I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.

Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.

We returned to the hotel and had intercourse. I like that word intercourse. It poses only a limited range of possibilities.

- E' come tra le persone?Scossi la testa. - No, tra le persone è diverso. Il sentimento che proviamo per qualcuno, si trasforma sempre un po' in rapporto all'altro. Si modifica, vacilla, cresce, si spegne, viene respinto, ferisce. Nella maggior parte dei casi è difficile riuscire ad averne il controllo. Non è come con una Subaru.

And our ages never bothered her from the very beginning. I was married, but that didn’t matter, either. She seemed to consider things like age and family and income to be of the same a priori order as shoe size and vocal pitch and the shape of one’s fingernails. The sort of thing that thinking about won’t change one bit. And that much said, well, she had a point.

I could feel her breasts up against my stomach. I wanted a beer real bad.

(When asked “Was the model for Midori (a character in Norwegian Wood) modeled after your wife?”)I showed your message to my wife. She got mad and yelled: “What would make them think I was the model for Midori?!” She told me to fix the misunderstanding immediately, so that’s why I’m writing this reply now. Please stop causing problems in my household. Thank you.