Julian had strong feelings about love, so strong that sometimes he wondered where they came from. Certainly not from his parents, nor from his contemporaries at college or the desirable girls he sometimes managed to date after parties.
Wherever from, he knew the truth about love as surely as he knew the truth about god, socialism, Zen and the films of Fassbinder.
Love was Sex plus Affection – A+B= C – and it therefore seemed to him that the purest and most effective way of sampling both must be separately, before compromising each by accepting them together in the name of Marriage.
That was the intellectual base.
In other words, only Sex unclouded by affection could fully disclose its mysteries and push back its frontiers.
At first furtively, and later with increasing confidence, Julian began exploring the world of one-night stands.
Quite early on, he felt that these forays called for a special uniform, neither formal nor his usual jacket-and-jeans. His Mr Hyde outfit, he called it – dark-blue shirt with button-down collar, no tie, grey flannels and blue zipper jacket – and in it he felt equipped to deal with whatever odd situations arose out of his investigations.
By no means did he always meet with success, of course.
Julian lived with his parents and had no freedom to say ‘come back to my place’, nor was his grant lavish enough to be able to book hotel rooms. Furthermore, not even London’s West End, he found, was so full of girls who shared his views that fulfillment was inevitable.