I know a noble Englishman
who is sure he is a gentleman,
that sort —
This moderately young gentleman
is very normal, as becomes an Englishman,
rather proud of being a bit of a Don Juan
you know —
But one of his beloveds, looking a little
peaked
towards the end of her particular affair with him
said: Ronald, you know, is like most Englishmen,
by instinct he’s a sodomist
but he’s frightened to know it
so he takes it out on women.
Oh come! said I. That Don Juan of a Ronald! —
Exactly, she said. Don Juan was another of them, in love
with
himself
and taking it out on women. —
Even that isn’t sodomitical, said I.
But if a man is in love with himself, isn’t that the meanest
form
of homosexuality? she
said.
You’ve no idea, when men are in love with themselves,
how they
wreak all their spite on women,
pretending to love them.
Ronald, she resumed, doesn’t like women, just acutely
dislikes
them.
He might possibly like men, if he weren’t too frightened
and
egoistic.
So he very cleverly tortures women, with his sort of
love.
He’s instinctively frightfully clever.
He can be so gentle, so gentle
so delicate in his love-making.
Even now, the thought of it bewilders me: such
gentleness!
Yet I know he does it deliberately, as cautiously and
deliberately
as when he shaves himself.
Then more than that, he makes a woman feel he is serving her
really living in her service, and serving her
as no man ever served before.
And then, suddenly, when she’s feeling all lovely about
it
suddenly the ground goes from under her feet, and she
clutches
in mid-air,
but horrible, as if your heart would wrench out; —
while he stands aside watching with a superior little
grin
like some malicious indecent little boy.
— No, don’t talk to me about the love of
Englishmen!