Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [94]
“No thanks,” she said, but changed her mind and took some after she had reflected that it was nourishing.
“You know, I think it might be a good idea if we went to bed,” Duncan said conversationally, putting his spoon down on the table.
Marian blenched inwardly. She had been justifying whatever had been happening with Duncan (whatever had been happening?) on the grounds that it was, according to her standards, perfectly innocent. It had seemed to her lately that innocence had some imperfectly defined connection with clothing: the lines were drawn by collars and long sleeves. Her justifications always took the form of an imagined conversation with Peter. Peter would say, jealously, “What’s this I hear about you seeing a lot of some scrawny academic type?” And she would reply, “Don’t be silly Peter, it’s perfectly innocent. After all, we’re getting married in two months.” Or a month and a half. Or a month.
“Don’t be silly Duncan,” she said, “that’s impossible. After all, I’m getting married in a month.”
“That’s your problem,” he said, “it has nothing to do with me. And it’s me I thought it would be a good idea for.”
“Why?” she asked, smiling in spite of herself. The extent to which he could ignore her point of view was amazing.
“Well of course it’s not you. It’s just it. I mean you personally don’t arouse exactly a raging lust in me or anything. But I thought you would know how, and you’d be competent and sensible about it, sort of calm. Unlike some. I think it would be a good thing if I could get over this thing I have about sex.” He poured some of the sugar out onto the table and started tracing designs in it with his index finger.
“What thing?”
“Well, maybe I’m a latent homosexual.” He considered that for a moment. “Or maybe I’m a latent heterosexual. Anyway I’m pretty latent. I don’t know why, really. Of course I’ve taken a number of stabs at it, but then I start thinking about the futility of it all and I give up. Maybe it’s because you’re expected to do something and after a certain point all I want to do is lie there and stare at the ceiling. When I’m supposed to be writing term papers I think about sex, but when I’ve finally got some willing lovely backed into a corner or we’re thrashing about under hedges and so on and everybody is supposed to be all set for the coup de grâce, I start thinking about term papers. I know it’s an alternation of distractions, both of those things are basically distractions you know, but what am I really being distracted from? Anyway, they’re all too literary, it’s because they haven’t read enough books. If they’d read more they’d realize that all those scenes have been done already. I mean ad nauseam. How can they be so trite? They sort of get limp and sinuous and passionate, they try so hard, and I start thinking oh god it’s yet another bad imitation of whoever it happens to be a bad imitation of, and I lose interest. Or worse, I start to laugh. Then they get hysterical.” He licked the sugar from his fingers, thoughtfully.
“What makes you think it would be any different with me?” She was beginning to feel very experienced and professional: almost matronly. The situation, she thought, called for stout shoes and starched cuffs and a leather bag full of hypodermic needles.
“Well,” he said, “it probably wouldn’t be. But now that I’ve told you at least you wouldn’t get hysterical.”
They sat in silence. Marian was thinking about what he had said. She supposed that the impersonality of his request was quite insulting. Why didn’t she feel insulted then? Instead she felt she ought to do something helpful and clinical, like taking his pulse.
“Well …” she said, deliberating. Then she wondered whether anyone had been listening. She glanced around the coffee shop, and her eyes met those of a large man with a beard who was sitting at a table near the door, looking in her direction. She thought he might be an anthropology professor. It was a moment before she recognized him as one of Duncan’s roommates. The blond man with him, sitting with his back