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excerpt from the short story "old complaints revisited" by susan sontag (from i, etcetera):

the translator is on the verge of talking about sex.

instead of going on about the moral will, i'd rather talk about sex. but there's an obstacle here -- of my own making. i have told you i am married. i have mentioned an adultery. but i don't want to go into too much detail. i'm afraid of your losing the sense of my problem as a general one.

that's why i have made a point of not making it clear whether i'm a man or a woman. and i don't think i will - because, either way, it might subtract from the point of what i'm trying to explain. think about it. if i'm a man, the problem stands but i become a type. i'm too representative, almost an allegorical figure. if i'm a woman, i survive as a singular individual but my dilemma shrinks: it reflects the insecurities of the second sex. if i tell you i'm a woman, you'll write off my problem - still the same problem!- as merely "feminine."

assume i'm a man, if that makes it easier for you to understand the problem as a general one. a man, say, in his mid-thirties, tall, good-looking, sallow, thickening in the waist, etc., who usually wears a suit and tie. lo and behold, everyman. and lee and nicky are women. nicky is probably a blonde, chews gum, and takes a larger size bra than lee. nicky reads rock magazines and smokes pot; lee wears glasses. but it doesn't have to be like that. i could be an adolescent-looking woman in my mid-thirties, with long straight hair, small breasts, fair skin, and nail-bitten hands, who wears jeans and button-down shirts. if i am a woman, lee can be my over-worked, gently reared, soft-spoken husband, and nicky my proletarian, paint-bespattered, beer-swilling, rough-talking lover. in either version, you'll assume, the sex is livelier with nicky than it is with lee. unfortunately, i have to agree with you.

as a translator, i'm aware that this may be the only language in the world that allows me to leave the matter open. (except for having to steer away from the telltale "his" or "her," it shouldn't be hard.) all other languages i know are saturated with gender. a little triumph. i have the pleasure of writing, myself, something that can't be translated. . .

i am reluctant to describe myself at all, for fear that too many particularities will make you take my problem less seriously. but i can describe nicky to you, and that way i'll also, by inversion, be describing myself. nicky has many qualities that i signally lack - for example, an unwillingness to judge others. nothing makes nicky indignant.

in bed this steamy summer, i tried to arouse nicky's sympathy for my longing to quit the organization. all i got for an answer was a smile, although not a callous smile. (it was certainly not the typical response of a nonmember, glad to hear the bad news about us.)

actually, what i wanted to be - when i was a child - was a saint. with the full awareness of how ridiculous this was. people who want, desperately, often want to be either angels or saints. unfortunately, angels are not saints. and saints are not angels. nicky (fortunately?) was an angel.

once, nicky explained to me how it was possible to get through the day without judging. the art is in not letting any time elapse between events and one's acting upon them. a judgment, said nicky, is a cry of impotence. when people can't do anything to change a situation, what's left but to judge it? but isn't judging necessary in order to act, i asked, when we are acting rationally? isn't there, in all our acts, at least an implicit judgment? "no," nicky replied. judgment is no more implicit in acts, according to nicky, than impotence is implicit in potency.

as for judging oneself - one of my favorite occupations - you can imagine what nicky thought of that.

the portrait nicky started painting toward the end of our affair did not judge me. it observed me, it recorded me - in my mid-thirties, tall and well formed, etc, or with long hair and small breasts and nail-bitten hands, it doesn't matter. . . i kept wanting nicky to add something. "what more do you want?" nicky asked. "it's the face," i replied. "i'm not as calm as you portray me."

"do you want me to paint doubt?" asked nicky. "grief?" as nicky left the canvas to get a beer from the refrigerator, i shook my head. "i want you to show someone in the process of becoming someone else. but do it without making the portrait any less linear and figurative. don't let the paint drip or smudge or blur."

"you can't become other than what you are. only more or less what you are. you can't walk over your own feet."

"i can, i can, nicky," i murmured. "that's just what i have to do."

nicky was right, of course. but that didn't prevent me from returning to lee. it wasn't guilt that brought me back. it was a very peculiar kind of homesickness: a longing for the word. nicky and i could have a certain kind of laconic, aphoristic conversation. but the full-blooded verbal union that i had with lee finally counted for more. returning to lee, i was plunged back into the warm bath of talk that i'll never be able to do without.