Dinner had been an overly long affair, the mutton greasy and steeped in a too sweet sauce, which, naturally, had been overly peppered with the cayenne beloved of the Anglo-Indian fraternity. The weather had added nothing to the ordeal of dinner. It was the time of year, before the rains come, when Ceylon is hot and humid and in which all of nature, and all of humanity, wait languidly, expectantly for the pregnant clouds to break and to wash away the decaying matter of the dry season. It is the season when that peculiar tropical reek of fecundity and decay reaches to an almost unbearable pitch and man and beast alike must collude in the pretence that it is so unnoticeable as to be unremarkable.
Fortunately, it was late enough for the mosquitoes to have departed and we had been able to escape the oppressive heat of the director's dining room for the relative cool of his bungalow's veranda. We were in a variety of positions in deckchairs and on cushions, had loosened our belts and lit cigars or pipes, according to the preferences of the assembled men of the company. I, at least, was still suffering the after-effects of our uncomfortable dinner and fit for little more than to listen to the maddening shrieks of the monkeys marking out their territory and communicating the devil knows what to each other. I have no doubt that I was not alone in my distemper, for no one made the slightest murmur of objection when Marlow lent forward, took a puff on his cigar and asked if he'd ever told us about his encounter with a dark whore in Calcutta.
"I say 'whore'," he continued, "but, of course, though perhaps there is no of course about it, I never bought her services. It was much stranger than that sort of transaction. There is something straightforward about sex with a prostitute. It fits. It makes sense. A man has needs. He wants something to envelop his penis from time to time, something to open and engulf it, something soft and slick to slide and slip around it, and, when the need has become too much, there's the release in the spurting of hot semen. Now, a woman has the very thing to satiate a man's desire. It makes sense, you see, walking down through Saint Catherine's docks or round the back of the Observatory at Greenwich, finding some, soft, pliable woman with hips and breasts to suit your taste. You negotiate a price, head to her lodgings, you take your clothes off, maybe she plays with your balls a little, scratches her fingernails along the shaft and round the tip of your hardening penis, but really that's just for show -- a little preliminary -- before she bends forward over the creaking bed, exposing round, dimpled, white buttocks to you, so that the swell of genitals, perhaps shaved or perhaps covered in hair, is there inviting you to slip your erection in and out, the curve of your belly bumping against solid, ivory coloured buttocks. She moans a bit to let you know that she can feel you pushing your cock into her void, but that's another charade, something to speed things up whilst you enjoy the sensation in your cock, the squeaking bedsprings, and breasts bouncing like udders as you slap your hips against a broad backside. Quickly enough you finish, pull out, wipe yourself down, button up your trousers and your shirt. You pay and head back to your boat or lodgings, or, maybe, refreshed, you go about your business, perhaps you hunt out the chandler to see about some replacement tackle, and she, I don't know, I suppose she puts her uniform back on, settles her hair and returns to her station to wait for the next man who needs to pay her for her services."
"Ah youth! We are all well out of it now, but it's simple, don't you see? It's sordid, but it's necessary. Sex is ugly when you come to think of it. Why were Adam and Eve ashamed of their nakedness? It's not because once they had eaten the forbidden fruit, they realised that the bodies were beautiful. Just the opposite, I'm afraid, what they realised is that their bodies were ugly and uncontrollable. Adam, the poor man, takes a bite of the apple and looks at Eve. Now he sees eyes, and a nose, plump, red lips, belly, rounded thighs; the lines of her body all drawing attention to her pubic mound. Suddenly he is aware that he wants to put his mouth on Eve's nipple and fill his whole mouth with her soft, white, plump breast. Then he looks down as his penis, something he's never noticed before, is up, standing to attention, practically quivering, demanding it be touched. And what of Eve? She now knows what Adam wants to do with this thick, angry solid thing that, as she is now aware, she has only seen him use to micturate. It must have disgusted her. Maybe it doesn't happen quite like that, perhaps it takes a bit longer for Adam to realise what he wants to do to Eve's body, even so, he is now aware that his skin itches, that he has a bit of soreness around his anus where he hasn't wiped properly, so he scratches himself, but now his finger smells in a way which disgusts him and he must pollute the river of bliss in order to wash himself clean of the impurity."
"No, we clothe ourselves not because we are too attractive, but because we are too ugly. Somehow we have to find a way to keep some purity in a debased world. That is the role of women, you see. We men, we fetch and carry, make and destroy. We have to be of this admixed material out of which the world is constructed, so that we can eat and reproduce and keep the whole, great biological process rolling on. I've often thought that it is this requirement to be of the material world that gives us men, when we're young and labouring, this insatiable need for sexual release. Women are, by and large, kept out of it. We must strive to keep them that way. They need to be covered up, naive and foolish, full of the high ideals. No man who ever, alone in the dead of night, has succumbed to the overwhelming need to tug himself off and soiled his bedclothes with the wasted seed of his onanistic fury can ever sincerely embrace the noble visions of our day. All men have masturbated, and so no man can truly be a democrat or believe in bringing the light of progress to the dark places of the earth. Our unthinkable lust forever bars us from that Eden of hope for a rational world. It is women who must be the principal of rationality and it is they who must carry the seed of a world, free from biological imperatives, a place where we are able to live a well ordered, well-regulated life. Because that purity can only come from ignorance, us men must constantly labour to keep women safe from our lust. That damned lust governs us -- that's the problem -- so, some women must minister to our needs, but at least we can keep that clean enough by making it a business transaction. Of course, we must rail against prostitution, but it's hypocrisy of course. It is she, the prostitute, who, by at least elevating sex to the level of financial exchange, preserves our civilisation from descent into animalistic savagery."
"I say that gentlemen, but, I must, in truth admit that there is another way. We are all men who, one way or another, have followed the sea. We know what it's like to be cooped up, alone, staring at that incomprehensible, maddening, ever receding horizon, the inscrutable face of the waters reflecting those damned winds, constantly examined for the slightest sign of change and meaning as if as if man could somehow understand the irrational. Of course, on a boat, you have to keep an eye on the weather, but it's another fiction, isn't it? There's no hope of understanding it. Really, one minute you are lazily, nudging forward through the placid waters, waters that seem harmless and friendly as they reflect the blue sky and the burning orb of the sun and the next the seas have darkened and the storm is lashing upon you, the futile, incomprehensible fury of the wild tossing and pitching your too tiny hunk of tin whilst you do your best to hang on and not vomit. There's nothing for it in a real typhoon. Is not skill that keeps the craft afloat and preserves the souls of every man aboard. It's blind luck, I say, gentlemen."
