Imminent death is supposed to have an aphrodisiacal effect. It certainly didn’t this time. I didn’t want a woman. I didn’t even want a good meal or a glass of whiskey. All I really wanted was to get the hell out of the cage.

“But,” he continued, “there will not be a woman for you. It was decided that you are a capitalist imperialist dog and a white devil, and that your seed must not be mingled with the love juices of our women. It is what they decided.”

They again. I started to say how good it was of him to tell me, but he was not interested in such pap. He had more important things on his mind, and I was in every sense a captive audience.

“I have never had a woman,” he said.

“Never?”

“Never in all my days. I have, however, spent many hours thinking about such a thing.”

“I can imagine.”

“I look at the women,” he said dreamily. “I watch them walking, you know, the shapes of their bodies, the legs, the tilt of their heads, the tinkling sounds of their voices. Like little brass bells. I think about them a great deal.” He fell momentarily silent, perhaps to think about them some more. His brown eyes were very large, and beads of sweat formed on his smooth forehead. “There are times,” he said suddenly, “when I can honestly think of nothing else.”

“And you have never had one.”

“Never.”

I felt like the Playboy Advisor. “Well, why don’t you, uh, go and get one?”

“How?”

“Well-”

“Women do not like me,” he said. “And when I am near one of them, I become nervous, my hands sweat, and my mouth goes dry, a dryness in the back of my mouth and in my throat, and words die in my mouth like fish flapping themselves to death upon the shore, and my knees turn to water, and my head spins…”