of advice designed for young couples. At the front was a list of the author’s previous works. She had written The Cretaceous Flora (in two parts), Ancient Plants, The Study of Plant Life, A Journal from Japan , a three-act play called Our Ostriches and a dozen books under the heading Sexology. One of these was called The First Five Thousand . The first five thousand what?
Jean wasn’t sure how to read the book, or whether she should be doing so anyway. Wasn’t it better to learn such things from Michael? He was bound to know most of this, wasn’t he? Or was he? It wasn’t an area they had discussed. Men were supposed to know, and women were supposed not to mind how they had found out. Jean didn’t mind: it was silly to worry about Michael’s life before she met him. It seemed so distant anyway—it was all before the war. The word prostitute sidled into her mind like a vamp through a door. Men went to prostitutes to rid themselves of their animal desires, then later they married wives—that was what happened, wasn’t it? Did you have to go up to London for prostitutes? She supposed so. Most of the unpleasant things to do with sex took place, she imagined, in London.
The first night she leafed through the book carelessly, skipping whole chapter called Sleep, Children, Society and Appendix. If she did this, it didn’t really count as reading. Even so, phrases droppedfrom the page and stuck like burrs to her flannelette nightdress. Some of them made her laugh; some of them made her apprehensive. The word turgid kept appearing, as did crisis; she didn’t like the sound of those two. Enlarged and stiffened, she read; lubricated by mucus; turgid again; soft, small and drooping (ugh); maladjustment of the relative shapes and positions of the organs; partial absorption of the man’s secretions; congestion of the womb .
At the back of the book was an advertisement for the author’s play, the one called Our Ostriches , “first produced at the Royal Court Theatre Nov. 14, 1923.” Punch said it was “full of humour and irony, admirably interpreted.” The Sunday Times said it “begins in excitement and keeps it up all through.” Jean found herself giggling and became suddenly shocked at herself. What a dirty mind. But then she giggled again as she imagined another review that read: “admirably turgid.”
She told Michael that Mrs. Barrett had given her the book. “Good show,” he said, looking away. “I’d been wondering about all that.”
She thought of asking him about prostitutes, but they were approaching that part of the lane where he hummed, and she decided this wasn’t the best time. Still, he clearly thought it a good idea that she was reading the book; so that night she went back to it more purposefully. She was astonished by how often the word sex seemed to be married to some other word: sex-attraction, sex-ignorance, sex-tide, sex-life, sex-function . Lots of hyphens everywhere. Sex-hyphens, she thought.
She tried hard, but couldn’t understand a lot of what was being said. The author made great claims to write plainly and straightforwardly, but Jean got lost almost at once. Soul structures , she read, and the rift within the lute , which she didn’t much want to think about. The clitoris corresponds morphologically to the man’s penis . What could that mean? And there weren’t many jokes around. The Queen of Aragon ordained that six times a day was the proper rule in legitimate marriage. So abnormally sexed a woman would today probably succeed in killing by exhaustion a succession of husbands … That was the nearest.
Even the parts she could understand without difficulty didn’t seem to correspond to her experience. The opportunities for peaceful, romantic dalliance , she read, are less today in a city with its tubes and cinema shows than in woods and gardens where the pulling of rosemary or lavender may be the sweet excuse for the slow and profound mutual rousing of passion . Admittedly
Jean wasn’t sure how to read the book, or whether she should be doing so anyway. Wasn’t it better to learn such things from Michael? He was bound to know most of this, wasn’t he? Or was he? It wasn’t an area they had discussed. Men were supposed to know, and women were supposed not to mind how they had found out. Jean didn’t mind: it was silly to worry about Michael’s life before she met him. It seemed so distant anyway—it was all before the war. The word prostitute sidled into her mind like a vamp through a door. Men went to prostitutes to rid themselves of their animal desires, then later they married wives—that was what happened, wasn’t it? Did you have to go up to London for prostitutes? She supposed so. Most of the unpleasant things to do with sex took place, she imagined, in London.
The first night she leafed through the book carelessly, skipping whole chapter called Sleep, Children, Society and Appendix. If she did this, it didn’t really count as reading. Even so, phrases droppedfrom the page and stuck like burrs to her flannelette nightdress. Some of them made her laugh; some of them made her apprehensive. The word turgid kept appearing, as did crisis; she didn’t like the sound of those two. Enlarged and stiffened, she read; lubricated by mucus; turgid again; soft, small and drooping (ugh); maladjustment of the relative shapes and positions of the organs; partial absorption of the man’s secretions; congestion of the womb .
At the back of the book was an advertisement for the author’s play, the one called Our Ostriches , “first produced at the Royal Court Theatre Nov. 14, 1923.” Punch said it was “full of humour and irony, admirably interpreted.” The Sunday Times said it “begins in excitement and keeps it up all through.” Jean found herself giggling and became suddenly shocked at herself. What a dirty mind. But then she giggled again as she imagined another review that read: “admirably turgid.”
She told Michael that Mrs. Barrett had given her the book. “Good show,” he said, looking away. “I’d been wondering about all that.”
She thought of asking him about prostitutes, but they were approaching that part of the lane where he hummed, and she decided this wasn’t the best time. Still, he clearly thought it a good idea that she was reading the book; so that night she went back to it more purposefully. She was astonished by how often the word sex seemed to be married to some other word: sex-attraction, sex-ignorance, sex-tide, sex-life, sex-function . Lots of hyphens everywhere. Sex-hyphens, she thought.
She tried hard, but couldn’t understand a lot of what was being said. The author made great claims to write plainly and straightforwardly, but Jean got lost almost at once. Soul structures , she read, and the rift within the lute , which she didn’t much want to think about. The clitoris corresponds morphologically to the man’s penis . What could that mean? And there weren’t many jokes around. The Queen of Aragon ordained that six times a day was the proper rule in legitimate marriage. So abnormally sexed a woman would today probably succeed in killing by exhaustion a succession of husbands … That was the nearest.
Even the parts she could understand without difficulty didn’t seem to correspond to her experience. The opportunities for peaceful, romantic dalliance , she read, are less today in a city with its tubes and cinema shows than in woods and gardens where the pulling of rosemary or lavender may be the sweet excuse for the slow and profound mutual rousing of passion . Admittedly
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