In the fifth book of Marcel Proust's long novel Remembrance of Things Past, The Captive(La Prisonnière in French), a strange thing about the narrator, who shares his first name with the author, is revealed. He can only fuck his girlfriend (and captive) Albertine (he basically imprisons her in his apartment), when she is sleeping. Not only that, it's also implied that she sometimes fakes sleeping while he is fucking her. Like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, The Captive is as beautifully written as it is disturbing.

Marcel, the narrator, is obsessed with Albertine. He thinks she is cheating on him, he also thinks she is more attracted to women than men. He relentlessly tries to get to her core, her true feelings, her many secrets. He is only at peace when she is sleeping, when she has nothing to hide, when she is just a body. But was there something more to this fucking-while-sleeping business? Was it really a fetish? Was it a weak imitation of necrophilia? Was it the only way Marcel could connect with a woman and feel satisfied? I recall having long conversations along these lines with a friend who was equally puzzled and disturbed by this book, which stands alone, and is the best written, in the novel.

All of this came to my mind this morning after reading in Salon a story told by a woman who hadn't been drugged and raped by the fallen American icon Bill Cosby but claimed that this had happened to her friend. In fact, and this is where the link to Proust exists, her friend was puzzled by the rape because she was already in a relationship with the icon and was happy to have consensual sex with him...

“He didn’t need to do it,” she repeated. “I just don’t understand why.”

Did it turn him on to see a woman “out cold” or was this all a mistake? Maybe Sandy’s body had reacted to the pills in a bizarre and unexpected way. I was willing to give Bill the benefit of the doubt, although Sandy felt his actions were intentional.

If the many (and still mounting) allegations are true, The Captive may offer some clues to the man America once loved.