DORIS LESSING
539
brief encounter where emotion does not enter for even one moment, that
quick fuck without any strings or obligations, and not with a prostitute
either. A fantasy of some golden age hovers here, I think. And there is no
woman whose first emotion is not "Is this the man I'm looking for?" and
this even when she has resolved to set this aside, having decided to be more
like men, enjoying the fun of it all, for a night or two. I am prepared to bet
that there is no woman who has not been left after the most enjoyable
night imaginable, and even if neither knows the other's name, or wants to,
without, as he leaves-full of love, admiration, and gratitude for her
aplomb-a suddenly dull and empty feeling, for she has gone against her
real deep nature and she must pay for it, even
if
only for half an hour.
How often have women who have 'with the most honest, open–
hearted intentions spent a night with a man not found themselves
swearing, raging: "You bloody heel. Surely you could at least ring up?
Can't you even send some flowers?" For the flowers would be ample,
would be enough, a psychological balance would be redressed. And
meanwhile the man, full of affection and pleasure, is thinking, "Now, at
last, a woman who understands how to enjoy life and who doesn't say,
'Do you really love me?'"
The Victorians knew what they were about, with their prescribed
tributes of flowers from man to woman. I am tempted to say they knew
what they were doing in laying down so many rules and restrictions.
Romance is the child of prohibition. But let's leave romance out, for there
are some parts of the world where it seems to have become obsolete. And
already in the fifties there was the beginning of the feeling that sex was on
an agenda, something that ought to be done, and blame would accrue if it
was not performed.
I am walking down Church Street, Kensington, with Donald Ogden
Stewart, and we are going to have dinner, his suggestion. He must be sixty or
so a lean, balding, freckly, sandy man, and I am thirty-something. He says to
me, "I ought to tell you that these days I am more interested in food than in
sex." I was absolutely, coldly furious. That it was so graceless-well, what did
one expect? meaning, specifically, from Americans; but there had never been,
not for one second, any suggestion of a physical attraction, and anyway he was
old. Now I see this as a quite sensible
(if
graceless) way of dealing with the sit–
uation. Mter all, he had come from Hollywood, and from the Left
in
America,
and probably had had affairs by the dozen. To his contemporaries he must have
seemed an attractive man. None of us find it easy to know that we are not as
attractive as we once were. He had thought, I'm not going to sit through the
whole dinner while she is wondering if I'm going to make a pass.
Again I have been out to dinner, with a high executive in Granada
Television, for I am going to write for them. He drinks heavily all evening.
