007's Teenage Pillow Fantasies

Through his glasses, Bond examined the two men and wondered about them. What did these people amount to? Bond remembered cold, dedicated, chess-playing Russians; brilliant, neurotic Germans; silent, deadly, anonymous men from Central Europe; the people in his own Service - the double-firsts, the gay soldiers of fortune, the men who counted life well lost for a thousand a year. Compared to such men, Bond decided, these people were just teenage pillow-fantasies.

Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming.

Bond, are you saying what it sounds like you're saying[1]? I thought you had something of a reputation as a ladykiller, and you currently are in pursuit of Miss Tiffany Case who is

...very beautiful in a devil-may-care way, as if she kept her looks for herself and didn't mind what men thought of them, and there was an ironical tilt to the finely drawn eye-brows above the wide, level, rather scornful eyes...

Her skin was lightly tanned and without make-up except for a deep red on the lips, which were full and soft and rather moody so as to give the effect of what is called "a sinful mouth". But not, thought Bond, one that often sinned...

There's something a bit odd there on second reading. What does Felix Leiter have to say about Miss Case?

Not surprising she won't have anything to do with men since then.

But as we know, Bond has an almost supernatural attraction, that no woman can resist!

"I'm not going to sleep with you," said Tiffany Case in a matter-of-fact voice, "so don't waste your money getting me tight."

Gosh! It seems as though Bond likes to take to dinner women who have no intention of consummating the affair! But surely we can't draw any other conclusion from this. There's no actual evidence in Diamonds Are Forever that Bond prefers the company of men. Is there?

(To be continued...)

[1] Also, Captain Troop now seems to be fighting something of a rear-guard action in the sequel From Russia With Love.