woman-haters

..This man was wearing an immaculate white suit, a pale blue shirt and a yellow satin tie with a bright stickpin.
I couldn't take my eyes off that stickpin.
A great white light seemed to shoot out of it, illuminating the room. Then the light withdrew into itself, leaving a dewdrop on a field of gold.
I put on foot in front of the other.
"That's a diamond," somebody said, and a lot of people burst out laughing.
My nail tapped a glassy facet.
"Her first Diamond."
"Give it to her, Marco."
Marco bowed and deposited the stickpin in my palm.
It dazzled and danced with light like a heavenly ice cube. I slipped it quickly into my imitation jet bead evening bag and looked around. The faces were empty as plates, and nobody seemed to be breathing.
"Fortunately," a dry, hard hand encircled my upper arm, "I am escorting the lady for the rest of the evening. Perhaps," the spark in Marco's eyes extinguished, and they went black, "I shall perform some small service..."
Somebody laughed.
"...worthy of a diamond."
The hand round my arm tightened.
"Ouch!"
Marco removed his hand. I looked down at my arm. A thumbprint purpled into view. Marco watched me. Then he pointed to the underside of my arm. "look there."
I looked, and saw four, faint matching prints.
"You see, I am quite serious."
Marco's small, flickering smile reminded me of a snake I'd teased in the Bronx Zoo. When I tapped my fingers on the stout cage glass the snake had opened its clockwork jaws and seemed to smile. Then it struck and struck and struck at the invisible pane till I moved off.
I hand never met a woman-hater before.
I could tell Marco was a woman-hater, because in spite of all the models and TV starlets in the rooom that night he paid attention to nobody but me. Not out of kindness or even curiousity, but because I'd happened to be dealt to him, like a playing card in a pack of identical cards.

A man in the country club ban stepped up to the mike and started shaking those seedpod rattles that mean South American music.
Marco reached for my hand, but I hung on to my fouth daiquiri and stayed put. I'd never had a daiquiri before. The reason I had a daiquiri was because Marco ordered it for me, and I felt so grateful he hadn't asked what sort of dirnk I wanted that I didn't say a word, I just drank one daiquiri after another.
Marco looked at me.
"No," I said.
"What do you mean, no?"
"I can't dance to that kind of music."
"Don't be stupid."
"I want to sit here and finish my drink."
Marco bent toward me with a tight smile, and in one swoop my drink took wing and landed in a potted palm. Then Marco gripped my hand in such a way I had to choose between follwoing him on to the floor or having my arm torn off.
"It's a tango." Marco maneuvered me out among the dancers. "I love tangos."
"I can't dance."
"You don't have to dance. I'll do the danceing."
Marco hooked and arm around my waist and jerked me up against his dazzling white suit. Then he said, "Pretend you are drowing."
I shut my eyes, and the music broke over me like a rainstorm. Marco's leg slid forward against mine and my leg slid back and I seemed to be riveted to him, limb for limb, moving as he moved, whith any will or knowledge of my own, and after a while I thought, "It doesn't take two to dance, it only takes one," and I let myself blow and bend like a tree in the wind.
"What did I tell you ?" Marco's breath scorched my ear. "You're a perfectly respectable dancer."
I began to see why woman-haters could make such fools of women. Woman-haters were like gods: invulnerable and chock-full of power. They descended, and then they disappeared. You could never catch one.

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an exerpt from the book The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.