Later, as she slept, I got out of bed to let the dogs out. I sat on the doorstep and watched them scuttle about, pissing single-file and digging up the flower beds. What a beautiful term, flower beds. I felt peaceful and sore. It seemed to me then, in my floaty postcoital daze, that the number one evil in the world was loneliness. It drove people to do terrible things. It was the reason strip clubs existed, to abate male longing and its grim consequences. How lucky for men! To know that every city in America had a long list of places, some seedy, some luxe, some playing hip-hop and some playing jazz, where any man could go to feel less alone. Yes, he had to pay to enter. But of course—we were feeding him.