There is nothing I won’t do for you guys. For example, I not only bought but actually read Lewis Libby’s (Scooter’s pen name) 2001 masterpiece, The Apprentice, which The Washington Post called “a small triumph of meticulous craftsmanship.”

“With delicate descriptive passages,” burbled The New York Times, “Lewis Libby elevates a youth’s narrative to the level of myth … [his] storytelling skill neatly mixes conspiratorial murmurs with a boy’s emotional turmoil.” Puffballs like this ease the path for “access journalism,” making it more likely that the burbler’s paper will receive leaks of false information in return.

I’m sure the class is familiar with the passage in which Libby delicately describes the sexual initiation of a ten-year-old girl by bears. But I knew there would be more, and that you would be anxious to read it once I had done the heavy lifting for you. Here, then, is the lesser known “Shallow River” passage in which a “girl-child” strips delicately for the guests of a Japanese inn at the turn of the 19th century:

Dancing, the tiny girl now did what seemed to the youth an amazing thing. Reaching down to her ankles, she parted her kimono and lifted it several inches off the ground. As she straightened, her eyes fixed once again on the youth, and they were wide and dark. The men were now shouting “Shallow River, Shallow River,” and as they did she raised her hem higher and stepped behind the candle as if to cross a stream. Her bare calves in the candlelight were thick and pale as she stepped. She wore low, stained socks.

The music grew slightly faster. The girl who had worn the cloak of yellow fur played with averted eyes. The old man had now rocked forward onto his bony knees and he clapped loudly and without rhythm while the verse came around and the men shouted out and the girl raised her hem higher still. Her shoulders began to shiver as if she were being shaken from within.

One of the men below her reached out and ran his hand up the dancer’s leg until it was below the hem and behind her knee. The tiny girl stared down at it but she kept her steps to the music and the village woman pulled the man’s hand away and bit it until the man cried out.

The tune shifted and quickened so that the singers could not keep up with the words, and the tiny dancer began to spin, near-naked, in place. First hips, then stomach, mound, and thighs revolved, revolved, revolved, and the men clapped until the girl-child lost her balance and stumbled over one of them, and he pushed her back onto her feet and she turned and turned and the men clapped on until the music abruptly ceased.