The Love Decoy by S. J. Perelman
"The Love Decoy" by S. J. Perelman is a satirical short story set at the fictional Tunafish College for Women, focusing on the character of Dolores Hornbostel. The narrative begins with Dolores reflecting on an encounter with Professor Russell Gipf, who is substituting for a sick instructor. Their previous meeting involved a discussion about an essay, during which Dolores felt a mix of vanity and disappointment when Gipf did not make any inappropriate advances. Seeking revenge after being humiliated in class, she concocts a plan to lure him to her dorm under the pretense of needing help with a toothpaste tube.
The story takes a comedic twist as Dolores prepares her dorm room as an enticing setting, only for Professor Gipf to realize he's been tricked. Tensions escalate when Dean Fothergill bursts into the room, leading to a chaotic confrontation that ultimately reveals unexpected connections among the characters. The plot juggles themes of desire, deception, and the complexities of interpersonal relationships, culminating in a series of humorous revelations. The story is characterized by Perelman's witty prose and offers readers a light-hearted examination of campus life and romantic entanglements.
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The Love Decoy by S. J. Perelman
First published: 1930
Type of plot: Satire
Time of work: The 1920's
Locale: A college campus
Principal Characters:
Russell Gipf , previously Donald Fenstermacher, an instructor at Tunafish College for WomenDolores Hornbostel , a student at the same collegeDean Fothergill , previously Jim the Penman, an administrator at Tunafish College
The Story
"The Love Decoy" begins in a packed classroom at the Tunafish College for Women. Dolores Hornbostel has just heard from Ivy Nudnick that Professor Gompers, the regular instructor, is ill and that Russell Gipf will be substituting for him. This news sends Dolores into a nostalgic reverie. She recalls going, on a previous autumn afternoon, to Professor Gipf's office to discuss an essay that she had written. Mr. Gipf, it seems, although confiding in her, provocatively, that he was studying dirty limericks for his doctoral thesis, failed to make the "usual indecent proposal." The meeting was not a success, and Dolores left with her vanity considerably piqued.
Dolores's daydream is interrupted when the real Professor Gipf, as handsome as her remembrance, asks her to answer a question that he has just posed to the class. She has not been listening and cannot answer the question, so Professor Gipf, with considerable sarcasm, proceeds to humiliate her in front of her peers. She seethes ineffectually, until a plan for revenge begins to form in her mind. Approaching Professor Gipf after class, she asks him to come to her dorm room, after lights out, to help her get the cap off her toothpaste tube. It is a thinly veiled proposition, which Mr. Gipf is unable to resist.
Late that evening, Dolores awaits her visitor/victim in a seductive negligee. With low lights and incense, she has turned her dormitory room into a love nest. Professor Gipf hurries up four flights of stairs, panting conspicuously, and enters the room with suspicion. He goes into the bathroom to look at the toothpaste tube. When he comes out, he realizes that he has been tricked. Dolores snarls at Professor Gipf that she has barred all avenues of escape, and picks up the telephone. It is clear that she intends to turn him over to the faculty, who have apparently already suspended him once before for a similar indiscretion.
At this point, what little plot there is in "The Love Decoy" breaks down completely. Dolores never gets to complete her call, because Dean Fothergill, mad with desire, crashes into her room and lunges at her. Russell Gipf, to the reader's surprise, defends Dolores's honor, and a nasty fight ensues, during which Dolores, unmoved by the spectacle, studies for her law exam.
The denouement is a hasty barrage of comic epiphanies, in which the understandably confused reader discovers that Dean Fothergill is really Jim the Penman, whose forgeries have sent Dolores's father, Harry Trefusis, to jail. (Why the unmarried Dolores does not bear her father's surname is only one of the story's many unresolved complications.) Professor Gipf turns out to be Donald Fenstermacher, the Splendid Wayfarer, and he takes his position at the end of the story as the tender, romantic hero. "The Love Decoy" fades out, presumably to everyone's relief, to the sweet strains of a strumming guitar.