Sex And Drugs Made Me A Man

Not that Janet and I had a future. She'd go on to a man handsome enough for Hollywood, and marriages and kids; I would have a decade of broken romances before I married, for the first time, at 39. But the future wasn't an issue. There's nothing harder in life than being here now—giving the moment and your partner your complete attention. Well, I did.

Our orgasm was alchemy. One moment we were locked together, then we became one, and then—poof! No bodies, no names. We had disappeared. Read: Orgasm For An Hour (Yes, We're Serious)

I don't know where we went or how long we were gone, but the return was gentle. This was a new feeling, and it had unexpected power. We held each other and whispered, and there was a sweetness about those moments that was as thrilling as all that had gone before.

I've known a lot of gentleness since, and I've been the recipient of more female kindness and tenderness than I probably deserve. John Updike once described another writer as a man who saw woman as a giant lap, but I know I wasn't hiding from the world in the beds of my lovers; I was trying out a little tenderness, exposing myself, daring to risk.

Now I'm in my final marriage, and my wife is the beneficiary of the women who came before her. The weed has changed; now it comes from somewhere in Northern California. And the music's more international; we're as likely to play Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as Led Zeppelin. But the essential transaction remains unchanged. Slowly, slowly, in bed with a woman, I am learning how to be human.

Read more from Jesse Kornbluth at Head Butler.

This piece first appeared on The Good Men Project.