What I could not register was this: In each of these affairs a necessary element of control devolved on me. If a man was short or stupid or uneducated or foreign, I felt sufficiently superior to risk tenderness. I might be socially uncomfortable but I was freed up. Love was a swamp of overwhelming proportion. It covered the ground once I stepped off the solid territory of miserable, blessed loneliness. To sleep with a man was to start drowning in need. An equalizer was an absolute, not a relative an absolute necessity. Stefan was
