18. A Habit That Amounted to a Compulsion
To say that Vaslav Nijinsky “liked” women is to understate: the man’s habit of frequenting ladies of the night was an irresistible compulsion. He was ashamed of what he viewed as an unfortunate affliction, but could not refrain from gratifying his lust for working women, whom he referred to as “tarts”. Nijinsky’s diary describes disappointments when he would “look for [a woman] all day long and not find one“. It also describes his joy upon finding them, and how he “made love to several tarts a day” on such occasions.
Understandably, that strained his marriage. After one spree with ladies of the night in Paris, Nijinsky’s wife wanted to send him to Zurich for psychiatric treatment. He looked forward to it – not because he was eager to improve his conduct and his marriage, but because of the opportunity to try out Zurich’s working women. His obsession went beyond intimacy: he was actually interested in plumbing the minds of women. As he wrote in his diary: “I will not be writing in Zurich, because I am very interested in that town. I will go to a brothel because I want to have an intuitive understanding of tarts. I have forgotten tarts. I want to understand the psychology of a tart“.
