““The water nymphs who came to Poseidon explained how little they desired to couple with the gods. Except to find out whether it was different, whether there was a fresh world, another dimension in their loins. In the old Pittsburgh, we dreamed of a city where women read Proust in the original French, and wondered whether we would cross over into a different joy if we paid a call girl a thousand dollars for a night. Or an hour. Would it be different in kind or only tricks and apparatus? I worried that a great love might make everything else an exile. It turned out that being together at twilight in the olive groves of Umbria did, indeed, measure everything after that.””
