Sophie's Choice - William Styron [287]
I am silent for a while. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s a sad story,” I add, trying to still the sarcasm striving to be expressed. “Very sad. I guess it happens to a lot of people. But I think I know why Walter left you. And tell me something, Mary Alice, do you really think that two healthy young people who are attracted to each other have to go through this masquerade about marriage before they fuck each other? Do you really?” I feel her turn rigid and hear her gasp at the horrid verb; she pulls away from me, and something about her prissy chagrin enrages me more. She is suddenly (and I now see justifiably) astounded at my unplugged fury spilling forth and as I too pull away and stand up shaking, quite out of control now, I see her lips, all smeared with the red goo of our kissing, form a little oval of fright. “Walter didn’t teach you to make love, you lying creepy little idiot!” I say loudly. “I’ll bet you’ve never had a good fuck in your life! All Walter taught you was how to jerk off the poor slobs who want to get into your pants! You need something to make that beautiful ass of yours gyrate with joy, a big stiff prick rammed into that cunt you’ve got locked up, oh shit—” I break off in a strangled cry, smothered with shame at my outburst but near loony laughter too, for Mary Alice has stuck her fingers in her ears like a six-year-old and the tears are rolling down her cheeks, I give a beery belch. I am repulsive. Yet I still cannot restrain myself from howling at her, “You cock teasers have turned millions of brave young men, many of whom died for your precious asses on the battlefields of the world, into a generation of sexual basket cases!” Then I storm off the porch and stomp upstairs to bed. And after hours of sleeplessness I drowse off and have what because of its Freudian obviousness I would be loath to put into a novel but what, Dear Diary, I must not shrink from telling You: my First Homosexual Dream!
Sometime late that morning, not long after finishing the foregoing entry in my journal and writing a few letters, I was sitting at the table where I had worked so well those past days, brooding glumly over the dumfounding homo-erotic apparition which had passed like a thick black cloud across my consciousness (festering in my heart and making me fear for the basic well-being of my soul), when I heard Jack Brown’s limping footsteps on the stairs, followed by the sound of his voice calling me. I did not really hear or respond right away, so deeply had I fallen into my funk over the appalling and very real possibility that I had turned queer. The nexus between Mary Alice’s rejection of me and my sudden metamorphosis into sexual deviation seemed a little too pat; nonetheless, I could not deny the possibility.
I had read quite a bit about sexual problems while studying at that noted athenaeum of psychology, Duke University, and had come away with some fairly well established facts: that male primates in captivity, for instance, when denied female companionship, will try to bugger each other, often with gleeful success, and that many prisoners after long periods of incarceration will turn so readily to homosexual activity that it will almost appear to be the norm. Men who have been many months at sea will take their pleasure with one another; and when I was in the Marine Corps (a branch, of course, of the Navy) I was intrigued to learn the ancient origin of “pogey bait,” the slang name for candy: it obviously sprang from the inducement held out by older sailors for the favors of fair-cheeked, smooth-bottomed young cabin boys. Ah well, I thought, if I have become a pederast, so be it; there was ample precedent for my condition, since although I had not been formally confined or caged, I may have just as well been in prison or on a timeless voyage on a brigantine as far as my lifelong efforts at good, wholesome, heterosexual screwing were concerned. Was it not plausible that some psychic valve in me, analogous to whatever