More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The man’s jacket scratched at John’s stomach—he felt it as an itch—and his buttocks brushed against John’s crotch, once, twice, another time.
the twist of hair on a nape; the way loose
trousers encircled a waist, brought out its beauty, like a bracelet on a woman’s wrist; the way these men walked, unself-consciously, slouching
the way they undressed: the rough, careless way they pulled off their shirts, dragging them over their heads, sometimes bending so that the shirt slid right off onto the ground, the knobs of the spine prominent under the skin; the practiced, unthinking way they unfastened their trousers, tugged them down, often while gazing out across the water or up into the trees; how they stepped out of their drawers, if they had them, like out
And their cocks: delicate, caressable things, so simple in the daylight, making no claim. The way they nodded and rubbed against the slouching, jostling testes as the men walked down to the water.
“Poem” was Whitman’s word for a man’s cock: “This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and that all men carry.” John wondered how Whitman described to himself the tremor in a man’s buttocks as he stepped down towards water, their heart-seizing paleness.
off them, running in rivulets through their hair, through the hair on their legs, budding on the ends of their cocks, all of them shining in the light, as if light were the very thing they had bathed in, something sticking and clinging, was to come as close as he dared to his ideal. It was how he imagined Greece in the time of Plato.
before they went away to their work, at their physiques molded and stamped by labor, and saw in them another kind of life.
Three weeks ago, John had gone down to Cambridge, where his old friend Mark Ludding was professor of philosophy. The two of them had walked and talked, in their usual way. And then, after taking tea in Mark’s study at Newnham, where Mark’s wife, Louisa, was mistress, John had produced a copy of his A Problem in Greek Ethics, privately printed, passing it in its wrapping over the cups still standing on the desk. It was something remarkable—he was not being immodest in thinking so, or not only. The book was an account of Greek love. Of love between men, love of men, as it was practiced in and
...more
about the nature of the passions in Greek poetry; about the fact (his discovery) that many of Michelangelo’s sonnets were addressed to his friend Tommaso; about the manly love hymned by Whitman.
The book, partly unwrapped, looked very small in his large hands, with their long fingernails. His beard, so gray now, reached down to touch it. “You are going too far with me, Johnny,” he said.
“It’s a lovely day,” the man said smilingly, rubbing
“It is.” John smiled back, and started to walk on toward the gate, as though this had been merely an exchange of pleasantries. He had been stopped before, never as many times as in his worst imaginings—only twice, in fact.
Frank repeated, something pained in his blue eyes. There was still water sheltering amid the hairs on his chest, visible at the opening of his shirt.
“I saw you watching, nothing wrong with it. A lovely day. I only thought you might need a friend, keep you company.”
thoughts as soon as he had them. “Is it?” Frank smiled again; such a beautiful smile, the teeth a bright line under his moustache. “It doesn’t feel that way to me. Though I do believe in kindness, sir. That is something I believe in. There’s precious little of it.”
In fact, Henry was unusually interested in issues relating to sex, which he took to be the central problem of life.
so easily lose the thread of civilization. Being bored, Henry decided, was civilization.
It licked into existence a self-consciousness in him. He saw himself, for the first time, as the object of a woman’s desire.
sex was inherent human potential, an instinct existing independently in each person, women as well as men.
He had seen this quite quickly, seen that the sex instinct might be a great engine for happiness, if only it could be liberated from shame. At first he hadn’t known
the power of science to expose the truths of human nature.
He saw how poverty by its unceasing pressure warped the relationships between the sexes.
with the creation of instruments for public health; with birth control, the illegitimacy and divorce laws. He spied the problem of sex somewhere beneath them all, like a great rock whose scale and shape was forever obscured by the waves crashing and spraying against it. He tried to imagine the sea becalmed, the rock standing clear and comprehended.
world seem vast and intractable in its stupidity.
He was soon working harder on his writing than on his degree, which took two years longer than expected to finish, eight years in total.
They had found in each other something neither had found in quite the same way with anyone else. Which was understanding—not in the easy sense of agreement, but in the greater and deeper sense of responsiveness.
satisfaction in freer relations with men and women committed to new ways of living. After finishing it, Henry wrote Edith a letter:
They recommended each other books and articles; they read each other’s writing, giving detailed responses, fearless criticism.
But this way of thinking had cultivated in them a view of marriage that no longer had sex at its heart.
The predominant influence of sex in the decision of most people to marry was a social fact, no matter how avidly concealed behind vows and frills and fancy lace.
To think rationally about sex—to liberate it from the marital bond as conventionally understood—was also to escape its power of dictation, to rescue marriage for higher purposes.
their curiosity about what the other was doing, their understanding and concern. Marriage would be a brand, but also an atmosphere, a mesh of fine feeling, strung beneath and between them—an invisible support, bearing them up, but also a sieve, separating and shaking out the worst aspects of self.
The existence of these higher purposes meant that it was of no great import whether Henry and Edith were physically drawn to each other, and that they needn’t live together, or needn’t live together all of the time. It also followed that they were
her most intimate relations were with women. She’d had close women
them, she said, that she felt easiest. She gave Henry to understand that this was why she was not romantic with him, and yet he was not disappointed or insulted—rather, he was flattered.
his feelings for Edith were not passionate.
“Not that that is a guarantee of anything at all,” Louisa broke in. “The world is too full of old fools, Cambridge especially.” She folded some salad under her fork. “Actually, Oxford is worse.” “The old
It was impossible to live like this, hemmed in by etiquette, by rules operating invisibly in your own home.
He’d always eaten like this, with the placid greed of an intellectual. It
“No, not so long as that. Though we cannot be certain that death would be the end of your development.”
does not seem that way to me,” he said, “and I am in a position to know.” “You have always overestimated your difference.”
“It’s a miracle of argument. I have no doubt of that. Your case is sound; the evidence is sound. But the tone, Johnny. The conclusion! You can’t ever publish it.”
But I don’t see the harm in stating facts. It is historical.”
“What am I, Mark? Would there be no benefit to me?” John looked at him directly. They had lowered their voices, but this only had the effect of putting pressure on their words, which came out compact and hard-edged. “And what are you? You are not so oblivious as to think there are only two of us. Is the law beyond scrutiny? It is a rotten, filthy law. That is the stain. The point of my conclusion, which you single out for scandal, is that there is a benefit, as you call it, in a proper comprehension of the past. The knowledge that what we punish with hard labor—a crime for which men used to
...more
We are both married men, with positions of value in the world.” “I do not feel that my position has value. I will not speak for you. I feel myself a fraud. I have grown sick on middle-class propriety. I am dying of it.”
“I do not. I am a married man only because I was told to be. I have tried to be a husband; I suppose I am not a bad one. I love my wife and my children. But Catherine is not happy. Neither of us ever has been. I have been disnatured.
should live his whole life in opposition to his nature—not when that nature is hymned by Plato. I will not suffer any longer, I have decided. That is what this book taught me in the writing. Perhaps it is why I felt compelled to write it. I had hoped you would agree with me.” “You told
“What of Whitman? Does he not point a way?” “Whitman is vague. You cannot presume on his meaning. Besides, he was only a man, like the rest of us.”
he would never perform the act, it was not in his nature;
