I had a busy day yesterday. In the morning I worked on a couple of course proposals for The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, and then I had a little check-up with my new resident (I'm still working on the paperwork for my mysterious overseas government post).

On the way to Boston Medical Center I dropped my bike off at my beloved Community Bike in the South End for much-needed repairs. My front breaks have been out for about a month—the cable snapped—and then, last week, my front brake cable cap popped out. I was able to pop it back in, but I felt it might be a good time for a, um, tune-up.

My new doc is nice. I liked my old one, but she's moved on. BMC is a teaching hospital, so you usually see a resident, and they come and go. I had never met the supervising physician until yesterday, in fact. She was lovely as well.

Dr. T., my new rez, is my first male doctor in yonks, and while he's a perfectly bright, upstanding fellow with a lovely manner, himself, I miss Dr. K. I have chronic slight swelling of the joints in my right hand, and the way she would gently take my hand and examine it was so intimate. And we would talk about the inflammation while she kept hold of my hand. She had examined every inch of me, tip to tail, inside and out. I trusted her completely.

Don't get me wrong. I like Dr. T. Even if he's unshaven and a little disheveled, and looks like he probably keeps snack crackers in the pockets of his lab coat and sleeps in his scrubs.  But when he takes my hand it just isn't the same. His were cold and clammy. Not at all like Dr. K's.

But he was eager—almost puppyishly eager—to prescribe me something, anything.  In the end he ripped off a script for Naprosyn—60 tabs with five refills!--which he described as "turbo-motrin" although I don't know that I need it (I'm not much of a pill-popper by nature). It's not so much the pain, anyway, as the stiffness.

Speaking of.  There was a surreal moment as Dr. T was reading over my medical history.

"Are you currently sexually active?" He asked, no doubt surveying the long list of STD tests I'd taken—and passed, I might add!--over the years.

Back in the day I'd have scoffed. Need you even ask? I mean, how could I not be? It would be a disservice to my race. I have duties to perform. It's the only honorable way.

"No," said I.

And then: "wow, when's the last time I could say that?"

"Well, good for you!" he said, applauding me. "Congratulations!"

Why was he congratulating me? Clapping his hands, even?  Isn't having sex the whole point? Even if abstinence means less work for him? I mean, are we here to make our doctors' lives easier?  Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? 

I said, "it does make things a lot simpler."

"For both us, I'm sure," he said with a wink.

And the truth is, when I think about it, this bout of celibacy has actually made my life a lot less complicated, and pleasanter of late. I can't deny it. I look at it as a sort of detox.

Because, much as we'd like to believe that bad sex is better than no sex at all—the "any lovin's good lovin'" school of thought—it's really not (and furthermore, it's only those who aren't getting any and haven't been for a spell who look at it that way).

Remember.  Mutual usury takes many forms, all of them corrosive. But the worst part of the sexual variety is that it negates the Other. And that's a spiritual crime. And those take a toll.

My last couple of affairs sure did, anyway.  My summer fling—one, count it!—turned toxic in no time. And aren't summer flings supposed to be refreshingly effervescent? Winters are for clinging together in the dark, burrowing under layers of blankets, sheltering each other from the heartless world. 

It was a Latin thing, is the problem. Anglos often look at Latins and think, wow, they're always having fun and listening to salsa music and laughing and dancing (that is, when they're not mowing my lawn or painting my house or busing my table). Not a care in the world, right?  But the truth is, Latin lovers are as high-strung as they come.

And Latins in the North, because they're a hot commodity in certain circles, have attitude to spare. You're constantly hearing from them about how Anglos are so-o-o superficial and clammy and heartless and cold and don't know how to love.

But once you've had a few Latins this line goes stale, let me tell you. It's true that Latins are good lays, better in the sack, I'd say, than your average Anglo (at least my Latins have been—and I've sampled stock from Spain, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru), but they're higher maintenance outside of the bedroom, too, precisely because they're so good in bed. You have to pay for everything, one way or another.

The thing I've learned is that you don't have to be in love in the courtly sense to be a great lover.  Men are in love with anyone they're making love to at the moment anyway—I mean at the very moment they're making love to them.  They don't have any reason not to be.

It's not that it's not love, either.  It's just that you don't necessarily get a dozen roses and a free meal with it.  And, of course, it's over once you've come. 

Nietzsche once said, "sometimes you embrace someone or other, out of love to mankind, because you cannot embrace everybody all at once."  

It's love, but it's anarchy. 

Thing is, you get a little older, you get tired of the anarchy.  Anarchy's a lot of work.  Order's easier. 

I left this last affair thinking, welp, my hollaback-girl days are finally over.  But I left my doctor's appointment feeling like celibacy might really be something to celebrate (it may have had something to do with those other pills he prescribed—the ones he called "happy-on-speed").

(There is some dispute, by the way, as to whether celibacy necessitates giving up masturbation, although in Catholicism masturbation is considered by many not just a minor, or venial sin, but a mortal sin, " gravely and intrinsically evil." A sin "so heinous it deprives the soul of sanctifying grace and causes damnation if unpardoned at the time of death." It's a violation of the 6th Commandment—against adultery! Yet another reason not to join Opus Dei. So maybe I'm thinking of celibacy-lite here. But I'm not giving up masturbation. It's better than Prozac.)

I walked to my garden from BMC, my inner dialogue raging. Along the way, right across from superhero park by the Fenway Community Health Center...


...I stumbled upon a terrible Omen!


Like my once-soaring sex-life: dead! Dead! With it's eyes eaten out! Its limp little body left to rot! I clutched my head, cried "No-o-o!" and ran straight to the Fens. I had found salvation there before, why not now?

And in my garden there was a different sign. The echinacea purpura—purple cone flower—I had started as seedlings with a guy I was dating in the Spring, were finally starting to blossom!


... Proving... that cone flowers can bloom in the months-old sludge heap of a cynical, shat-out affair.

Or something.

OK, I'll admit I don't always know how to read the multitude of signs and signals the universe throws in my face on a daily basis.

And there was one more on the way to pick up my bike. I saw it from a distance—a new magazine among the free weeklies across from the Symphony:


Yes! I thought! Finally a magazine with something useful! That's just what I need: a free FB! I mean, sex and intimacy obviously don't mix. Romantic love is a roller coaster. Dating is expensive. This is the magazine for me!

But on closer inspection, to my horror, I discovered it wasn't what it appeared to be:


No, it was quite the opposite, in fact. For people like me, desperately seeking substitutes for sex.

Though my hopes for a sign that celibacy might not be the only route open to me were now utterly dashed, I decided to take one and see how they suggested sublimating my libido. "Ask The The Sartorialist" seemed to have the answer in her advice to a bored post-menopausal reader from Canton:

Play hooky at Barneys New York and try on designs that catch your eye. Brighten a smoky black Rick Owens jersey jumper with a white blouse. Snap up a Martin Grant navy pencil skirt and pair it with amber Chloe Mary Janes. Wrap yourself in a Missoni zig-zag cardi-coat and black trousers, and accent the whole thing with a Miu Miu patent leather satchel. Your age? Who cares!

It's a bit much. I'm not feeling that deprived yet—I mean, what's it been? Three weeks? But I think the ol' Sartorialist is on to something. I might just take myself out tonight, and splurge on a pair of silk charmeuse opera-length gloves for my date.