baffled as anyone by her cold envy for her mother, her cold contempt for her father, and by her fear of being alone.
A word about Diana's sex life.
Nine days after the first menstrual bloodstain had been sighted on her sheets Diana was successfully, and very painfully, seduced by a thirty-five-year-old stuntman at a Bruce Parry shindig. High time too, she thought, dispatching letters to her friends the next morning. When she got back to London she told her mother about it. Mrs. Parry, who would never stand any nonsense from Diana, marched her straight down to the gynecologist's and put her on the pill. Diana could be said never to have looked back: an intelligible procedure— at what, anyway? If someone neither sordid nor unattractive seemed to want to go to bed with her, Diana went to bed with him. Along they came—tramp tramp tramp—slowly and sporadically at first, then in steady Indian file. Unlike many of her friends, Diana never felt that she had "let herself down" in these affaires, no matter how brief and pleasureless they might have been. She had never slept with anyone who wasn't rich, well-groomed, and halfway civilized; the ubiquitous venereal maladies which she could not but occasionally complain weren't, in her case, of the chronic variety and her tolerance to antibiotics was happily low; on no account would she entertain gentlemen friends at home and her bedroom remained a silent, pink retreat of dolls and paper tissues; up until the age of nineteen, up until Andy, Diana hadn't once spent an entire night with a man, would leave unfussily when the act was completed, had never woken up to new skin and breath.
For Diana, sex was not a fleshy concern; it was a dial in
the machinery of her self-regard, a salute to her clothes sense,
applause for her exercises, a hat tipped to her dieting, the required compliment to her hairdresser, the means socially to measure herself against others. She quite enjoyed it, too, now that most people were good enough at pressing the right buttons to give her clitorial orgasms of admittedly varying quality. If anyone happened to be particularly rich, handsome, or accomplished in bed, Diana would perhaps see them more than once, and, if they were moreover kind and/or amusing, she might even get quite to like them. But sexual lassitude and disgust seemed to be everywhere among the young, and two-night stands were becoming a rarity. The party, the man, the dinner, the flat, the fuck, the taxi, the scalding bath. Besides being good exercise in itself Diana found that it helped her to eat less. She would get out of bed the next morning and complete her callisthenics program with fresh verve.
Diana and Eleanor Parry were sunbathing by the Reina Victoria swimming pool one August afternoon when Andy Adorno boomed down the Seville Road into Ronda on his 1,225 cc. Harley Davidson Hurricane, stripped to the waist, his gout of black hair driven back from his face, his heavy body dusted and sweatstained in the mountain sunshine. He pulled up at the traffic lights adjacent to the hotel driveway, and, revving hugely in the empty road, glanced round about him, enjoying the heat, the noise, the new town. Twenty yards away, Diana and Eleanor looked up from their magazines. "Why aren't there any Spick laws about scooters," said Mrs. Parry. "I don't think he's Spanish," said Diana. "Mm, too tall." Adorno turned and met their eyes; he smiled, apparently pleased that he was the theme of their irritation. "You English too?" he shouted. Removing her sunglasses, Diana nodded. "Catch you around," he said as he hurled the bike forward with needless violence into the town, causing the tan-suited patrones of the hotel to watch the thinning sprays of grit with cardiac disgust.
They saw him every day—punching the pintables that lined the cafe terraces, shooting pool with the soldiers in the main square casino, lurching out of side roads by the bus station on his bike, bellowing past the hotel to El Hondon
A word about Diana's sex life.
Nine days after the first menstrual bloodstain had been sighted on her sheets Diana was successfully, and very painfully, seduced by a thirty-five-year-old stuntman at a Bruce Parry shindig. High time too, she thought, dispatching letters to her friends the next morning. When she got back to London she told her mother about it. Mrs. Parry, who would never stand any nonsense from Diana, marched her straight down to the gynecologist's and put her on the pill. Diana could be said never to have looked back: an intelligible procedure— at what, anyway? If someone neither sordid nor unattractive seemed to want to go to bed with her, Diana went to bed with him. Along they came—tramp tramp tramp—slowly and sporadically at first, then in steady Indian file. Unlike many of her friends, Diana never felt that she had "let herself down" in these affaires, no matter how brief and pleasureless they might have been. She had never slept with anyone who wasn't rich, well-groomed, and halfway civilized; the ubiquitous venereal maladies which she could not but occasionally complain weren't, in her case, of the chronic variety and her tolerance to antibiotics was happily low; on no account would she entertain gentlemen friends at home and her bedroom remained a silent, pink retreat of dolls and paper tissues; up until the age of nineteen, up until Andy, Diana hadn't once spent an entire night with a man, would leave unfussily when the act was completed, had never woken up to new skin and breath.
For Diana, sex was not a fleshy concern; it was a dial in
the machinery of her self-regard, a salute to her clothes sense,
applause for her exercises, a hat tipped to her dieting, the required compliment to her hairdresser, the means socially to measure herself against others. She quite enjoyed it, too, now that most people were good enough at pressing the right buttons to give her clitorial orgasms of admittedly varying quality. If anyone happened to be particularly rich, handsome, or accomplished in bed, Diana would perhaps see them more than once, and, if they were moreover kind and/or amusing, she might even get quite to like them. But sexual lassitude and disgust seemed to be everywhere among the young, and two-night stands were becoming a rarity. The party, the man, the dinner, the flat, the fuck, the taxi, the scalding bath. Besides being good exercise in itself Diana found that it helped her to eat less. She would get out of bed the next morning and complete her callisthenics program with fresh verve.
Diana and Eleanor Parry were sunbathing by the Reina Victoria swimming pool one August afternoon when Andy Adorno boomed down the Seville Road into Ronda on his 1,225 cc. Harley Davidson Hurricane, stripped to the waist, his gout of black hair driven back from his face, his heavy body dusted and sweatstained in the mountain sunshine. He pulled up at the traffic lights adjacent to the hotel driveway, and, revving hugely in the empty road, glanced round about him, enjoying the heat, the noise, the new town. Twenty yards away, Diana and Eleanor looked up from their magazines. "Why aren't there any Spick laws about scooters," said Mrs. Parry. "I don't think he's Spanish," said Diana. "Mm, too tall." Adorno turned and met their eyes; he smiled, apparently pleased that he was the theme of their irritation. "You English too?" he shouted. Removing her sunglasses, Diana nodded. "Catch you around," he said as he hurled the bike forward with needless violence into the town, causing the tan-suited patrones of the hotel to watch the thinning sprays of grit with cardiac disgust.
They saw him every day—punching the pintables that lined the cafe terraces, shooting pool with the soldiers in the main square casino, lurching out of side roads by the bus station on his bike, bellowing past the hotel to El Hondon
Similar Books
