Alternatives to Sex A Novel

a start My decision to practice celibacy had nothing to do with prudery or penance, morality or manners, dysfunction, or fear of disease. It had very little to do with sex. It was all about real estate. What had started out, one year earlier, as a bout of benign computer dating -- a euphemism for online chatting followed by brief encounters, less impersonal than old-fashioned anonymous sex because you exchanged fake names with the person -- had turned into an almost daily ritual that had replaced previous pastimes such as reading, going to the movies, working, exercising, and eating. I'm exaggerating, of course, but by how much, I'd rather not say. For months, I'd known that my habits were slipping out of control, but I figured that as long as I acknowledged my behavior was a problem, it wasn't one. And then, one rainy September morning -- coincidentally, the same morning Samuel Thompson and Charlotte O'Malley wandered into my life -- I woke up and decided that too much really was enough. I could feel trouble pressing down on me like the low dark sky outside my bedroom window. I lived in a house near the top of a steep, San Francisco-like hill, but rather than a view of the Pacific, I saw from my windows the colorful sprawl of Somerville, Massachusetts -- jagged rooftops and the tight grid of streets -- and in the near distance, the cozy, unimpressive skyline of Boston, minimized this morning by the clouds. The previous owners of my house had installed a picture window in the master bedroom, an architectural feature I frequently deride but secretly love. As I stood looking out through the streaks of rain, a plane dropped from the clouds in its approach to Logan Airport. The sight of it, popping suddenly into view like that, jolted me. For the past year, the sight of airplanes heading toward the buildings of the city had been alarming. Dosomething about your life, I told myself, a directive that's usually, in my case, translated as:Stopdoing something. For some reason, a disproportionate number of the men I met online turned out to live in dank basement apartments with minimal, makeshift furnishings that didn't acknowledge the existence of aesthetics -- sofas made out of rolled-up futons, mattresses on the floor, television sets that took up half a room, collapsible bookshelves lined with DVD boxes. I hate DVDs. I'd switched from vinyl records to tapes, from tapes to CDs, from convection ovens to microwaves, from typewriters to computers, from landlines to cell phones, from revival movie houses to videocassette rentals, and as far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. I'd traveled as far along the technology highway as I could, and the sight of those skinny boxes gobbling up space in the video stores (and on collapsible bookcases) was enough to send me into a spiral of despair and dread. It's always good to take a stand in life, even a completely meaningless one. I don't mean to be a snob about anyone else's taste or to suggest that my own is worth bragging about. I don't really have taste; I have reactions to other people's. I have opinions. If I walked into my own apartment with anything resembling objectivity (fortunately, an impossibility) my reaction would undoubtedly be disapproval. Too beige. Too many midcentury lines and angles. Too self-consciously symmetrical. Way too clean and tidy. Who lives here? I'd wonder. What's at the center of this guy's life, aside from dusting? But imperfect as my own place was, the fact that I so often connected with men who chose to live unfurnished, subterranean lives had started to worry me. Maybe, if I kept to current habits, my future lay in that direction. Downward. The night before, I'd spent an impersonal, passionate forty minutes with someone who claimed to be called Carlo. Most of the men I met claimed to have names that were either Latin-loverMcCauley, Stephen is the author of 'Alternatives to Sex A Novel', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743224734 and ISBN 0743224736.