"What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary "What uneasiness lies in being loved." Takeichi uttered that idiotic compliment, that women would fall for me, because I had been kind enough to clean the discharge from his ears. My reaction at the time was merely to blush and smile, without saying a word in return but, to tell the truth, I already had a faint inkling of what his prophecy implied. No, to speak in those terms of the
atmosphere engendered by so vulgar an expression as "to fall for" is to betray a precocity of sentiment not even worthy of the dialogue of the romantic lead in a musical comedy; I certainly was not moved by the farcical, self-satisfied emotions suggested by the phrase "to have a faint inkling." I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male. In my immediate family women outnumbered the men, and many of my cousins were girls. There was also the maidservant of the "crime." I think it would be no exaggeration to any that my only playmates while I was growing up were girls. Nevertheless, it was with very much the sensation of treading on thin ice that I associated with these girls. I could almost never guess their motives. I was in the dark; at times I made indiscreet mistakes which brought me painful wounds. These wounds, unlike the scars from the lashing a man might give, cut inwards very deep, like an internal hemorrhage, bringing intense discomfort. Once inflicted it was extremely hard to recover from such wounds. Women led me on only to throw me aside; they mocked and tortured
