Myra-Breckinridge-Gore-Vidal

marry and settle down. Dr. Montag still believes that eachsex is intended to be half of a unit, like those monstersmentioned in Plato's Symposium. This is the Doctor'sMosaic side overwhelming common sense, not to mentionthe evidence of his senses. Admittedly some are bestserved when the struggle for power narrows to but oneother person and the duel endures for a lifetime as mateattempts to destroy mate in that long wrangling forsupremacy which is called marriage. Most human beings,however, prefer the short duet, lasting anywhere from fiveminutes with a stranger to five months with a lover. Certainlythe supreme moments occur only in those brief exchangeswhen each party, absorbed by private fantasy, believes heis achieving mastery over the other. The sailor who standsagainst a wall, looking down at the bobbing head of thegobbling queen, regards himself as master of the situation;yet it is the queen (does not that derisive epithet suggestprimacy and dominion?) who has won the day, extractingfrom the flesh of the sailor his posterity, the one element inevery man which is eternal and (a scientific fact) cellularlyresembles not at all the rest of the body. So to the queengoes the ultimate elixir of victory, that which was not meantfor him but for the sailor's wife or girl or simply Woman.Much of my interest in the capture of Rusty is the thoughtthat he is so entirely involved with Mary-Ann. That givesvalue to what I mean to seize. If it were freely offered, Iwould reject it. Fortunately he hates me which excites meand so my triumph, when it comes, will be all the sweeter.