Alfred had been following right up until the last sentence, when he realized he only thought that he'd been following, if this was where she'd been leading him. He blinked, trying to process this entirely new bit of information.
Alfred had a much more lenient view of this sort of thing than most did, he thought. He had known several sailors who had turned out to be in those sorts of relationships, so he thought it was the sort of thing that could happen to good, honest people. He was slightly less charitable towards those who engaged in that sort of behavior on land, when there were plenty of women around, because he didn't know why anyone would choose to do that if there were alternatives — but it wasn't as though Jo necessarily fell into that category. She'd traveled, and been in remote corners of the world. The scenarios she was referring to could just as easily have happened there, where they were to a large extent excusable. If she were a man, that would have been the end of his thoughts on the matter — he could brush it off without much further comment — but she wasn't a man, and that part made no sense.
On one hand, Alfred had been raised with the assumption that women didn't want those things with the same sort of insistence that men did. He was willing to allow, however, that he might be mistaken on that front. He'd seen plenty of evidence to the contrary, in his own experiences and in his observations while abroad, but he'd never had cause to directly question the assumption. Maybe it was still true in certain cases, even — proper English ladies didn't crave that sort of thing, and Jo wasn't a proper English lady — no surprise there. But even putting that aside, there was another mental hurdle he simply couldn't overleap.
"But that's not... that's not sex," he replied, laughing a bit at the absurdity of this conversation. In his mind he played through all of the activities he associated with the act, and there were several that he supposed were just as possible when both parties were lacking a certain part of anatomy, but what Alfred thought of as actual sex was not in that category. "I mean, that's just... what do you do?"
MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER
Alfred had a much more lenient view of this sort of thing than most did, he thought. He had known several sailors who had turned out to be in those sorts of relationships, so he thought it was the sort of thing that could happen to good, honest people. He was slightly less charitable towards those who engaged in that sort of behavior on land, when there were plenty of women around, because he didn't know why anyone would choose to do that if there were alternatives — but it wasn't as though Jo necessarily fell into that category. She'd traveled, and been in remote corners of the world. The scenarios she was referring to could just as easily have happened there, where they were to a large extent excusable. If she were a man, that would have been the end of his thoughts on the matter — he could brush it off without much further comment — but she wasn't a man, and that part made no sense.
On one hand, Alfred had been raised with the assumption that women didn't want those things with the same sort of insistence that men did. He was willing to allow, however, that he might be mistaken on that front. He'd seen plenty of evidence to the contrary, in his own experiences and in his observations while abroad, but he'd never had cause to directly question the assumption. Maybe it was still true in certain cases, even — proper English ladies didn't crave that sort of thing, and Jo wasn't a proper English lady — no surprise there. But even putting that aside, there was another mental hurdle he simply couldn't overleap.
"But that's not... that's not sex," he replied, laughing a bit at the absurdity of this conversation. In his mind he played through all of the activities he associated with the act, and there were several that he supposed were just as possible when both parties were lacking a certain part of anatomy, but what Alfred thought of as actual sex was not in that category. "I mean, that's just... what do you do?"
MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER