Men and Supermen

Sexual Types

NARCISSISTS

ONE OF THE great misconceptions is that women don’t like very good-looking men. They do—the best lovers are either men who cater for and play on your fantasies or who are so beautiful you don’t need to fantasise at all. The trouble is that beautiful men aren’t usually interested in women.

You also have to spend so much time jostling with them for the mirror, telling them how marvellous they look, and knowing they’re only gazing passionately into your eyes to admire their reflection in your dark glasses. And because they feel secure on the basis of their looks, they’re inclined to be apathetic in bed.

They are also a bit boring about keeping fit, not eating or drinking much and getting up early to do press-ups. The only press-ups a man ought to do should be on one.

They usually have portraits of themselves in the attic getting older and older, and marry plain women because they don’t like competition.

FAIRIES

Every girl should have one at the bottom of her.

One is inundated with so much improperganda these days that it’s easy to think everyone is queer. You can be quite sure, though, if a young man comes floating up to you with flowing locks, gaudy shirt, matching flowered tie, a mass of necklaces, rings on each finger like a knuckleduster, bells on his toes, clouds of scent, and says “Hullo Baby” in a soft gentle voice, that he’s not queer.

Everyone thinks all actors are queer. That’s why the straight ones rush round making it with women to prove they’re not. I always wonder what the gay ones think when they have to kiss girls on stage: “Shut your eyes, and think of Equity,” I suppose.

People automatically assume that hairdressers and antique dealers are queer, but this is no longer so. Since both professions became big business, the butch has moved in.

THE LOUSE BEAUTIFUL

The toast is absent fiends.

Lice Beautiful have accounts at the sex shop, seen-it-all-before eyes, and a million light years of sexual experience under their belts. They also smell of sulphur and brimstone rather than aftershave.

The bounder will love you and leave you, but he’ll never put a tongue wrong while he’s loving you. If he stuck around you’d find he’d got hidden shallows, that he is the kind of man who has to keep on making love to women because he can’t think of anything to say to them in between.

“I’ll definitely see you before the weekend, or after the weekend,” he says as he whisks off in his Lotus Elan after a night of passion. Next morning he’ll send you two dozen red herrings.

He seldom likes other men, his philosophy being like Byron’s, a compound of misanthropy and voluptuousness.

“Hate thy neighbour and love thy neighbour’s wife.”

TOUCHERS

Excellent well, thou art a fleshmonger.

Touchers cannot keep their hands off you, they must touch flesh and are not safe in taxis. If they’re not pinching your bottom, they’re propelling you across the road, or putting their hands round your waist six inches too high. If you remonstrate with them they give you a lecture on the importance of grope therapy, and you end up feeling you’re both frigid and riddled with inhibitions.

GIGOLOS

Gigolos have the sort of hair styles that make older men snort, pencil in their moustaches every morning and cruise around with For Hire signs on their foreheads. They walk with bent knees because they’re so weighed down with presents, gold rings, cufflinks, watches, necklaces, and stoppings.

CASANOVA—the Great Lover.

I’ve always wondered why Casanova himself was so successful. It must be something to do with stamina: anyone who can keep up a diary let alone anything else for twelve volumes, must have remarkable staying power. Another secret of their success is blanket coverage. They ask every woman they meet to go to bed with them, and though they get their faces slapped fairly often, they also notch up some conspicuous victories. Others concentrate on ugly girls. Nostalgie de la boot, I suppose.

“Harry—for God’s sake not now!”

But how many women do you chalk up before you become a Casanova? My husband says 43, which sounds a somewhat arbitrary figure, but he refuses to elucidate. He believes Casanova provides a useful social service, claiming that the best women, like Rolls-Royces, should be delivered to the customer fully run in.

Reputation helps, of course. Once a man has established himself as Mr Rat, women can’t wait for him to come along, for they see themselves as the saviour who halts the Rake’s Progress. Or as one libertine said of his ex-wife: “She complained I was too well endowed and went on too long, a remark which did me no disservice with her friends.” But what motive drives the compulsive womaniser on to fresher and fresher feels? Like the sportsman who sees a duck flying across the sky and can’t resist taking a pot at it, some men have bigger sexual appetites, I suppose, or are frightened of commitment and find safety in little numbers.

The difference between Casanovas and the Louse Beautiful type is that Casanovas like women and enjoy making love to them. “I love the sex,” they cry, like Macheath. “Nothing unbends the mind like them.” Whereas Lice Beautiful only take pleasure in conquest. They regard women like Kleenex tissues, to be cast aside once they’ve been used, or like the pilot who, as the 109th Messerschmitt plunges flaming to the ground, leans calmly out of the cockpit and chalks another swastika on his fuselage.

Some men are promiscuous because they’re unhappy, or frightened of growing old and losing their pulling power; others like the brinkmanship of living dangerously.

But promiscuity feeds upon itself. If two women in a man’s life are cross with him because he’s not giving them enough attention, he invariably moves off in search of approbation and a clean slate, which sets up a chain reaction. Nobody too arouses more disapproval tinged with envy among other men than a Casanova. Empty pots, they mutter darkly, latent homosexual, only doing it because he hates women. No wonder Casanovas get a bit twitchy about their images.

“I’m not promiscuous,” said one outraged libertine. “I just like girls.”

VOYEURS

Beautiful people looking through beautiful peep-holes.