A great many of the men I know would refuse to believe or weigh
the facts as they existed. Their knowledge of homo sapiens is so
superficial, so repressed, or so compartmented, that they could not
even assume an Yvonne would want to take a Gwen into her boudoir, let
alone that one had done so.
And the majority of my male friends would label any narrative of my
past two days as a boast. They would doubt that I'd encountered two
such extremely attractive girls in so short a space of time. Two?
Three, by the reckoning of these men--for they would include the
scalding stare of Marcia as a sexual coup. They would assume I'd
somewhat mistaken my own libido for any description I gave of the three
girls, in the bargain.
They would forget how disturbed Yvonne was; hence they would fail to
see that the interest she had shown in me was motivated not by myself,
or any possible charm of mine, but by her wish for escape, or for
anodyne, or for revenge--and perhaps, also, for mere experiment with
her insatieties. These men would also overlook the fact that Gwen was
a prostitute. Such liking as she felt for me was merely a fortunate
vicissitude of business. She would have called me up even if she had
disliked me: trade was slow and I had the price. Such men--and I knew
many--would even overlook Marcia's attachment to Paul, on the opposite
grounds that she _was_, after all, a prostitute. They would imagine
every woman's hot-eyed glance as evidence of their irresistibility. In
my place, they would conclude that three women, young and handsome, had
given them a tumble because of what they were.
Three handsome young women had certainly invited me; but not one for
myself.
There is also, among some of my friends, an inverted form of chivalry
which causes them to feel they are obliged to respond to every
feminine beckon with assent. But they take no responsibility for the
results--the tangible and psychological results--of whatever behavior
follows such assent. These imagine themselves great lovers and great
understanders of women; they actually hold toward women about the same
attitude they hold toward roast beef.
To all these last men, the fact that I had failed to wait upon Yvonne
the night before, and dispatched Gwen with a nod, and responded to
Marcia's luncheon leer with nothing more than analysis, would seem a
great waste of opportunity, a failure to meet obligation, and even a
kind of hypocrisy. For they would be men who knew that I held no brief
for absolute fidelity in marriage. Knowing that, they would conclude
_any_ refusal of mine to commit adultery was Pharisaic. Such men are
black-white viewers; they go through life blind to the color spectrum.
I knew still other men--a few, at least--who would regard my
association with prostitutes and loose women (which is what they would
call Yvonne) as proof that I was a bum. To these, all that I did,
thought and expressed would be discredited by the antics of some of
my companions. "Wylie," they would say, "hangs out with scum." _Ergo_
Wylie's discernment, his art, his intellectual ability is manifestly
nil.
This is the common attitude of "Christians"--though how they explain
their own Christ's various companions is beyond my guessing.
Two or three more of my friends would take what might be called the
anthropological view of my situation. They would argue that, being away
from my wife and needing sexual refreshment, having the opportunity,
but not taking it, I was acting weakly. These would overlook not merely
the motives of the ladies, and my feelings about my wife, but also the
fact that my share of everyman's borrowed time was apparently running
out--a circumstance which in itself alters the libido.
To some of my friends, then, I would have to excuse myself for what I
had already done; to others, I would have to make excuses for what I
had failed to do. To myself, I had nothing much to say.
In a minute, an hour, or on the morrow, my reasons, moods and motives
would change once more and my behavior might be different. Hence this
empathetic review had merely shown again how men behave according to
sets of compulsions--patterns of conscious virtue, conscious sin, or
conscious animalism--which stem in every case from arbitrary mores.
And neither amongst the overtly virtuous nor the subtly sinful is the
pattern valuable; it makes hypocrites of the former and deprives the
latter of joy. The animalists, too, have no solution: they fornicate as
through a wall, knowing a person exists on the other side but not what
a person is.
So any instinct, when unseen, compels men to abide by some formulation
of itself. They accept a Faith and are then obliged to play they are
the God who rules that Faith. So, too, a man like myself, who quests
beyond these compulsive faiths (and is therefore called faithless by
Believers of every stamp) foolishly plays God whenever he does not
quite know himself.
I sat there, sneering at the pompous fashion in which I had behaved and
wondering how to make peace with my solitude, my recovered mortality.
Even I had wanted more than I had found for myself. Not redheads and
ash blondes abed in the night of that heat-glazed city, but their
company, their tempting presence. It would be a matter worth thinking
about in the future--if my future was to be long enough for that kind
of thought.