Naturally, the situation with my companions

[Sukhomvit]

I am reading A trip to Hanoi by Susan Sontag. She went there with two men who she has not met before. That is why the trip involves “unremitting and not wholly voluntary proximity, the kind befitting a romance or a dangerous emergency, lasting without pause for at least a month.” Then There is a sentence (underlined) I do not understand and need your enlightening:


“Naturally, the situation with my companions claimed a sizable part of the attention that, had I traveled alone, would have gone to the Vietnamese: sometimes in the form of an obligation, most often as a pleasure. There was the practical necessity of learning to live amicably and intelligently with two strangers in circumstances of instant intimacy, strangers even if, or perhaps especially since, they were people already known to me by reputation and, in the case of Andy Kopkind, by his writing, which I admired.”

Thanks!

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I am reading A trip to Hanoi by Susan Sontag. She went there with two men who she has not met before. That is why the trip involves “unremitting and not wholly voluntary proximity, the kind befitting a romance or a dangerous emergency, lasting without pause for at least a month.” Then There is a sentence (underlined) I do not understand and need your help with:

“Naturally, the situation with my companions claimed a sizable part of the attention that, had I traveled alone, would have gone to the Vietnamese: . . .

I had to put time into my companions. If I had traveled alone, that time would have gone to the Vietnamese.

. . . sometimes in the form of an obligation, most often as a pleasure. . . . ."

Sometimes the time I could have spent with the Vietnamese would have been out of duty, but usually I would have ejoyed it.
Thanks!

You're welcome!