“Just be glad you can still feel it. I feel a little . . . numb now. Dead down there.” I wondered if she was making it sound worse than it really was. Sometimes I did that to compensate for people’s lack of imagination. But I had plenty of imagination so maybe I should take all of this down a notch. “There’s no hormonal drive now so it all becomes mental,” she continued. “I have to create a narrative that makes it possible, otherwise it starts to feel like rape.”

This was new for her? I’d always had to get out ahead of sex, dig an inclined trough so it could flow easily downhill. Being walloped, pounded by lust was very recent. Very. I told Mary about body- versus mind-rooted arousal. “It sounds like you used to be body-rooted.”

“Oh, definitely,” she said, laughing, “but I don’t even recognize that person now, my old lustful self. I can’t imagine doing the things I did.”