Category Archives: Underwear

Continuing our New York adventures, I present The Solitude of a Hotel Bathroom. In a city teeming with millions of people, pockets of solitary secrecy still survive, places where the mood can be sullen or celebratory and no one is any the unhappier. But as Levar Burton once put it, ‘You don’t have to take my word for it.’ And who is better at words and navel-gazing than Balzac?

“When no relationships exist which call for minor concessions in dress and deportment, we lose the habit of accepting inconvenience for the sake of others and a deterioration sets in which affects our inner and outer selves.” ~ Honore de Balzac

“Indeed, ridicule is most often incurred by the carrying of fine sentiment, good point and special ability to extremes. A haughtiness which is not toned down by intercourse with polite society takes on a certain rigidity when it can only find outlet in trivialities instead of expanding in contact with people capable of lofty feeling.” ~ Honore de Balzac

“Which of us has not observed the eccentricities peculiar to polite society, the capriciousness of its judgements and the extravagance of its demands? To some persons everything is permissible; their conduct may go far beyond the bounds of reason; all their actions are seemly; they are justified by all and sundry. But there are others to who society is incredibly severe: they must make no mistakes, never falter or even utter a foolish remark. They are like venerated statues which are removed from their pedestals once the winter frost has nipped off a finger or chipped a nose; they are allowed no human feelings and must for ever remain god-like and perfect.” ~ Honore de Balzac

“This young man is characteristic of our times. When one has no particular aptitude for anything, one takes to the pen and poses as a talented person.” ~ Honore de Balzac

“Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.” ~ Madonna

The pursuit of love seemed to need the cultivation of indifference. The deep connection between them was so secret that at times it was hard to believe it existed. He wondered if anyone knew – had even a flicker of a guess, an intuition blinked away by its own absurdity. How could anyone tell? He felt there must always be hints of a secret affair, some involuntary tenderness or respect, a particular way of not noticing each other… He wondered if it ever would be known, or if they would take the secret to the grave.

– Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty

There was nothing this man could do to help him. None of his friends could save him. The time came, and they learned the news in the room they were in, at a certain moment in their planned and continuing day. They woke the next morning, and after a while it came back to them…

He seemed to fade pretty quickly. He found himself yearning to know of their affairs, their successes, the novels and the new ideas that the few who remembered him might say he never knew, he never lived to find out. It was the morning’s vision of the empty street, but projected far forward, into afternoons like this one decades hence, in the absent hum of their own business. The emotion was startling.

– Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty

It was a sort of terror, made up of emotions from every stage of his short life, weaning, homesickness, envy and self-pity; but he felt that the self-pity belonged to a larger pity. It was a love of the world that was shockingly unconditional. He stared back at the house, and then turned and drifted on. He looked in bewilderment at number 24, the final house with its regalia of stucco swags and bows. It wasn’t just this street corner but the fact of a street corner at all that seemed, in the light of the moment, so beautiful.

– Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty