My Years With Proust - Day 632

  Associated now with the memory of my love, Albertine's physical and social attributes, in spite of which I had loved her, oriented my desire on the contrary towards what at one time it would least readily have chosen: dark-haired girls of the lower middle class. Indeed what was beginning partially to revive in me was that immense desire which my love for Albertine had been unable to assuage, that immense desire to know life which I used to feel on the roads round Balbec, in the streets of Paris, that desire which had caused me so much suffering when, supposing it to exist in Albertine's heart also, I had sought to deprive her of the means of satisfying it with anyone by myself.  Now that I was able to endure the idea of her desire, since that idea was once aroused by my own desire, these two immense appetites coincided; I would have liked us to be able to indulge them together, saying to myself: "That girl would have appealed to her," and led by this sudden detour to think of her and of her death, I felt too unhappy to be able to pursue my own desire any further.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 564

Marcel finds himself desiring women, "dark-haired girls of the lower middle class," that he would not normally desire because he knew that they would interest Albertine.  Thinking back on his odd request to Andree that he would like to watch her and one of Albertine's friends together - and his hiring of the two laundry-girls to have sex with each other while he watched - we now have this admission: "Now that I was able to endure the idea of her desire, since that idea was once aroused by my own desire, these two immense appetites coincided; I would have liked us to be able to indulge them together, saying to myself: "That girl would have appealed to her. . .'" The other day we asked ourselves whether Marcel's actions request to Andree and his actions with the laundry-girls was indicative of his generally pervy nature, or a deeper desire to try and understand Albertine, her own desire, and her secret life.  It seems to me that this latest revelation favors the latter more than the former.  That said, I keeping thinking back to Proust's own sexuality, and how so many of these statements about Albertine's homosexual or bisexual desires are really statements about the author's own desires.