“And what will the real future have to be like?”
“God knows! I can feel something inside me, all mixed up with a lot of rage. But what it really amounts to, I don’t know.”
“Shall I tell you?” she said, looking into his face. “Shall I tell you what you have that other men don’t have, and that will make the future? Shall I tell you?”
“Tell me then,” he replied.
“It’s the courage of your own tenderness, that’s what it is: like when you put your hand on my tail and say I’ve got a pretty tail.”
The grin came flickering on his face.
“That!” he said.
Then he sat thinking.
“Ay!” he said. “You’re right. It’s that really. It’s that all the way through. I knew it with the men. I had to be in touch with them, physically, and not go back on it. I had to be bodily aware of them and a bit tender to them, even if I put ’em through hell. It’s a question of awareness, as Buddha said. But even he fought shy of the bodily awareness, and that natural physical tenderness, which is the best, even between men; in a proper manly way. Makes ’em really manly, not so monkeyish! Ay! it’s tenderness, really; it’s cunt-awareness. Sex is really only touch, the closest of all touch. And it’s touch we’re afraid of. We’re only half-conscious, and half alive. We’ve got to come alive and aware. Especially the English have got to get into touch with one another, a bit delicate and a bit tender. It’s our crying need.”
She looked at him.
“Then why are you afraid of me?” she said.