"You know. And a lot of my clients know. And a lot of women. But they can't change anything."
"Yeah."
"What do I really do here, then? Ask yourself. I'm in the business of supplying erotic fun to people who are made for it, born to it, urged from the cradle to the grave to take part in it, who depend upon it for mental health, for a decent feeling of good will toward others—and aren't allowed to engage in it even with their own wedded wives, by the statutes of New York State and forty-seven other little penitentiaries! That's my trade. And because I'm in it—I am regarded as the greatest blight in civilized society, by millions. Holy, jumped-up St. Peter's be-hee!"
Through a recollected haze of alcohol I heard this same tirade from old and distant days. And Hattie was right, in her way. The theory of accession to culture and intelligence, to morality and Godliness, through the restraint of desire by the demeaning of it, had run its course in the Western world and unstrung nearly all of us. And where that thesis did not exist, there were others, still more absurd, to bring other peoples to their repetitive, obnoxious dooms.
Quite suddenly, I felt like weeping.
She left the window and sat down. "Relax."
The feeling passed like a bird's shadow.
"What were you doing all evening?" she asked. "How come you're up so late? Work?"
I thought of telling her—telling her the truth. Thought of it hard and seriously. "Out with a dame," I said, which was not what I meant by the truth. "A wife. A pretty package of all the quality advertising, from Pasadena, who had caught her hubby in flagrante with a gent—and fled. Protesting too much, if you understand."
"Half the girls in the country—if they had the nerve—!"