My Years With Proust - Day 458

"What, you didn't notice how distressed he became when you mentioned her," went on M. de Charlus, who liked to show that he had experience of women, and spoke of the sentiment they inspire as naturally as if it was what he himself habitually felt.  But a certain equivocally paternal tone in addressing all young men - in spite of his exclusive affection for Morel - gave the lie to the womanizing views which he expressed.  "Oh! these children," he said in a shrill, mincing, sing-song voice, "one has to teach them everything, they're as innocent as newborn babes, they can't even tell when a man is in love with a woman.  I was more fly than that at your age," he added, for he liked to use the expressions of the underworld, perhaps because they appeared to him, perhaps so as not to appear, by avoiding them, to admit that he consorted with people whose current vocabulary they were.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 1127

I culled out this section for two simple and pretty superficial reasons.  First off, it's another example of M. de Charlus struggling with societal expectations of sexuality, but also clearly increasingly letting down his guard around friends. And I have to admit that I laughed at his statement that "I was more fly than that at your age."  And I will avoid the obvious popular culture reference joke.  I am interested in how that managed to be one of "the expressions of the underworld." More research necessary.