Yvonne danced Gwen through the other room and through the doors.
They closed quietly.
Moments before, I had been embarrassed by Gwen's presence--by the
realization that I had wanted companionship rather than passion. Now
my feelings changed, showing how incomplete my awareness of them had
been. I was alone and I did not want to be. Yvonne had deprived me of
my casual date. I was not precisely jealous of one woman over another,
but I was distressed. And this sentiment was not relieved by the plain
fact that I was responsible, through a series of negative acts, for my
situation.
I could have sent Yvonne packing. I could, by not nodding my head,
have kept Gwen with me. On the evening before, I could have accepted
Yvonne's invitation for a nightcap, or accepted the later invitation in
her note to me. I'd been somewhat Olympian on both occasions--a little
more detached than there was detachment in the sum of the parts of my
nervous system.
But what should one do?
What would others do?
This is a question which I sometimes test by projecting myself into
others, not to examine their circumstances, but to imagine what they
would do in mine.