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and she’d let me sleep until late in the afternoon before she came over and let herself into my apartment.
    She woke me up on one of these Wednesdays and put her hand in my boxer shorts, trying to arouse me. I turned over and away from her, not ready to wake up. She exhaled loudly and left the room. I fell back asleep but she kicked open the door ten minutes later.
    “I know why you don’t want to have sex,” she said tightly.
    I woke up immediately. I tried to remember what I’d been looking at earlier in the day, when I woke up around noon, when I surfed the Internet, image after image, trying to find just the right one. I never knew when I’d find it but I always did, even if I had to look at dozens of women. It was something I did sometimes several times a week, a few private moments of fantasy. Sometimes, after I’d emptied myself of these urges, that hollow space would fill with shame.
    She left my place angry and calling friends on her cell phone. I hated to think what she was saying and what they would say back to her.
    She called the next day and we talked more. She was still shook up by the whole thing. “I’m taking some more days off,” she told me. She was being very stern. I imagined her standing very stiffly somewhere, close to a highway, her eyes rimmed red, staring at a mountain far away.
    Somehow, Maureen and I found ourselves at a jazz club where one of her friends was playing. Some of her other friends were there, too, and I got this weird feeling that they were treating us like we were a couple.
    “At first I thought you were her younger brother or something,” her friend Scott said to me. His hair was mostly gray with some red. His mouth seemed involuntarily wrinkled into a frown. I swallowed some beer and tried to tell him we were just friends, but he interrupted me. “My first wife was ten years younger than me. Not to say that’s a bad thing. I was in heaven for six months.” I asked him what happened and he looked at me as if I was getting too personal. “The life experience just isn’t there yet. I got tired of being her teacher.”
    “Are you talking about Mandy again?” Maureen asked him. She grabbed my arm and held on. “Stop telling your horror stories. Are you trying to scare my date away?” I experienced a strange mix of feelings then—I felt defensive about my age and my “life experience,” but I was also unexpectedly thrilled that Maureen had called me her date. It was like I had permission to play a role now. I didn’t have to be an individual among strangers. I could scoot closer to Maureen and blend into her. I could let her talk and only offer a comment if she asked me herself. It was easier this way. I kept drinking and felt my nerves unwind. The jazz started to sound good as I held hands with Maureen and tried to play footsie under the table.
    I told Kristi that I thought I was a sex addict, that I felt the need to ejaculate every day. I told her that I had worried about it for a long time—worried about things like becoming sterile or mentally ill—but the habit had become a part of me. Even if I had sex with her every day, I’d still have to masturbate sometimes. Anything could trigger it. Anyone. It wasn’t a matter of her not satisfying me, because she did. The images I looked at weren’t competition. But everything I said sounded unfeeling and terrible. Words were dumb.
    It’s a desire to please myself. To be able to do it whenever I wanted. Without ceremony.
    She asked if I’d see someone about it and I said I would. Still, she saw it as a betrayal and couldn’t stop imagining me, sitting at my computer, looking at other women. It made every part of her burn.
    Maureen came over to my apartment after the jazz band finished that night. My neighbor, a college dropout named Larry, made small talk with us for a little while outside. He was cooking hot dogs for himself on a little barbecue and he kept looking at Maureen like he was trying to remember