Free Spread by Barry Malzberg Page B

mad by the sight of men far uglier than he in the company of attractive women who are obviously having sex with them.
    Our newspaper is “probably the only breath of fresh air in my life at the present time because I see in your pages something that I have never seen in any other publication or admitted in public, namely that there seem to be a large number of men in my condition, men seemingly normal in appearance and manner, who simply cannot get a woman and for whom masturbation is their only sexual outlet. That you can take for granted the fact that this is so and that masturbation is a perfectly sane activity under the circumstances gives me hope; for the first time you have begun to show me that I am not the only one in my condition, and if this much is so, then there mast be another conclusion: that there is hope. No one could have the philosophy expressed in your newspaper unless someone working there had been through the same thing and had passed through it. When I was eighteen people told me not to worry because some people matured socially later than others and eighteen was very young. When I was twenty-three I reminded myself that many men had their first real involvements in their late twenties. Now at twenty-eight, the only thing I find I can remind myself is that George Bernard Shaw did not have sex with a woman until he was over thirty, but this somehow is no comfort to me. What I want to ask you is this: how can I get out of this? How can I find a girl who will have sex with me and who is not repulsively ugly? I am perfectly willing to get married if that is the price of sex; in fact I am dying to get married, but since I cannot establish a relationship with a girl for even a second date I obviously find it very difficult. Can you help me? I promise that if something changes in my life and if I am able to stop masturbating for release, I will not stop buying your newspaper. I will in fact buy it faithfully, all the time, as a reminder of my origins and a constant reminder to me that no matter what happens, where I go, how things work out, how much I am suffering, I yet have much to be grateful for and will never suffer in this way again.”
    I looked over the letter for a long time and then I dug up an envelope from the drawer, addressed it back to him (as expected he included his full name and address and I settled quickly with the phone directory that it was real) and stuffed it back into the envelope. Then I took a sheet of letterhead stationary and typed this note to him:
    Dear Sir:
    I have read your letter with much interest. Your condition is ineradicable, your suffering is eternal and there is nothing that can be done to change your circumstances. Certain men are doomed to suffer in this way, just as others are born with clubfeet or low intelligence. It is your cross to bear. Nothing will ever change for you as long as you live. You will never have a woman as long as you live. At thirty-five you will still be standing on pavements outside the Hotel New Yorker on Saturday nights, watching the girls go in by twos and threes and wondering how such attractive girls could obviously be lonely and desperate, but these wonderings will not enable you to get any nearer to them than you are at that moment. Whole generations of girls with whom you tried and failed will get married, bear children and be divorced while you remain outside the Hotel New Yorker. At fifty-one you will be trying to look forty-six with a flower in your lapel as you go to a college graduates mixer in a Fifth Avenue hotel, and when you go to a girl to speak to her, something within you will unwind and you will be without words. At sixty-five you will still be jerking off although by then far, far less and more as a matter of habit than anything else. Like certain old married couples, you will obligatorily engage in sex with yourself once or twice a month just to prove that you have the capacity which you will deceive yourself into thinking