Amish Sex Secrets

Lots of Amish in the moraines between the Finger Lakes. It’s kind of a game to drive down a road, trying to figure out which of the houses you’re passing are Amish and which aren’t.

“Do you think Amish women have orgasms?” I asked.

“Well, I’m sure they’re physiologically capable of it,” B said. “Maybe you could pitch an article about it to The Daily Mail. Amish Sex Secrets!”

“The Daily Mail is a news aggregator," I reminded him primly. "Still. I suspect that are few books or articles in the universe that wouldn’t be improved by being renamed Amish Sex Secrets. Maybe I’ll rename my novel Amish Sex Secrets.”

“Would do a lot for sales,” B said.

Next morning, we were sitting on the porch, drinking coffee and smoking. (I always smoke when I’m visiting Ben, and I always cough for a week when I get home.) The blind man who lives in the horribly dilapidated house down near the creek came walking by, pulling his horribly fat service dog. The blind man was wearing a garish safety vest. Kind of like an elementary school crossing guard’s safety vest.

“So, what’s the deal with him?” I asked once the blind man was safely out of earshot.

“Well, he’s not blind, for one thing,” said B.

“He’s not?”

“Well, he’s legally blind,” said B. “But he can see. Of course, he’s on every type of welfare/disability assistance known to man and he rents out rooms in that hovel to all sorts of people. Plus that dog is an embarrassment to service dogs everywhere.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Drunk driving accident,” said Ben. “He was plastered out of his mind and plowed his car into something.”

“Oh, “ I said again. I sighed. “Sometimes, you know, I feel absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer number of personal narratives on this planet.”

“Drowning in stories!”

“Something like that. Especially when it hits me that each and every person thinks his story or her story is the one that’s really important. When it’s not.”

“No,” said Ben.

“Because my story is the only one that’s really important.”

“That’s what I always tell people,” said Ben. “Forget the Pope. Forget Winston Churchill. Read up on Patrizia.”

###

We ended up in Skaneateles, possibly the most beautiful of the Finger Lakes:



On a side street in the tiny village, we actually saw a DeLorean!



I immediately texted RTT a photo, but, of course, a DeLorean means nothing to him. Why would it? I don’t think he’s ever seen Back to the Future. (Movies about the future seem corny and ridiculous to people who are actually living in those futures.) And he wouldn’t remember when a DeLorean was every wannabe coke dealer’s ride of choice.

And then I thought some more about the curious contractile properties of time. How when I was 20, World War II seemed like some bygone era, only infinitesimally more remote than, say, the Crusades, though, in fact, I was born less than ten years after the end of World War II. How the process of growing older may be little more than the granulation of time, the subdivision of eternity into little memory parcels, meaningful only to oneself.

B also told me that when RTT got back from California, he told his father all about my Big Fight with Max, clearly relishing every detail: "It felt really good to be the good son for once, you know?"