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rnold told me he wished he could be with me tonight. He was stuck at a party, hiding in the coatroom. The hosts of the party were old friends of his—fellow travelers from back in the Red Scare days. The husband now owned a fur shop in Beverly Hills; the wife was a big supporter of Israel. He didn’t…

Or maybe his analyst asked him about the other sources of his anxiety besides me. His wife, of course. And his other mistress, E.

I knew about E. He had promised me that he was going to break up with her soon, but it was complicated. She was married to a friend of his. The two couples dined regu…

Arnold was in psychoanalysis at the time, as were most of his comrades—lapsed communists with successful fur businesses, screenwriters who yearned to write novels, and admen who wished they were artists. These were the days before pharmacological fixes, so no one had any choice but to talk and talk…

[...] This is how the memoir describes our first vacation:

We traveled from motel to boggy motel, each a damp block or two from the gray Pacific. Most of the rooms had yellow blinds or yellow curtains, a trick to make the weary traveler believe every morning is filled with sunny skies and brig…

When I was not learning about fellatio from Arnold, I was sleeping on my father’s side of the bed. The memoir never mentions the unresolved Oedipus complex or any other daddy issues. To mention the Oedipus complex, I believed, would have been stating the obvious, an insult to the reader who might n…