We refused to call it menopause. First of all, it wasn’t that, yet, and second of all, the very term annoyed us. When men have existential crises—when Richard Ford, for instance, limns the male at midlife—it doesn’t get called by some dumb hormonal name. It’s a “universal human experience.” We were having those, “universal human experiences,” not

It didn’t occur to me that he might be chafing a little too.

Marriage is essentially plotless, but a dick has a plot. Something happens or doesn’t happen, and suddenly you’re in a story.

I look at her and I think . . . it might have worked. She might be both, safe and free, in a way I never was. My daughter is a poised cat with a beautiful, rare giggle and a complex and very well protected interior life. Not protected in a rigid, rampart-y way but protected the way a nature preserve is protected. That’s what her introversion is

“Sometimes life is a thing of determination,” I wrote in my diary that first winter when I returned to school. “And when you are determined, you are free.” Too right, mate. I looked like a bigger fuckup than ever: the heavy blackout drinking, the promiscuity, the mad butter eating. But my life had become a thing of determination, and so it came to

It is my blessing and my curse to professionalize every single enthusiasm that floats through my distractible head. It’s this way for many journalists—you become fascinated by a subject, and then you kill the thing you love by turning it into your job.

Secret 5 I ran into an old friend at a backyard BBQ. He matter-of-factly informed me he was having a midlife crisis and the thought of an affair had crossed his mind. But he was pretty busy. Also, he said, waving his hand comically up and down in front of his aging body, as if to display it, “Who’d have us?”

I had isolated myself from that, in my house in the country, where I had thought I would be safe. But I wasn’t safe, just isolated. I believed my cohort, my fellowship, the formerly weird, the troubled, the angsty, the fucked-up was nowhere to be seen here on my island. People on my island were life’s winners. Most had cruised through college and

I don’t think I’ll ever really be better. I’ll always wish I was a dude. I’ll always be a flirt. What was that thing I wrote in my diary? “Completely allied with masculinity—that unbelievably beautiful feeling of ‘I shouldn’t be here, I’m here’ that I get whenever I am around some testosterone.” Male attention will always be of value to me. I’ll