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Apart from stressing Colmenares's incapacity to remain impersonally detached from his own report, the narratorial aside cited above also insinuates the sexist bias which saturates it. Still, Colmenares's sexist prejudice is not immediately patent. Conversely, it would first appear that he himself assumes a critical stand towards the male chauvinism which, perceived from his own standpoint, distinguishes the Mexican men with whom Ethel socializes. Moreover, his behaviour towards Ethel ostensibly attests to his being an odd number within this male-centred community, a position which is verified by the fact that everybody 'laughs' and 'jeers' at him because he is constantly at Ethel's service and yet fails to obtain any sexual "dividends" in return for his services (p. 709-10).

Colmenares's exceptionality is nevertheless a matter o f appearances, for in actual fact he, like the rest o f the male community he so portrays, also entertains outrageously sexist ideas about women. Furthermore, notwithstanding his ('[grudging]') acknowledgement of Cuesta's brutal behaviour towards Ethel (p. 702) he reveals himself as being no different from Cuesta.

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Even before Ethel comes to the centre o f his narrative, Colmenares tacitly rearticulates the sexist double standard which associates women's sexual assertiveness with evil. For example, those women who are attracted towards Cuesta become contemptible '[besiegers)' in Colmenares's discourse (p. 704). At the same time, he does not particularly object to those men who want to make of Ethel their '"mistress'", nor does he appear to censure their violent conduct towards her:

'In Mexico, women must run in the dust like the Indian women, with meek little heads. American women are not very popular. Their energy, and their power to make other people do things, are not in request ... So Ethel found not a cold shoulder, but a number of square, fat backs turned to her ... General Isidor Garabay danced with her, and expected her immediately to become his mistress. But, as she said, she was having none o f that. ... They would, perhaps, have carried her off and shared her as mistress, except for the fear of trouble with the American Government' (p. 707).37

Taken in isolation this excerpt would convey Colmenares's ironic stance towards both parties — Ethel and the Mexican men. Yet the context brings to light that he virtually condones the male community’s approach to Ethel: for just as the male community perceives in Ethel's sociability a sexual sign, so does Colmenares interpret Ethel's friendliness towards him as a sign of 'some part of her [wanting him] to make love to her' (p. 709). Then, like the Mexican men who expect her to become their mistress, Colmenares similarly thinks that she wants to become his mistress (p. 710). Furthermore, the Mexican men's aggressive attitude towards Ethel following their realization that she will have 'none o f that' (p. 707) parallels Colmenares's sexually violent day-dreams:

T tried to rebel against her, and p u t her in her place, as the Mexicans say — which means to them, in bed with no clothes on' (709; my emphasis).

[...]

'When I was away from her, I could think of her white, healthy body with a voluptuous shiver. I could even run to her apartment,

37. Colmenares's portrayal o f the Indian women in relation to men echoes a similar description contained in Lawrence's travel book Mornings in Mexico (1927); here the debasement of the Indian women is unequivocally condemned: 'The Aztec gods and goddesses are ... an unlovely and unlovable lot ... The goddess of love is a goddess of dirt and prostitution, a dirt-eater ... If the god wants to make love to her, she has to sprawl down in front of him, blatant and accessible'; D. H. Lawrence, Mornings in Mexico and Etruscan Places (London: Hcinemann, 1956), pp. 1-82 (p. 23). See also Lawrence's essay 'Pornography and Obscenity' (1929), where he heavily criticizes those men who '[having had] intercourse with a woman ... triumphantly feel that they have done her dirt, and now she is lower, cheaper, more contemptible than she was before'; reprinted in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers o f D. H. Lawrence, edited with an introduction by Edward D. McDonald (London: Heinemann, 1936), pp. 170-87 (p. 176).

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intending to kiss her, and make her my mistress that very night' (p. 710; my emphasis).

What is important to note is that Colmenares’s violent fantasies seem triggered by his own realization that Ethel's behaviour towards him does not comply with the phallocentric social order which he himself underwrites: an order in which women are expected to satisfy men and in which intelligence and self-assertiveness are "masculine" properties. His adherence to such a male-centred discourse comes fully to the forefront in the imagery which pervades his description of Cuesta's fight with the bull:

'Cuesta opened his arms to him with a little smile, but endearing, lovingly endearing, as a man might open his arms to a little maiden he really loves, but, really, for her to come to his body, his warm, open body, to come softly' (p. 713).

This is not an even-handed portrayal of Cuesta's carriage, but a refractory light on the sexist glance of the 'painter' — Colmenares's (p. 701) — recalling Cuesta's performance. The stakes are similar when, following this description, Colmenares adopts an omniscient mask and interprets the reaction of the female spectatorship as one of 'fascination' towards Cuesta's 'lovingly endearing' pose (p. 713).

Colmenares's sexism does not need further emphasis. What needs to be stressed instead is that his sexist bias is overtly underscored from within his own discourse inasmuch as it comes forth thoroughly overloaded with linguistic markers of subjectivity. And yet the more one probes his discourse, the more his sexism issues as a masquerade disguising an intense homo-erotic attraction towards Cuesta:

'He had the body of an Indian, very smooth, with hardly any hair, and creamy-yellow. I always thought it had something childish about it, so soft. But also, it had the same mystery as his eyes, as i f you could never touch it, as if, when you touched it, still it was not he' (pp. 703-704; my emphasis).

Certainly one reads here Colmenares's latent yearning to touch Cuesta and his utter incapacity to bring himself to do it. Then, notably, one hears him express later what is felt to be Colmenares's almost sadistic desire to 'stick' Cuesta: "'He fascinated me, but I always hated him. I would have liked to stick him as he stuck the bulls'" (p. 712). (One is reminded here of the opening bull-fight scene in The Plumed Serpent and the homo-erotic innuendoes which pervade the scene o f the bull charging against the horse, particularly as

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this scene is later on recalled by Kate.38) When Colmenares later likens the fourth bull which Cuesta tights to a 'little maiden' (p. 713), his earlier wish to "'stick'" Cuesta becomes even more sexually laden.

It should be noted that Colmenares's mixed feelings of admiration and hatred towards Cuesta parallel his equally paradoxical attitude towards Ethel. This conspicuous similitude becomes meaningful when examined in the light of these two characters’ explicit heterosexuality. It as if both characters constituted the mirror in which Colmenares saw highlighted his own sexually deviant nature. That such is indeed the case becomes evident as one examines carefully some of Colmenares's speech utterances.

In the course of Colmenares's narrative the framing narrator interrupts him in order to enquire whether Ethel '"[tried] her hand on Cuesta"', to which Colmenares responds in a confessing manner:

'Yes! That was what she did. And I was jealous. Though I couldn't bring myself to touch her, yet 1 was excruciated with jealousy, because she was interested in someone else. She was interested in someone besides myself, and my vanity suffered tortures of jealousy'(p. 711; my emphasis). The crux of the matter is that Colmenares's avowal clashes against an earlier observation:

'I wondered always why she did not take a lover. She was a woman between thirty and forty, very healthy and full of this extraordinary energy. ... She attracted men ... Yet she had no lover'(pp. 708-709).

In other words, while Colmenares does not seem to object to her taking a lover, he nonetheless resents her choosing Cuesta. One wonders, then, whether what lies behind his categorical admission to jealousy of Cuesta is in fact envy of Ethel. This would help explicate his sudden outburst: '"She took herself so seriously, it seemed to me she would deserve what she got'" (p. 720). The statement sounds outrageous, even more so in view of Ethel's fate and Colmenares's knowledge o f it at the time o f his narrating. But this ought not to be interpreted as the story's tenor. Rather, it is Colmenares's own "moral", that is to say, the utterance of a man who appears to be torn between pressing discourses of masculinity and a personal inability to meet the required standards.39

38. D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, edited by L. D. Clark (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987), pp. 5-6; p. 20.

39. The way in which male sexual behaviour is dictated by pressuring discourses of masculinity can also be pursued in another controversial story by Lawrence: 'Monkey Nuts' (composed in 1919; no subsequent

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From the argument elaborated so far it is clear that, in contrast to the other stories examined in this chapter, the heroine's conflict in 'None o f That' is mediated by a man whose very mind is immensely problematic. I have already noted that this conflicting male consciousness is divided between social pressure and natural inclination; he is, as much as Ethel, the victim of patriarchal discourses of "masculinity". This links with the issue of rape: as Lynne Segal appropriately explains,

the prevalence and problem of rape in our society stems in part from the cultural connections which are made between "masculinity" and heterosexual performance. As the gay liberation movement has argued, it ties in with the repression and ridicule of "effeminate” masculinities, and in particular with the policing of "deviant" sexual identities, such as male homosexuality.40

It is worth recalling that Colmenares is a figure of fun within the Mexican male community because he is at the service o f a woman. Therefore, one is driven to surmise that what leads him to entertain sexual fantasies verging on rape is not a masculine desire to overpower a

woman; rather, such imaginings issue from Colmenares's acute sense of ridicule and connate inability to perform according to social strictures. This needs to be stressed in order to dispel the misleading idea that in this narrative the reader is presented with a stereotypal female castrating figure. Instead, 'None of That' presents a male figure who is caught in the web of discourses of "masculinity" from which he himself remains alienated.