IX: Esther

When at nineteen I first hit bottom my mother's anxiety seethed so unexpectedly that I have only recently been able to stop nursing the wound. A decade later I discovered free fall and, thinking I would die, was caught by Esther. You must be able to diddle lust, get sex to shill for love. It's all a game with mirrors and very light-fingered hands, a peek-a-boo of who's got the orgasm, and bonding is hardly the word when by some smokey prestidigitation my sex is uttered in her.