A Single Man

by Christopher Isherwood

Then to the mirror. What it sees there isn’t so much a face as the expression of a predicament.

Those who call him on the phone at this hour of the morning would be bewildered, maybe even scared, if they could realize what this three-quarters-human thing is that they are talking to.

The living room is dark and low-ceilinged, with bookshelves all along the wall opposite the windows. These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, according to his mood.

She is the kind of bully who likes being challenged; it soothes the itch of her aggression.

Ah, how the poor body recoils with its every nerve from the sight, the smell, the feel of this place! Blindly it shies, rears, struggles to escape. That it should ever be brought here—stupefied by their drugs, pricked by their needles, cut by their little knives—what an unthinkable outrage to the flesh! Even if they were to cure it and release it, it could never forget, never forgive. Nothing would be the same any more. It would have lost all faith in itself.

personally, I haven’t gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I’ve been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn’t seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily sillier and sillier and sillier—and that’s a fact.”