It was not on that evening, however, that my cruel mistrust began to take solid form. No, to reveal it here and now, although the incident did not occur until some weeks later, it arose out of a remark made by Cottard. On the day in question Albertine and her friends had wanted to drag me to the casino at Incarville where, to my ultimate good fortune, I would not have joined them (having decided to pay a visit to Mme Verdurin who had invited me several times), had I not been held up at Incarville itself by a train breakthrough which required a considerable time to repair. As I strolled up and down waiting for the men to finish working at it, I found myself all of a sudden face to face with Dr. Cottard, who had come to Incarville to see a patient. . . . I was meaning to go off with Cottard in a moment to the Verdurins', when I finally declined his offer, seized by an irresistible desire to stay with Albertine. The fact was that I had just heard her laugh. And this laugh at once evoked the flesh-pink, fragrant surfaces with which it seemed to carry with it, pungent, sensual and revealing as the scent of geraniums, a few almost tangible and mysteriously reveling particles.
One of the girls, a stranger to me, sat down at the piano, and Andree invited Albertine to waltz with her. Happy in theought that I was going to remain in this little casino with these girls, I remarked to Cottard how well they danced together. But he, taking the professional point of view of a doctor and with an ill-breeding which overlooked the fact that they were my friends, although he must have seen me greet them, replied: "Yes, but parents are very rash to allow their daughters to form such habits. I should certainly never let mine come here. Are they pretty, though? I can't make out their features. There now, look," he went on, pointing to Albertine and Andree who were waltzing slowly, tightly clasped together, "I've left my glasses behind and I can't see very well, but they are certainly keenly aroused. It's not sufficiently known that women derive most excitement through their breasts. And theirs, as you see, are touching completely." And indeed the contact between the breasts of Andree and of Albertine had been constant. I do not know whether they heard or guessed Cottard's observation, but they drew slightly apart while continuing to waltz. At that moment Andree said something to Albertine, who laughed with the same deep and penetrating laugh that I had heard before. But the turmoil it roused in me this time was a painful one; Albertine appeared to be conveying by it, to be making Andree share, some secret and voluptuous thrill.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 812-814
I've stated before that I'm always amazed/amused/incredulous the Marcel proposes that he is not jealous, or suggests that he had not been jealous up to that point, and then turns around and displays marked jealousy. I'm suppose I should be amazed/amused/incredulous, because I'm a firm believer that most of us have precious little understanding of our true nature. I used to joke with my classes that I have an almost profound bordering on mystic understanding of why people do things, with the one obvious exception of myself, in which case I might as well be discussing quantum physics for my ability to make a calculated guess. Here Dr. Cottard, basing his observation on his medical knowledge, proposed that Andree and Albertine are dancing much too closely, and that "parents are very rash to allow their daughters to form such habits." He follows it up by adding, "It's not sufficiently known that women derive most excitement through their breasts. And theirs, as you see, are touching completely." To top it off, the two women, apparently sending the conversation between the two men, laughed and seemed to share "some secret and voluptuous thrill." This is fascinating on several levels, not all of which I'll pursue at the moment because, in classic Proustian fashion, this reflection continues for several more pages - and because I'm having folks over to watch Local Hero on one of my movie nights. At this points it's enough to point out that reading it made me think of my time in Abu Dhabi, and how I taught a couple girls who were clearly more than just friends, and would practically rub each up in class. In the Emirates, where women lived a very isolated existence, the girls formed intense friendships which, obviously, were occasionally so much more. We all need to be touched, emotionally and physically, and this becomes especially true when the options are so totally limited. It also reminded me of how the men and women, in segregated classes, would ask me questions about the other group as if they were a totally alien species. Dr. Cottard's comments, and his observations that it's "not sufficiently known that women derive most excitement through their breasts" reflects a similar distance, although here it's based less on total isolation, but rather, I would argue, an accepted societal belief that female pleasure was not particularly important.
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