana Del Rey: Lolita, Little Girls and Daddy

In Malka Howley's PopMatters article, “You Know You Like Little Girls: Lana Del Rey and Dolores Haze" (20 Feb 2013), Lana Del Rey described herself as, “Lolita lost in the hood."

Thus, unsurprisingly, references to the most famous nymphet are peppered throughout Lana’s early lyrics. For example, “Little Girls (Put Me In A Movie)” is a song on Lana Del Ray (2010). Here is a self-explanatory excerpt from the lyrics:

Lights, camera, action

If he likes me, takes me home

Come on, you know you like little girls

Come on, you know you like little girls

You can be my daddy

You can be my daddy

What may not be apparent is that “Put Me In A Movie” is an additional reference to Lolita as Lolita had an affinity for the movies. “Everything was fine. There, in the lobby, she [Lolita] sat, deep in an overstuffed blood-red armchair, deep in a lurid movie magazine.”

“Carmen” is a song that was co-written by Lana and is on Born to Die (2012) - Lana’s second album. Sometimes, Humbert referred to Lolita as Carmen. “My Carmen,” I said (I used to call her that sometimes), “we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed.” 

“Off to the Races” is on Born to Die too and was co-written by Lana as well. A riff of “Off to the Races” contains one of Lolita’s most famous sentences: 

Light of his life, fire of his loins

Keep me forever, tell me you want me

Light of your life, fire of your loins

Tell me you want me, gimme them coins

Humbert said it better: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” 

And “Lolita” is on Born to Die: The Paradise Edition (2012) - an album reissue. Here is “Lolita’s” riff: 

Hey Lolita, hey

Hey Lolita, hey

I know what the boys want, I'm not gonna play

Hey Lolita, hey

Hey Lolita, hey

Whistle all you want but I'm not gonna say

No more skipping rope, skipping heart beats with the boys downtown

Just you and me feeling the heat even when the sun goes down

The "Real" Lolita and Humbert: Sally Horner and Frank La Salle

Sally Horner and Frank La Salle

In Lolita, Phyllis’ mother, Mrs. Chatfield, “with a fake smile, all aglow with evil curiosity”, "attacked" Humbert: 

Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank LaSalle [sic], a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948? (289) 

For some reason, in The Annotated Lolita, Appel didn’t annotate the rhetorical question. However, in Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, Boyd noted:

Nabokov undertook research of all kinds [in preparation for Lolita.] [...] He noted newspaper reports of accidents, sex crimes, and killings: “a middle-aged morals offender” who abducted fifteen-year-old Sally Horner from New Jersey and kept her for twenty-one months as his “cross-country slave,” until she was found in a southern California motel [...]” (211).

But it was Alexander Dolinin who made the connection between the rhetorical question and Nabokov’s research. Dolinin wrote in “What Happened to Sally Horner?: A Real-Life Source of Nabokov's Lolita”:

The phrase [...] is a deliberately planted riddle that invites the reader to do some research in old newspaper files. However, the necessary information is difficult to find, because major American media didn’t cover the La Salle case [...].

By that time, [Nabokov] “beset with technical difficulties and doubts” (Strong Opinions, 105), he had almost halted work on his new novel and would not have missed an interesting prompt provided by the “given world.” [...] their story reads as a rough outline for the second part of Lolita.

The second part of Lolita abounds with echoes of the story [...] elements of the novel’s nightmarish plot seem both to derive from the real-life precedent and to refer back to it. The sequence and time-span of events are strikingly similar.

Humbert made a previous reference to the Sally\La Salle case:

“Only the other day we read in the newspapers some bunkum about a middle-aged morals offender who pleaded guilty to the violation of the Mann Act and to transporting a nine-year-old girl across state lines for immoral purposes, whatever they are. Dolores darling! You are not nine but almost thirteen, and I would not advise you to consider yourself my cross-country slave […] I am your father, and I am speaking English, and I love you (150).”

Appel made an annotation here but not in reference to the Sally\La Salle case. However, Dolinin noted: 

Changing the age of the girl, Nabokov indicates that in the inner calendar of the novel the allusion to the case of Frank La Salle is an anachronism: Humbert is talking to Lolita in 1947, that is a year before the real abduction when Sally Horner was nine or ten years old. Yet the legal formulae used by the narrator as well as his implying that he, in contrast to La Salle, is really Lolita’s father, leave no doubt that the passage refers to the newspaper reports [...]

Sarah Weinman’s post “The Real Lolita: The story of 11-year-old Sally Horner’s abduction changed the course of 20th-century literature. She just never got to tell it herself” provides the details about how La Salle seduced Sally. Here’s an abridgment: 

On June 13, 1948, 11-year-old Sally Horner was a student at Northeast School in Camden, New Jersey. Urged on by her middle-school classmates, Sally walked into the Woolworth’s on Broadway and Federal to steal a five-cent notebook. 

Once inside, she reached for the first notebook she could find [...]. She stuffed it into her bag and sprinted away, careful to look straight ahead to the exit door. Then, right before the getaway, came a hard tug on her arm.

“I am an FBI agent,” the man said to Sally. “And you are under arrest.” She cried. She cowered. 

He pointed across the way to City Hall, the tallest building in Camden, and said that girls like her would be dealt with there. If it went the way they normally handled thieving youths, he told her, Sally would be bound for the reformatory.

But his manner brightened. It was a lucky break he caught her and not some other FBI agent, the man said. If she agreed to report to him from time to time, he would let her go. Spare her the worst. Show some mercy.

Sally felt her own mood lift, too. He was going to let her go. 

On her way home from school the next day, though, the man sought her out again. Without warning, the rules had changed: Sally had to go with him to Atlantic City—the government insisted. She’d have to convince her mother he was the father of two school friends, inviting her to a seashore vacation. He would take care of the rest with a phone call and a convincing appearance at the Camden bus depot.

His name was Frank La Salle, and he was no FBI agent [...]

Sally and La Salle—he used the alias “Frank Warner” at that time—moved into a rooming house at 203 Pacific Street in Atlantic City. She called her mother on several occasions, always from a pay station, to say she was having a swell time. For six weeks, Ella Horner thought nothing was amiss—she believed her daughter was on summer vacation with friends.

After the first week, Sally said she’d be staying longer to see the Ice Follies. After two weeks, the excuses grew more vague. After three weeks, the phone calls stopped. Ella’s letters could no longer be delivered. Sally’s last missive was the most disturbing: she and “Warner” were leaving for Baltimore. Something woke up inside Ella’s mind: she’d been duped, her daughter snatched away not with violence, but with sweet-talking stealth. Ella received Sally’s final letter on July 31, 1948. She called the police later that day.

Cops in Atlantic City descended upon the Pacific Street lodging house, where they learned the man called Warner had posed as Sally’s father. They’d found enough evidence to arrest him, but it was too late: he and Sally had disappeared. Two suitcases full of clothes remained in their room, as did several unsent postcards from Sally to her mother and friends. There was also a photograph, never before seen by Ella or the police, of a honey-haired Sally, in a cream-colored dress, white socks and black patent shoes, sitting on a swing. Her smile was tentative, her eyes fathoms deep with sadness. She was still just 11 years old.

Sally Horner in Atlantic City in 1948

The man called Warner was really Frank La Salle, and only six months before he abducted Sally, he’d finished up a prison stint for the statutory rape of [...] five girls between the ages of 12 and 14. 

Having cleared out of Atlantic City, knowing the police were in pursuit, La Salle and Sally settled in Baltimore by September 1948. They kept up the father-daughter pose [..] —until April 1949. She attended Saint Ann’s Catholic School at 2200 Greenmount Drive [...]

They left Baltimore and headed southwest to Dallas, the timing of the move appearing to coincide with Camden County indicting La Salle a second time. Back in 1948, prosecutor Mitchell Cohen indicted La Salle for Sally’s abduction, which carried a maximum sentence of three to five years in prison. This second, more serious indictment, for kidnapping, handed down on March 17, 1949, carried a sentence of 30 to 35 years. If La Salle did get word of the new indictment—he told Sally they needed to leave Baltimore because the “FBI asked him to investigate something”—he didn’t want to be in striking distance of Camden, where police could find them.

Using the last name of LaPlante, they lived on Commerce Street, a quiet, well-kept trailer park in a more run-down part of Dallas, from April 1949 until March 1950. Their neighbors regarded Sally as a typical 12-year-old living with her widowed father, albeit one never let out of his sight except to go to school. But she seemed to enjoy taking care of her home. She would bake every once in a while. She had a dog. La Salle provided her with a generous allowance for clothes and sweets. She would go shopping, swimming, and to her neighbors’ trailers for dinner. And while La Salle, as LaPlante, set up shop again as a mechanic, Sally attended Catholic school once more, at Our Lady of Good Counsel. 

A copy of Sally’s report card from her time at Our Lady of Good Counsel between September 1949 and February 1950 indicates she was a good student [...].

[...] the consensus about Sally and her “father” was that they “both seemed happy and entirely devoted to each other.” Nelrose Pfeil, a neighbor, said, “Sally got everything she ever wanted. I always said I didn’t know who was more spoiled, Sally or her dog.” Maude Smilie, living at a nearby trailer on Commerce Street, seemed bewildered at the idea of Sally being a virtual prisoner: “[Sally] spent one day at the beauty parlor with me. I gave her a permanent and she never mentioned a thing. She should have known she could have confided in me.”

Ruth Janish was married to an itinerant farm worker. During a fallow period at the beginning of 1950, the Janishes lived in the West Dallas trailer park at the same time as Sally Horner and Frank La Salle. Soon after she met them, Ruth began to suspect that Frank was not, in fact, Sally’s father. 

Ruth tried to cajole Sally, still recovering from her appendectomy, to tell her the “true story” of her relationship with La Salle in Dallas.

The Janishes left for California in early March 1950, thinking they’d have better luck finding work there, but on arrival, Ruth hatched the beginning of a plan. First, she wrote La Salle, urging him and Sally to follow them to the San Jose trailer park, where they could be neighbors again. The Janishes had even reserved a spot in the park for them.

La Salle was in. He and Sally drove from Dallas to San Jose, the house-trailer attached to his car, and arrived in the park by Saturday, March 18, 1950.

Before leaving Dallas, Sally mustered up the courage to tell a friend at school of her ordeal at La Salle’s hands. The friend told Sally her behavior was “wrong” and that “she ought to stop,” as Sally later explained. As her friend’s admonishment sank in, Sally began refusing La Salle’s further advances. And on the morning of March 21, 1950, Ruth Janish’s determined concern and Sally’s burgeoning need for change collided in a San Jose trailer park.

With Frank La Salle safely away for several hours, Ruth invited Sally over to her trailer. Knowing this was her only chance, Janish gently coaxed more honesty out of the young girl. She wanted to go home. She wanted to talk to her mother and older sister. Janish then showed Sally how to operate the telephone in her trailer so the girl could make long-distance phone calls.

Sally called her mother first, but the line was disconnected;...Next, she tried her sister Susan, who lived with her husband, Al Panaro... “Al, this is Sally,” she said. He tried to contain his excitement. “Where are you at?” “I’m with a lady friend in California. Send the FBI after me, please!” Sally cried. “Tell mother I’m okay, and don’t worry. I want to come home. I’ve been afraid to call before.” Sally’s brother-in-law assured her he would do that if she would stay where she was.

After Sally hung up the phone, she turned to Ruth. “I thought she was going to collapse,” Mrs. Janish said. “She kept saying over and over, ‘What will Frank do when he finds out what I have done?’”

The next day, La Salle was charged with violating the Mann Act for transporting a female along state lines with the intent of corrupting her morals. 

Judge Rocco Palese sentenced him to 30 to 35 years at Trenton State Prison, with the shorter sentence for abduction to be served concurrently. 

La Salle never saw the outside world again. He died of arteriosclerosis in Trenton State Prison on March 22, 1966, 16 years into his sentence. He was just shy of 70 years old.

[15-year-old] Sally and the young man, 20-year-old Edward John Baker[...], set out as planned [from a resort in the shore town of Wildwood] in the early morning hours of August 18, 1952. Just after midnight [...] Baker drove his 1948 Ford sedan into the back of a parked truck on the road, knocking it into another parked truck. Baker emerged from the four-car collision with minor injuries[...] The crash killed Sally instantly.

If you haven’t read (The Annotated) Lolita for some time, Dolinin notes some pointed similarities between Sally\La Salle and Dolly\Humbert:

The second part of Lolita abounds with echoes of the story. Lolita’s captivity lasting nearly two years, the “extensive travels” of Humbert Humbert and his “child-bride” all over the United States, from New England to California, their soujourns in innumerable “motor courts,” a stay in Beardsley where Lolita goes to school, the hero’s constant claims that he is the girl’s father, “not very mechanically-minded [a hint at La Salle’s profession] but prudent papa Humbert” (208)—all these elements of the novel’s nightmarish plot seem both to derive from the real-life precedent and to refer back to it. The sequence and time-span of events are strikingly similar. Sally Horner lived with Frank La Salle for twenty-one months, went to school in Dallas where she confided her secret to a friend, resumed travels with the kidnapper and finally, three weeks later, made a crucial telephone call asking for help, escaping her captor. After twenty-one months with Lolita, when the pair stays in Beardsley, Humbert suddenly realizes that she has grown up and is slipping away from his power. He suspects that she has told everything to her schoolfriend Mona, and might be cherishing “the stealthy thought … that perhaps after all Mona was right, and she, orphan Lo, could expose [Humbert] without getting penalized herself” (204). They have a terrible row, but Lolita manages to escape and make a mysterious phone call, afterwards telling Humbert: “A great decision has been made” (207). They resume their travels and about a month later Lolita manages to escape. When in the final chapter of the novel Humbert states that he would have given himself “at least thirty-five years for rape, and dismissed the rest of the charges,” he mimics Frank La Salle’s sentence.

Several details transposed by Nabokov from newspaper reports seem to underscore an affinity (or, better, a “rhyme”) between Sally Horner and Dolly Haze. Both “nice looking youngsters” are daughters of widowed mothers; both have brown hair; Lolita’s “Florentine hands” and “Florentine breasts” evoke not only Boticcelli but also the first name of Florence Sally Horner. It was in the sad story of the New Jersey girl that Nabokov found a psychological explanation of Lolita’s acquiescence in her role of sex-slave. Copying La Salle, Humbert terrorizes his victim with threats that if he is arrested, she “will be given a choice of varying dwelling places, all more or less the same, the correctional school, the reformatory, the juvenile detention home…” (151).

In the Books section of the August 2018 issue of Vanity Fair, Sarah Weinman wrote about two new books about the Sally\La Salle case. In her piece, “Two new books go in search of the real Lolita”, Weinman mentioned her book with is hyperbolic title, The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World (out in September from Ecco) and T. Greenwood’s novel Rust & Stardust (out in August from St. Martin’s).

LOLITA Magazine: Nubile Nymphet Models

This is what was written on the About page of the (now defunct) Lolita magazine's website:

LOLITA magazine is a new playful photo zine about girls.

Entirely handmade as a limited edition print zine, as well as an online magazine, Jolijn Snijders (founder of I LOVE FAKE magazine) literally went back to the drawing board in search to create a fresh, original look as a D.I.Y. format playing with illustration, old school copy machines, hand written typo and lots of pretty [young] girls shot by photographers worldwide.

The print zine will be sold exclusively via the website this fall.

And as you can determine from the photographs screenshots, the description is on point. The magazine was a nympholept's dream (i.e., It's brimming with nymphets.) The photographs reminded us of Balthus, Vivienne Mok, and Richard Kern.

Here are some quotes from the magazine:

"Lolita is young, fun and bright! And makes me happy to be a girl!"

"[...] playful and innocent: two keywords a lolita girl must have in our eyes."

"Lolita means a perfect mix between playfulness and innocence; a young carefree girl who knows how to enjoy life."

Lolita magazine definitely added to the debate - is it art or [child (softcore)] pornography?

LOLITA - Romee & Sanne from Lolita Zine on Vimeo.

Alisson Wood's BEING LOLITA: A Dark Student-Teacher Sexual Romance

Part 1: “The Perfect Teenage Lollipop”

Being Lolita, Alisson Wood’s memoir, is choke full seeming contradictions that commences with the very first sentence on the dust jacket: “A dark romance evolves between a high schooler and her English teacher in this breathtakingly powerful memoir [...]” Wait, so, per Flatiron Books, Being Lolita is about a teacher-student romance?

However, in the very next sentence, 17-year-old Alisson goes from being a student, to a lover, to a vulnerable victim of Mr. North - her green-eyed 26-year-old Ivy League educated high school teacher. 

But the dust jacket’s description is telling, because part i of the memoir is about a “dark [teacher-student] romance”, but by parts ii and iii, Alisson went from a lover of her high school English teacher to a vulnerable victim of her high school English teacher to a lover to a victim to a lover to a victim...

Interestingly, in part i, Alisson described Mr. North as “the perfect teenage lollipop”:

“[...] the other girls thought he was so hot. His dark hair was long enough to stay behind his ears but still short enough to be appropriate for a grown-up. He had a full shadow of beard, something only a handful of senior guys could manage [...] he shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch just like the students did. The mixed signals of adult man and teenage boy in his body radiated through the air, making everything thick and quiet and warm.”

Even Alisson’s little sister opined, “He’s really cute, Ali.” “Totally.” Consequently: “There were always girls around Mr. North at school.”

In parts i and ii, Alisson wrote that the techniques Mr. North used to make her a vulnerable victim were: 1. giving her a copy of Lolita and 2. being controlling (i.e., Mr. North made Alisson keep their student-teacher age-gap affair a secret.). But Alisson confessed that she didn’t finish Lolita nor understand the novel until after she graduated from high school, and she and her high school teacher had sex. “I still hadn’t really read the whole book.”

However, Alisson never said that Mr. North’s hotness, beard, Abercrombie & Fitch shirts, and the way “his body radiated through the air, making everything thick and quiet and warm” played a factor in making her a vulnerable victim.

And apparently, his eyes didn’t play a part: “His eyes fixed on mine and I felt stunned; an animal across a meadow. My breath caught and ribs knit. He was a concoction of the accessible and forbidden, the perfect teenage lollipop.” 

Nor because he paired her with “students who struggled”. Thereby, making her feel like “an ally instead of a nerd.” “You’re the prettiest girl here, and you’re smarter than any of them.”

He was the only one who believed in her and that she could “stand up”, “collect herself” and “look poised”, but that didn’t seem to play a part. Consequently, he got her a part in the school play: “[...] no one had done anything like that for me in a long time. It was like my prince had come.” As a result, Alisson became: “[...] suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to kiss him.” But that didn’t seem to play a part. 

Alisson felt comforted by the fact that her English teacher was: “[...] risking for this, for me: his job.” “[...] he would never risk his job like this for any other girl.” And Alisson shared with her therapist: “[...] he’s nice, he spends time with me, I think he’s so smart.” But apparently none of those attributes of Mr. North played a part. 

Mr. North encouraged Alisson's writing and made her feel safe and protected. “I had never felt like that before in high school.” And he made her feel seen. “All I wanted was to be seen.” Yet, Alisson feeling safe, protected and seen played no part. 

To reiterate, Mr. North’s seductive eyes, that fact that Alisson described him as a “perfect teenage lollipop”, the fact the he made her an “ally”, and his firm belief in her, did not, per Alisson, play a role in making her a vulnerable viction - it was Lolita and being controlled (i.e., being forced to keep their student-teacher age-gap affair a secret.). 

Part 2: A Teen’s Powerful Body

No slut shamming, but Alisson was not a virgin before she had sex with Mr. North. “I had slept with all three of my serious boyfriends in high school.” And it’s worth noting that it was Mr. North’s idea that they wait to consummate their age-gap affair until after Alisson turned 18, and she graduated from Hunt high school. Wood wrote: “[...] I wanted so badly to be seen as a woman, as someone worthy of attraction. I wanted Mr. North, Nick, to want me. And I didn’t understand why we had to wait, anyway; once I turned eighteen, I didn’t understand [...]” But on page 283 Alisson wrote: “[...] I was asking for the support I desperately needed. I wasn’t asking to be fucked.”

Subsequently, in her white cap and gown, Alisson shared that all she could think about was how much she wanted her time with her teacher to start. “It was all I wanted.” Consequently, the night after graduation, Alisson went to her English teacher’s apartment, and they made love for the first time. But it wasn’t like the boys who had sex with her in the corner of the basement who: “[...] apologized for how quickly it all came and went.” 

Wood wrote that she was a beautiful 17-year-old who boys called a “Disney princess”. Yet it wasn’t until after she met Mr. North that she said: “I wasn’t suicidal anymore.” Alisson’s suicidal ideations stemmed from the fact that she felt that her body was her: “[...] only possible source of power.”, which she blamed on Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, MTV, Fiona Apple, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Victoria’s Secret. 

However, Alisson used the power of her body on her English teacher. Alisson shared that she knew that she had power over Mr. North but that she wanted the power of sex and the safety of childhood: “[...] my breasts, all of the things that shifted the way men looked at me. If this was power [...] I wanted the safety of childhood and the power of sex. I wanted it all, in my life and in my body.” 

Consequently, while Mr. North was teaching, Alisson learned over while on her knees with her back to Mr. North so that she could share her black lace underwear and a strip of skin with her English teacher. After the bell rang, Alisson arched her back, sat up slowly, and tossed her long black hair. “This must be what power feels like.” 

In addition to her nubile body, Alisson came to the realization that she had an additional power over her teacher. After Mr. North reminded Alisson that she could go to the principal and get him “[...] fired in a minute.” Alisson wrote: “It was interactions like these that made me think I had power in the relationship, that I wasn’t just an eighteen-year-old being manipulated by her twenty-seven-year-old teacher.”

But that didn’t stop Alisson from using the power of her young body. After she gave her English teacher a topless photo that her boyfriend, a college student, had taken when she was 17, Alisson was convinced that she had power: “I had shown him I was capable of creating desire, that I could do this, that I wasn’t just some dumb, clueless girl. This was a power I had, too, that I was his equal in all this. The wanting went both ways.” Thus, another seeming contradiction. Is Alisson espousing that she was equal in the age-gap relationship with high school English teacher and that, despite their age-gap, she wanted Mr. North as much as he wanted her or, as she espoused in parts ii and iii, was she a vulnerable victim?

Oh and by the way, Alisson shared: “I always wore short shorts and skirts because I knew he liked my naked legs.” And on another occasion, Wood shared: “I knew he was watching me. I tried to walk sexy, with a wiggle, like Jessica Rabbit. I tossed my hair as I passed through the threshold of his door. The second bell, ringing through me.”

On closing night of the school play, Alisson tried to will Mr. North to kiss her: “Kiss me just kiss me please kiss me”. He didn’t. However, during the night of the cast party, Christina, another Hunt nymphet, hugged Mr. North and, “in the darkness of the doorway”, gave him a kiss on the cheek before she turned and smiled at Alisson. And Sarah, a member of the Hunt slam team, “[...] was all over him. And he just let her flirt with him, openly." (Mr. North and Alisson weren’t the only teacher-student “romance” at Hunt high school. Mr. North shared with Alisson that a math teacher was having an affair with a girl on the softball team.) 

Alisson gave at least two examples of how her “dark romance” with her high school teacher “went both ways”. After Mr. North inappropriately shared with Alisson that he imagined her naked, Alisson wrote: “Romance and sweetness. It was then that I realized he was not like my other boyfriends.” Consequently, outside the diner and between the cars, Alisson inappropriately informed her English teacher, “I love you.” Aww. “He just smiled at me and said good night.”

And after Mr. North shockingly asked Alisson for her bra size, she shockingly said, “I’ll trade you [...] You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.” 32C. 7¾. Alisson wrote that she knew that asking her English teacher to share the size of his penis was seductive. She asked: “At what point does a girl turn into prey?” 

Part 3: The End of a Dark [Teacher-Student] Romance 

During her freshman year college, Alisson ended her “dark romance” with her former English teacher for two reasons. She wrote that she ended it because Mr. North was controlling (i.e., Mr. North wanted to continue to keep their “dark romance” a secret while Alisson desperately wanted an open age-gap relationship.) Alisson wrote that the relationship was “problematic and unhealthy.” And she wrote: “[...] our relationship was built on lies, that he isolated me in high school and continued to while I was in college [...]” “I was tired of being alone to hide our relationship.”

And she ended it because every time they had sex, unlike with boys, it hurt. Alisson didn’t clarify if Mr. North had a rough sex fetish or if she suffered from a degree of vaginismus. However, she did explain why she simply never told him to be gentle: “[...] it hurt the whole time, so much I made noises, but I didn’t say stop [...]” “I didn’t want to ask him to be gentle because I didn’t want him to think I was a child [...]” However, she had a secret code: “[...] moan means go, that means stop, an inhale of please, my nails were really, please stop [...]” 

Mr. North even told Alisson, “I love you so much, I’m so in love with you, I would never hurt you.” But Alisson didn’t use that as an opportunity to tell Mr. North that he did hurt her during sex. Once during sex, Mr. North even asked Alisson, “What’s wrong?” What Alisson's reply, “Nothing, I love you. Don’t stop.” 

And Alisson wrote in the latter parts of her memoir: “Now when I think about the first ten years of my life after the teacher, I see a clear impact [...] I thought it was supposed to hurt.” As you can see, this simply isn’t true. Alisson never expressed that she thought that it was supposed to hurt. Just the opposite.

Very interestingly, in part ii, Alisson wrote that she was just a child when she 17: “[...] I was a child. I was barely 110 pounds, I had been only with other teen boys, all of us children. I was eighteen [when I first had sex with my English teacher], but that didn’t matter [...]” 

Here’s Oxford Languages’ definition of child: "/CHīld/ [noun] a young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority." And I’m assuming that it’s safe to assume that Alisson doesn’t support 18-year-old porn stars who rarely do professional porn with other 18-year-olds. Or maybe Alisson only supports sensual teen porn but with a minimum weight requirement.

Alisson opened chapter 13 with: “The first thing I did when I got to college was fuck a stranger.” She described the sex with her college mate as “gentle” and painless, which appears to have erroneously solidified in her mind that non-age-gap sex equals “gentle” and age-gap sex equals “pain”. 

Alisson’s back and forths are dizzying. Another example: One page 272 she wrote, for the first time, that Mr. North had “power” over her, but on the very next page she wrote: “I still wonder if I have just exaggerated things, if I am the unreliable narrator in this story, if I truly did seduced him [...]”  But then on page 275 she wrote that she was groomed and abused: “[...] the teacher was a predator, that he spent our school year grooming me to be the perfect subject for abuse [...]” 

On page 284 Alisson wrote: “The last thing I wanted was for him to not think I was the strong, powerful, sexy woman I was [during senior year of high school].” But on the very next page, Alisson wrote: “[...] I wasn’t some powerful, sexy grown-up. I was a child being manipulated, being preyed upon. I was the victim of a predator [...]” 

And Alisson wrote that as a negative consequence of having a “dark romance” with Mr. North: “I found myself seeking out or at least choosing relationships where I was the secret - illicit affairs, married men, guys who couldn’t commit [...]” but two pages later she wrote: “I began to understand that I was making choices to get myself into these situations [...]” [Emphasis mine]

Wait, how about a non-fiction plot twist. Alisson wrote: “Three years after the relationship ended [...] I needed to see Nick’s face [...] I showed up at his apartment unannounced [...]” “I had so much I still wanted to say, that I wanted to ask him - Did he really love me then? Was I really special? [...]” 

And 23-year-old Alisson: “[...] sent Nick and an email out of the blue, asking him to get a coffee sometime [...]” They had lunch: “[...] outside, at a cute restaurant on the water.” Alisson found out that Mr. North was in a relationship that was “basically over”. She told him to call her when it was completely over. She followed up a month later with an email, but he never replied. Why did Alisson attempt to reconnect with someone whom she said took advantage of her vulnerabilities and made her a victim? She shared: “Sure it was totally fucked up, I could say, but it wasn’t rape. I wanted it as much as he did. It was never abuse abuse.” 

GIF from Who Will You Be? Written by Emily Ratajkowski & directed by Lena Dunham

Part 4: “The Wanting Went Both Ways”

29-year-old Alisson co-led a weekly “girls-only comprehensive sex education and leadership program” at the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. The girls in the program were: “[...] all seniors, seventeen and eighteen years old.” Here’s a conversation Alisson overheard:

Nicole, “Girl, it’s no big deal. I’ve had sex with three guys. Just relax and have a good time. And if you’re not having a good time, it’s your problem, because you gotta ask for what you want.” The third girl agreed, “Yes!” Alisson wrote: “[...] I was thrilled that they were talking about sex without any accompanying shame.” But “[...] [f]or all her bravado, Nicole was a child.” 

child: /CHīld/ [noun] a young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority. (Oxford Languages) Thus, I’m assuming that Alisson was implying that Nicole had the mind of a child?

After the session, Nicole helped Alisson clean up, and Nicole put a handful of condoms into the pocket of her lavender slicker. How did Alisson react? She wrote: “I offered her candy for helping me clean up. “Thank you, Miss Alisson.”

I won’t discuss the misleading and erroneous errors that Wood wrote about Lolita. Like when she wrote of Lolita leaving Humbert: “She fled, she got out. Let’s not focus yet on where she ended up.” But it’s misleading if you mention that Lolita fled from Humbert but not mention that she fled to Quilty - another much older man. But I won’t discuss that topic. 

Alisson taught an introductory undergraduate creative writing course. And guess what book she taught at the “culmination” of the semesters. You guessed it - Lolita: “[...] the only convincing love story of our century,” said Vanity Fair”. That’s correct. She taught the novel that she said her high school English teacher used for grooming. And Alisson shared in the penultimate chapter of her memoir - her final contradiction: “In many ways, I still want to be like Lolita.”

In the end, I suspect that Alisson Wood wrote Part i of Being Lolita for writer fame slash money. And that she wrote parts ii and iii to avoid being canceled, which may have been prompted by one of the over 50 people Alisson acknowledged in the acknowledgments. 

Part 5: It’s Normal for a Nymphet to Crush on her Teacher

Kaia Gerber had Alisson Wood on her Instagram Live book club (November 13, 2020). To promote the event, Geber posted a picture of Alisson’s memoir, and Kaia wrote that she read Being Lolita: [...] four times and filling the margins with endless annotations [...]” 

Before Alisson joined the live stream, Kaia said that in Being Lolita, Lolita: “[...] becomes a backdrop to their connection that blooms from like a crush into a romance and a relationship.” Thus, Kaia confirmed that Alisson had a “romance” with her English teacher. 

But then Kaia said that, via Lolita, Mr. North, “[...] convinces her that that book is a love affair when in reality it is not [...] as time kind of progresses in the book and in Alisson’s life, ‘cause it is a memoir, you see how his grip on her tightens and how the relationship quickly becomes abusive.” Wait, is Kaia implying that Alisson’s “romance” with her English was not initially abusive, but that it became abusive after they had rough sex, which was after Alission turned 18, and she graduated from high school? 

Kaia said misleadingly, “As a young woman you think you’re in control - a lot of the time. And realizing what consent is and when you can give consent. And as a minor that is something you cannot give to an adult.” I don’t know whom Kaia was referring to, because there’s no way that she was (correctly) referring to Alisson, because Alisson was not a minor when she had sex with Mr. North. In other words, there’s no state in the US that has an age-of-consent that’s higher than 18. (Note: 19-year-old Kaia was 18 when she began a romantic relationship with 26-year-old Pete Davidson.)

Remember that Alisson and Kaia related that Mr. North used Lolita to groom Alisson, but just like in the memoir, Alisson confessed that she didn’t actually read Lolita, “When I was in high school I didn’t actually [...] I didn’t really, like, carefully read Lolita. Umm, I read the parts that he read to me and, like, you know, sort of skimmed through it. And but I got bored by the second part. I was like, “This so boring and it is long [...]”

Then Kaia implied that it wasn’t Lolita but that Mr. North took advantage of Alisson’s mental issues (i.e., suicidal tendencies) to “control and abuse” Alisson. And Alisson agreed that Mr. North noticed that she had those vulnerabilities and took advantage of them, but there’s no explicit mention of that in the memoir. One could take a long stretch and make that inference, but there’s no explicit mention of that in Being Lolita. On the contrary, Allison explicitly related that Mr. North’s seduction methods were (excerpts from) Lolita, which, once again, she didn’t (fully) read, and control (i.e., Despite Alisson’s wishes, Mr. North made Allison keep their affair a secret.)

Here’s the penultimate (seeming) contradiction from the book club discussion. 

Alisson, “Oh, I didn’t want a woman. I didn’t want any reader to come away from this book thinking, “Oh, she was ruined. She was broken.”

Kaia, “And I think that’s what’s so cool. While you are the victim. You don’t victimize yourself - especially in the beginning.” 

Alisson, “I completely agree.”

But throughout the book club discussion, Alisson implied to Kaia that, as a consequence of her romance with Mr. North, she was a victim and that she had been ruined and broken. 

And now for the final (seeming) contradiction from the book club discussion. Allison confessed that it’s completely natural, totally normal, and completely developmentally and socially appropriate for a high school student to have a crush on her older teacher: 

Alisson, “That’s completely natural. It’s normal for a teenager. It’s totally normal for, like, a teenage girl to have a crush on her older teacher.” 

Kaia, “Yes.” 

Alisson, “And I was not the only one at my school to have a crush on him.”

Alisson, “It was totally normal for me to have the [sic] crush on the teacher.” 

Kaia, “Yeah.”  

Alisson, “Like that’s fine. Like, that’s completely developmentally appropriate. It’s socially appropriate.”

Lastly, in what is arguably Alisson's most pertinent statement, “Like that’s not the problem. The problem is that an adult man was like, “Hey, she’s got a crush on me, like, let me see if I can sleep with her.”

And that’s exactly what happened. Mr. North noticed that Alisson had a crush on him and, per Alisson, he correctly assumed that she inappropriately wanted to have sex with her high school English teacher, but Mr. North should have waited to begin the (non-sexual and sexual) romance after Alisson had graduated from Hunt. (Although, despite Kaia's own consensual age-gap affair, it appears that she would have (openly) objected to that scenario as well.)

Lastly, let me be absolutely clear, Mr. North should not have had an (non-sexual) affair with Alisson - his high school English student. But Alisson should not have had an affair with Mr. North - her high school English teacher. Like Alisson Wood wrote: “The wanting went both ways.”