DORIS LESSING
543
lot. Now, I had never been to bed with a black man. This was because I
did not really fancy them. You could say it was my early conditioning, if
it were not that the same conditioning has produced people, but I think
mostly men, who yearn for black flesh.
It
was because of pity for his state
that I eventually gave in, expecting to assuage a painful passion. The actu–
al sexual contact lasted perhaps three minutes, and then he fell asleep. His
snores were such as I had never heard before nor have since. I removed
myself to another bed and slept peacefully till morning. When I took him
in a cup of tea he was uxorious and complacent. Then he saw I had not
slept beside him and demanded to know why. The inhibitions of a proper
upbringing-"You must
never
hurt people's feelings"-intervened, and I
murmured, "You were snoring." He seemed surprised. Having drunk his
tea, he dressed and said that he was so happy. He then resumed his roman–
tic pursuit-telephone calls, passionate letters, encounters in the street,
where he had been lying in wait. I cannot help feeling that all this roman–
tic passion of his had derived from literature. I have sometimes caught a
certain ironical look on the faces of black women friends when told of the
amorous fame of their partners. But perhaps I was unlucky.
Another occasion I remember wi th shame. This was a black man too,
and he was from Jamaica. Madly in love, he was, and his pursuit was lengthy
and exhaustive. Remembering my previous experience, I kept saying no,
and then at last I thought, as women may do, Oh, for God's sake, what am
I making such a fuss about, if it means so much to him? I took off all my
clothes--and then I put them on again, for by now I was thinking, Why
the hell should I, when I don't want to? This was a terrible thing to do.
Cruel. As my mother might have said, though in a somewhat different con–
text, There are things a decent woman doesn't do.
There was a theatre director who was as queer as they come, and
famously so, with whom I shared the easy friendship women do with some
homosexuals. A rambunctious sexual romp of a play was running,
Lock Up
Your Daughters,
and in it was the line, "When is the ravishing going to
start?" I am descending a staircase, glass in one hand and a cigarette in the
other, and this suitor stops me by gripping both my arms while he stands
in front of me, demanding, "And
when
is the ravishing going to start?" A
joke, you'd think, but no, for a time whenever we met he'd accost me, by
now full of accusation, saying, "It is your duty to initiate me into the joys
of this heterosexual sex we hear so much about."
And now an embattled subject, American men. Things may very well
have changed, for they always do, but in those days a lot of comparisons
were being made, invidious or not. A woman cannot have as bed partners
first a man from the center of Europe and then one from America, both
womanizers on principle, without brooding about differences. I say
