I had always subscribed to the much-vaunted theory that everyone is bisexual, and that circumstance turns us toward one gender or the other. I had thought then that if one could triumph over circumstance, the difference between sex with a man and sex with a woman would be like the difference between sex with a short person and sex with a tall person. But for me, the two experiences proved so different that the use of one word to refer to them both seemed hilarious. The Eskimos cannot be more puzzled by the huge generality of the English word “snow” than I was by the generality of the word “sex.” To feel that one kind of sexuality should exclude the other saddened me, for I cannot pretend that I did not still long in some ways for Nick; even as I lay with Helen, images of men ran through my mind. It was not like choosing between apples and oranges so much as like choosing between the mountains and the sea, whose beauty is clearest in their contrast. That you cannot be monogamous and encompass both genders—this is one of life’s gross cruelties. With men, I had felt something urgent and terrible that built up and then broke, suddenly and entirely, and then was over. With Helen, I felt something constant and slow and continuous, something that grew by slow degrees, that seemed to wane only to return again more strongly. Perhaps it was more profound; it may also be the case that there was less of me in it.