[Redbook1:219-220][19710817:1915b]{A
trip to Scotland
[continued]}[17th August 1971]
17th August 1971
7.15pm [continued]
I was
slightly apprehensive about staying with the Ms but as it happened I need not
have worried. No letter was mentioned or
alluded to; nevertheless from L’s behaviour I think it may have been received,
and from the way things were organised it is possible that his parents saw it
and put a potentially unpleasant interpretation on it, as he did not. In one sense they were right: P is too
attractive a child to be risked. Everyone who comes into contact with him and
loves children must love him as an ideal child.
He is bright; he is polite; he is fair (God knows where that came from,
but the [children] all have it) and
he is slight (malnutrition again?). That
politeness is infuriating -- it gives so few clues as to how he feels, and what
he thinks.
I think
that P has in his turn become a ‘symbol’ of my exploding awareness of and love
for people since 1969. This has less to
do with sex: I have been in love with girls often enough in my life, and always
hopelessly -- I was too shy.
Nevertheless sex is part of the ‘social scene’, or is one of the social
urges. I do not feel any desire to have
“sexual” relations with any boy or man -- apart from the unsatisfactory
physical situation, the idea is ludicrous.
But I would very much like to have children of my own, and I would have liked
-- knowing very well that such an idea is ridiculous -- to be in a position to
treat P as my own son. Within
reason and very obvious limits, what a man or woman does for love of their own
son or daughter should be their business; but then, why the distinction
between their own children and someone else's?
As a people we are frightened of affection; I suspect that if I had
known more love as a child I should not find the situation so confusing now.
What we
should fear is to go through the social and sexual rituals without the love
which is the meaningful part.
[PostedBlogger31082013]
