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Goodbye, Johnnie Walker

Until recently, I hadn’t gone to bed sober in twenty-five years. I was a drunk when I first met my wife of twenty-three years, and I have been one ever since. I have been a pretty good drunk, as drunks go, without the usual DWIs, abusive behavior, or too dear a price paid for being too honest after my seventh or tenth drink.

Surviving The Fall

A Physician Comes Of Age

Now I gradually reconstructed the story of my father’s death, piece by piece. Despite the many gaping holes remaining, I realized that it was most likely not, as I had grown up believing, an accident. The truth was he hadn’t fallen from that window; he’d jumped.

Blowing It In Idaho

A flock of silent mallards skims low, and the first bats flutter out. In a moment the couple will disappear into the warm, glowing belly of the hotel, where they may or may not make love. So much depends on the man’s attentiveness, and so far he is blowing it. I know more than a little something about that myself.

Marriage Is Impossible

To begin with, marriage is an impossible topic of conversation. Just try to put into words what makes a friend’s marriage work — never mind your own. It’s impossible to fully describe, much less arrive at a consensus about. Marriage is a subject sure to disrupt most dinner parties. Ultimately a product of the human imagination, it appears in countless forms and varieties. For reformers and many feminists, marriage is oppression and legalized rape, while right-wing fundamentalists (Christian, Muslim, and otherwise) see heterosexual marriage as an act of salvation for civilization.

An Erotic Way Of Life

As I’ve been writing a book about sex in recent months, I’ve had the Kama Sutra, the Indian guide to personal sexual culture, on my desk, and I’ve occasionally consulted the Internet to track down relevant books and articles. On the Internet, I’ve noticed, as soon as you venture in the direction of sex you quickly come upon crude, unadorned images of stark sexual union. Apparently we have finally found a public place where we can show our private parts and secret fantasies free of the repressive eyes of the government agencies that serve our culture’s dominant puritan philosophies. But here there is no love, little sentimentality, and almost nothing that could be called foreplay in any innocent sense of the word.

To Be A Sexual Son

For me, it is a magical moment. Some combination of the group dynamic, the food, the wine, and the festivity — together with a little courage — has for once made it possible to speak directly and be heard clearly about these usually misrepresented subjects. For a moment, my mother, as well as my more receptive father, is able to see an aspect of my sex life free of distortion or oversimplification, and therefore to better understand me as a sexual human being. I am exhilarated to have accomplished such a delicate bit of communication, and deeply appreciative of my mother’s willingness to put aside her usual judgments and biases. It is a moment of real intimacy between us, and, although neither of us speaks of it directly, I know that she, too, feels the connection. I also know that this moment will pass.

One Hand Clapping

I studied Ram Dass’s spiritual odyssey as if it were a map to some mysterious continent whose existence I’d only recently discovered. A year earlier, I’d taken LSD for the first time; I, too, had experienced a radical shift in consciousness as I’d glimpsed my true self, and tasted the glory at the heart of creation.

Fifty-Two

At forty, you may have half your life in front of you; at fifty-two, it’s not likely. In your thirties you may worry about losing your looks; in your fifties you worry about losing your capacities.

Secrets

I have been in many women’s groups: walking groups, writing groups, ritual groups, clothing-exchange groups, exercise groups, even a long-ago Tupperware group. So it wasn’t odd to hear Sarah talk, at a meeting of my oldest women’s group, about an entirely different group of women with whom she met. These women rode horses into the deepest part of the woods, and upon arrival, each told a secret.

The Date

A man I like is coming for dinner tonight. This means I don’t sleep very much, and I wake disoriented in the half light of dawn, wondering where I am. I look at my naked body stretched diagonally across the bed; I look at the untouched breasts, the white belly, and I wonder. I don’t know if this man will ever touch me, but I wonder.