Ann Bauer

“Motorcycle racing,” he answers. And a dangerous flush runs through you.

So you move to a restaurant with this man, where he takes your hand. Asks you what you want from a relationship and you tell him the truth: Saturday nights. Movies, nice dinners and maybe — you force yourself to meet his sharp, hazel eyes — with the right person, occasional sex. He takes this in stride, nods, raises his hand for the check, then takes you out to his car where he slips a hand up your skirt and acquaints you with his fast-cornering ways.

On your third date, he takes you to a motorcycle show. The convention center reeks of motor oil and black leather. You meet various long-haired, tattooed people who greet him with great cheer. Afterward, you go to his place and eat the lime-cured salmon ceviche he’s prepared. Candlelight flickers, the stereo clicks from Coldplay to Rachmaninoff. He touches you reverently. It is, you think, the perfect affair.

But then, suddenly, this thing begins to move faster. It is like you are riding something that’s not within your control. He is around not just on Saturdays, but on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and sometimes Sunday as well. He is teaching your daughter to dirt bike, helping your son with higher algebra, stopping by with grocery bags full of imported cheeses, dark chocolate and red wine.

For your 40th birthday, he whisks you away to New Mexico where he takes you to the Georgia O’Keeffe museum then drives like a demon along curving mountain roads. A sign for Las Vegas appears and he points at it, “Want to get married?” he asks. And you look at him in profile, thrilled with confusion, wondering if this is a joke or a dare.

Summer means racing season. By this time he has made his proposal official and you have accepted. Also, he’s begun taking you to club dinners, where the talk is all of throttles and gear. Race weekends are surprisingly long, you discover — Wednesday night through Sunday — and involve at least three days of prep work to ready the bikes.

It is the first time you’ve been apart for four nights in a row since you met. He calls you several times from the track, text messaging “I miss you” in the middle of the night. His friends, he says, are teasing him about being whipped. But he is racing better than ever, shaving two to three seconds off each lap. You are secretly pleased that even at 40, while schlepping kids to and from the YMCA and the shopping mall, you can inspire both recklessness and love.

He arrives home Sunday near midnight with a new beard and a raw quality to his voice, both of which turn you on. You welcome him into your bed, though he is sweat-stained and slimy with axle grease. It’s never been better than this.

During the second race weekend, he calls you from the track to tell you one of his friends crashed. You notice that your man sounds odd — both anxious and strangely high. He’s packing the injured man’s gear while two other guys accompany him to the hospital. They’ve all agreed to forgo the last race while waiting to see if their buddy will lose a hand. He says this as if it is a major concession, an act of extraordinary goodwill.

You join the racers at the bar where they eat tacos each Tuesday. It is here that your fianci announces your engagement. His friends raise their glasses and the only other woman at the table leans in to give you a hug. The evening goes on, more beer is drunk. Someone tells a joke: Why do they call it PMS? Because the name Mad Cow Disease was already taken. You draw in a breath that you let out raggedly, almost like a laugh. You think about your 12-year-old daughter who once went dirt biking with this crowd, and remember her, just last month, doubled over with cramps.

Not the sort of person who hides your feelings easily, you are probably quite visibly tense. Aloof behind your plain librarian face. One of the men scoots his chair over next to yours. He is young and handsome, with a wide Tom Cruise grin, which he employs at its fullest wattage now.

“A guy gets to be a certain age, starts to slow down, he starts feeling a little desperate,” he says quietly, in your ear. “Suddenly, he’s getting married.”

You stare at your blood-red glass, realizing at exactly this moment that you are the only one in this entire biker bar who is drinking wine, and blink back tears. The room is awash in ’80s music and laughter. You may as well have morphed back 28 years; this is junior high all over again. And you remain the odd, eggheaded girl on the edge.

The third race weekend coincides with your book tour. You have a hotel suite in downtown San Francisco and a car, all-expenses paid by your publisher. You mention once, trying not to sound needy, that your fianci would be welcome to join you but he simply raises his hands and shrugs. “If it weren’t a race weekend…” he says.

So you go alone, enjoy your canopied bed and complimentary champagne. Your cellphone rings on a bright, breezy afternoon in California as you are standing on the bay, gazing out at the fortress of Alcatraz. It is he, calling from the track, his tone heavy, morbid, depressed. There was a rainstorm and a flood, the races were canceled, his entire weekend was ruined.

There is a wedding scheduled for the Saturday of the fourth weekend — a racer who “messed up” (or so you’re told), forgetting to inform his fiancie which dates were off-limits. By the time he figured out the ceremony would conflict with an endurance race, it was too late to change it.

“The race?” you ask hopefully.

Your math geek stares at you. He’s decided to keep the scruffy beard and seems suddenly unfamiliar. “No.” He speaks patiently, as if to a small child. “The wedding. They tried to switch to another date, but the reception hall had already been booked.”

You excuse yourself, get a bottle of water, ponder the fact that he offered to plan and book your own wedding and honeymoon. Then you return and sit down with the man who is on your couch reading “Middlesex,” your cat lying across his lap. “Did you schedule our honeymoon around race weekends? Is that why we’re rushing to get married?”

He lowers his book, nods calmly. “I thought you understood that.”

You stand, and in the only act of violence you’ve committed since leaving your first husband, throw your water bottle at him.

To his credit, he forgives your violence and is himself contrite. To your bewilderment, he remains singularly focused. He offers to move your wedding, absorb all the cancellation fees, and plan something nice for winter. After the racing season is over.

You go away to brood. You calculate the following things: that he is helping your younger son apply to MIT; that he is coaching your autistic son to find a job; that he once fixed your garage door; that he is kind to your parents; that he took your daughter to school on the back of his bike after she sprained her ankle — lashing her crutches on with bungee cords and performing a few comic stunts for the waiting crowd.

Moreover, you truly love him. Sexy, dirty, dangerous obsession and all. You will marry him as planned, you decide. Take the bad with the good, the yin with the yang. That’s what marriage is all about. In fact, as a gesture of supreme solidarity, you will go up to the track and show support for your man the weekend before your wedding.

You show up on a Saturday at the end of summer. It is a warm, golden day and when you walk into the garage he looks up and breaks out into a huge smile. He is happy to see you even though you don’t wear American flag short shorts and a spangled halter top, like 98 percent of the other women at the track. You take this as a sign of true love.

There are races all afternoon and evening. You travel from one to the next on the back of the bike of an onlooker — an elementary school teacher who tells you he’s thinking of taking up the sport. You listen, even as the news of a near-fatal crash is broadcast over the P.A. system. Two riders have been transported to the hospital by helicopter; the track is closed until officials can assemble more ambulances on-site.

After dinner, there is a campfire. Your fianci, freshly showered, sits with your hand in his and jokes with his friends in a desultory way. Racing, politics, science. A weirdly sarcastic reference to concentration camps. You stiffen at this last and pull your hand from his, but he barely notices, so focused is he on the conversation.

Back at the hotel, you cry. Your people died in those camps, 6 million of them. He listens to your latent, useless grief and holds you. Moves in and makes love. But the next morning he awakens agitated, irritable and brusque. At 8 o’clock, he says, “Gotta go, the races are starting.” And he hurries away, without a kiss, leaving you to drive blearily 180 miles back home.

The wedding is off, you tell him when he returns. You have a career, three children to raise, a set of hard-won values of which you are proud. He turns meaner than you’d ever imagined he could and rages for a while, then drives off into the night and follows with a frantic series of e-mails. He is worried about you. He is sorry. He is done racing, no matter what you decide.

The next day, he pulls up after work and explains that racing is like cocaine. Expensive, destructive, addictive. He wants to quit, to help raise your children, to have a life with you instead.

This is like some kind of fable in which the beginning matches the end. You recall the hailstorm at the end of your last marriage: whiskey, drugs, gambling debts. Never again, you have told yourself. And yet…

This is a truly fine man. Your children have come to love him; they will be torn apart — again, as they were when their father left — if he disappears. Your wedding is just five days hence and his arguments are compelling. He was an unencumbered bachelor when he began racing. Circumstances have changed and he is willing to change with them.

You make a date with a couple you trust, motorcycle riders themselves who have been married for 22 years and still treat each other with the utmost respect. They tell you to have faith in your commitment. Romance, disillusionment, joy, they say. This is the endless cycle. So you take a breath and decide to believe.

Your wedding is perfect: a sunny, cool day on Lake Superior. A friend — licensed by the church of Mother Earth — marries you. Throughout the entire ceremony, Bach’s cello suites play in the background and your 240-pound linebacker son cries.

You leave for your honeymoon by train. Glacier Park, Mont. It is completely remote: no phone, no e-mail. Just the two of you hiking and camping in the mountains. By the fifth day, you are certain you have made the right decision. The man you met in that wine bar so long ago — the sweet, gentle math geek with the funny pince-nez — is back.

Day 6, on a side trip to Alberta, you stop at an Internet cafe to download the hundreds of e-mail messages each of you has received. Then you drive to the trailhead where you begin an 11-mile hike. It is on your first water break that he speaks.

“You should know, my friends are talking about us,” he says, referring to the racing listserv to which he still subscribes. “Dallas wrote to ask why I’m not racing anymore and Mike posted back saying you laid down the law and if I ever want to have sex again, I have to quit. A few people actually defended you. But overall, it wasn’t … good.” His voice is mournful, his bearded face perplexed.

It is late afternoon and the air is beginning to chill, but you flush hot with embarrassment and irrational hurt. You are the mother of teenagers, a woman with a small but respectable literary reputation, and a gang of bikers has been discussing your lovely new marital life via e-mail. Making it sound dirty and ugly. Accusing you of using sex as currency. Essentially calling you a whore.

You open your mouth to say this is not your life, you do not associate with people who talk about women in such a diminishing way. Then see that, in fact, you do: When you married him, you inherited this group as surely as you would have a set of in-laws were his parents not both deceased. You close your eyes and try to adjust to this.

From the glacial valley below a silence rises, thick and clear. And you are simply two tiny people at the top of a gorge, whimsically linked together for life, risking everything, wondering what comes next.

“What about a coffee shop?” I ask. “If we find a place that opens early, we could sit there until it gets light.”

He glances at my laptop, which is sitting — in clear violation of the rules — on the desk. “Go ahead and try,” John says.

I stand unsteadily, my head pounding from two hours of questioning under fluorescent lights. I plug in the hotel’s Ethernet cord and am irrationally comforted when Google appears.

After a few searches and one furtive cellphone call to a number that only rings, I turn back to John. He’s sitting on the mammoth bed staring out the window, his eyes wide and glassy. “There’s no answer,” I say. “I don’t know if they’ll be open at 6. And I don’t dare call the front desk to ask.”

“No.” He moves slowly, as if drugged. “You get ready for bed. I’m going to pack everything and …” He glances at the clock radio next to the bed. It’s midnight. “Set the alarm for five.”

After we’ve brushed our teeth and checked the room for stray items, we get under the covers and huddle in about a fifth of the mattress’ breadth. He sleeps fitfully. I sleep not at all but for a short stretch in which I dream there is a tall man standing in the corner, watching us.

Then there is a piercing sound and we bolt out of bed. I shower in three minutes and dry my hair. John puts on yesterday’s clothes, unlocks the door, and peers into the hall.

“C’mon,” he hisses. “I don’t see anyone.”

So I grab my backpack and umbrella, pulling my suitcase behind me, and follow him down the hall. We wait 30 tense seconds for the elevator. We’re nearly through the lobby when a hotel clerk calls to us to stop.

“Which room are you leaving?” she asks, picking up her phone.

Neither of us even thinks to lie. We blurt out our room number and dash through the automatic doors into a dim and dreary storm.

—-

I’ll admit, we should have known better. But it seemed like such a reasonable idea when it first came up.

Several months before, I’d asked my husband, John, what he wanted for his birthday. “A trip alone with you,” he said. “Something just for us. Maybe a marriage retreat.”

Now that may sound like an unusual request from a middle-aged agnostic from the deep South, but John is an unusual guy. Not only is he incredibly sweet, he’s also an engineer who relies on statistics. Math is his religion. And our odds — they’re not good.

John was divorced twice before marrying me. His father, a hard-drinking used car salesman, was married to so many different women I need an org chart to keep track of John’s various siblings, whole, half and step. I have long-married parents but divorced my own first husband after 13 years, then remarried him after his first stint in rehab, six months later, and divorced him again. Historically, neither of us is good at this marriage thing.

Add to that the various stresses: My three children — a brilliant but unpredictable young man with autism; a college student with a flair for throwing blow-out parties; and a stunningly sardonic teenage girl — and John’s now-pregnant adopted daughter. Also the two houses we’re supporting, a recent cross-country move from Minnesota to Washington, and our very different ways of dealing with the outside world.

Just 18 months into marriage we’d nearly come undone when our condo association exploded into a particularly ugly feud. At issue was a $9,000 plumbing bill. I wanted to negotiate with our neighbors; John wanted to hire a lawyer. A couple of the wilier residents quickly figured out we were at odds and further divided us. In the end, John and I were barely speaking and we wound up covering a far greater share of the cost than we would have if we’d pursued either tack jointly. It was a bitter lesson. But when you’re two strong-willed people who came together at 40, acting as one can be hard.

The marriage encounter John had found in Tukwila, Wash., claimed to address this and more. It focused on enhancing communication and making couples stronger. Divorce-proof, even. It was nearby, relatively inexpensive, and, yes, it was sponsored by Lutherans, he said, but the literature clearly stated it was “ecumenical” and that people of “all religious faiths” were encouraged to attend.

This is the religion that runs one of the best and most effective social service organizations in the world, I reasoned. The sect so progressive it ordains gay clergy. I tend to feel warmly toward Lutherans and they seemed to be welcoming me — a Jewish woman –to renew my marriage with them. Plus it was a weekend with a king-size bed and towel service. I immediately said yes.

But as months passed and the retreat drew near, I had misgivings. First, there was the e-mail we received from one of the organizers, outlining everything from precisely what time we should arrive to the exact type of clothing we should bring.

The 26K message contained the lines, “We would like to stress that this is a structured, work Weekend. There is no time for TV, books, work, etc. There are also no distractions.” Weekend was capitalized throughout the text, including in this personal testimonial from past participants: “By Sunday afternoon of our Weekend, we had a whole new appreciation of our relationship and didn’t want the Weekend to end.”

“This is feeling a little, um, cultish to me,” I said to John.

“I agree,” he said. “Let’s check it out.”

So we both, independently, ran our own computer background searches but came up with nothing. There were 20 or so Marriage Encounter pages and a single endorsement — for an “expert” called Dr. Michael Peters (not his real name, but that’s what I’ll call him due to the team of lawyers his empire no doubt employs) — but no stories, schedules or descriptions to be found.

A few nights later, John received a phone call from two of the presenters. Both husband and wife were on the phone and they were so enthusiastic I could hear their bright shouted welcomes from across the room.

“That was really weird.” He’d hung up but stood, still staring at his phone. “What do you think? Should we cancel?”

I was tempted. But the trip was only three days away. I’d already cleared the time and arranged supervision for our teenage daughter. “Let’s try it,” I said.

—-

We relaxed when we arrived at the resort. We had an hour to kill before the introductory session and I’d come prepared: I pulled a bottle of wine, some cheese and crackers, and blood oranges from my suitcase. We ate dinner on the love seat, my feet in John’s lap.

But at 7:40, the phone rang. “They want us downstairs for a photograph,” John said, covering the receiver. Ten minutes, I signaled with my fingers then got up to cork the bottle and put away the food. “He said no.” John’s voice came from behind my bent back. “Now.” And everything in me went stiff.

It took us perhaps five minutes to get down to the lobby, where we were posed in front of a potted plant and our photo was shot. Then we were led into a small room lined with tables and felt banners: God Loves Your Marriage, they proclaimed. In front of each seat was a red three-ring binder with a blank white sticker in the top right corner. “Sit,” we were told by the older man. “Write your name and room number on your folder. We –” he gestured at the white-haired woman and two middle-aged couples who had gathered around him, “must leave for a few moments to pray.”

I looked around the room. There were a dozen other couples that looked to range from mid-20s to late 50s. One was biracial; two were overdressed. Most of us hovered around 40 and wore sweat shirts and jeans.

John put his arm around me. And that’s when I noticed there was one thing nearly all the other couples in the room shared. With one exception — a pair that was at least inclined toward each other — the husbands and wives sat looking forward, keeping a space between them that practically glimmered with hate.

The first presenters were a prim woman and a slicked-back Jimmy Swaggart-looking man. He smiled his toothy grin and told us how the Weekend would proceed.

There would be many presentations and we might feel resistant, he told us. But we needed to trust in order to let the Weekend do its work. It was important to do everything we were told and stay until the very end of the Weekend. They themselves had been saved by the Weekend. And it was their privilege to be along on our Weekend, because magical things were about to happen to us.

Then the man stepped down from the little podium where they sat — the four presenters — and told us there was one more person who wanted to welcome us. He pulled a TV out of the profusion of banners and hit a button. Presto! Dr. Michael Peters appeared. He reiterated that our marriage was about to be saved by the Weekend. And he told us that even more wonderful work could occur in the privacy of our own home, even after the Weekend was over, thanks to his several, life-changing books. One by one, the titles scrolled across the screen: “The Five Love Languages,” “Love Talks for Couples,” “The Marriage You’ve Always Wanted.” And so on.

Then the elderly couple spoke. He was a pastor, but his wife was the real force — you could tell. She talked about how their marriage had grown lackluster after 20-plus years. But on their Weekend, Marriage Encounter “relit the spark in their relationship through Jesus Christ.”

He stroked her back suggestively, and I tried not to squirm. But this was like watching my grandparents at foreplay. I was relieved when the third couple took the stage. The wife was cheerful and childlike; she described their renewed marriage using kindergarten phrases. Every day was like her birthday, she said; she felt so happy with her spouse, it was like being wrapped in a bright pink blanket all the time. Her husband — a squat, bearded man — beamed and wept, telling the assembled men he had learned on his Weekend that it was OK to cry.

Then the pastor told us to open our folders and turn to Page 3 where we would find a list of questions to answer and discuss. What do you love most about your spouse? Describe a time when you felt a strong emotion. A few moments passed during which John wrote diligently, as did I. Behind us, there was a scuffle.

“Write something,” hissed a woman’s voice.

The answer — coming from her husband, I assume — was something between an obscenity and a groan. We heard her slam her folder closed and throw it at him. “Well, if you won’t, I won’t either,” she said.

We engaged in a couple more exercises like this; during the final one, all the men were sent back to the hotel rooms to write in private and we women were kept to do our work under the buzzing lights.

Finally, around 10:30, the presenters began to wrap things up. This was only a taste of the Weekend ahead, the pastor said. Then, suddenly, his wife stepped back and he stood to give us a steely look. There was to be no TV, no computers, no cellphones or pagers, he said. If we were found using any of these devices — he grinned, but in a serious way — we risked having them disconnected or removed.

In the morning, we would get a wake-up call. We would then have exactly 45 minutes to shower and dress. A second call would come in. “Do not,” he said, wagging one finger, “leave your room until that second call. Under any circumstances.”

We would gather for a devotional prayer before breakfast. Then the day’s work would begin: about 15 hours of it. Meals would be taken together, in a designated area of the hotel dining room. Sunday, at the end of the Weekend, there would be a sacred Communion ceremony and he encouraged all who had been “baptized in the name of Jesus Christ” to partake. The rest of us were required to attend, even if we could not accept the Host.

The wives were dismissed first to wait for our men in the rooms; it was, I think, meant to be like a wedding night. We women moved in one solemn herd toward the elevator and boarded, exceeding the weight limit by about 200 pounds and setting off an alarm. Nevertheless, the door closed.

Once inside our room, I paced. After several minutes John arrived, his face ashen, and closed the door behind him. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

Which is how we end up running down a frontage road at dawn, our rolling suitcases bumping along behind. We cross over the highway and slow a little. My forehead and eyelids are wet and itching. I need caffeine.

Hallelujah for Starbucks, open at 6:20. We sit by the faux fireplace and dry out as we sip from enormous cups. Reading the New York Times by Wi-Fi feels like a luxury; we trade news items and move closer together, cuddling openly in the Southgate Mall Starbucks while we discuss the Dow Jones and healthcare reform. The rain lets up and light floods Tukwila.

“Do you think we should call someone and tell them why we left?” I ask.

John considers for a moment before shaking his head. “My father always told me there was no use chasing a mark once he was out the door,” he says. “I don’t know what they were selling us back there, books or religion or both, but I think once we’re gone they don’t care anymore. They lost the deal.”

I start to object but stop myself. “All right,” I say, snuggling further in.

We miss the first bus, happily, but run through the sunny, yellow morning to catch the next.

An hour later, we’re nearing Seattle. It’s 9 a.m. and we’ve already been awake for half the day. But I realize, suddenly, that I feel strangely good. “Hey,” I breathe into his neck. “Are you hungry? Do you want to go to Mae’s and get something to eat?”

“Yes,” he says, in that I’m-always-hungry tone he has. So we get off in the tunnel, walk up to Third Avenue, and transfer to a No. 5. It’s another 30 minutes to Mae’s Diner but the bus is warm and growly and we’re jostled together between our piles of suitcases, coats and bags.

Finally, around 10 o’clock, we’re in a booth drinking hot tea and eating from mounded plates of food. It feels like we did something momentous together and I realize there was not a moment when one of us questioned the other. Not even Dr. Michael Peters and the scary pastor could sway us. We made our decisions in partnership.

Just then, John reaches across the table and grabs both my hands. “This may be the best morning I’ve ever had,” he says.

“Me, too,” I say, and mean it. What do you know? Dr. Michael Peters may be on to something: The retreat really did work.

Ann Bauer is a novelist and frequent contributor to Salon.

Then she looked at her partner’s face and saw panic. So she put the procedure off … for a while.

Finally, though, she decided she couldn’t live with the odds any longer. She scheduled the mastectomy, along with plastic surgery to get implants. After discussing it with her doctor, Jessie opted against saving her nipples — an option some women choose even though it carries a small risk.

In a so-called nipple-sparing procedure, surgeons would have carved out the breast tissue under and around while leaving the nipple and areola of each attached. Because nerves would be cut during the surgery, there’s little chance of actual nipple sensation. And in some cases, diminished blood supply causes the nipple to shrivel and become deformed over time. Of greater concern to Jessie and her surgeon: There’s a small chance that breast cancer lurks or will grow in the nipple itself.

“My attitude was, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right,” she says.

But her boyfriend disagreed. He was angry and felt she hadn’t taken his feelings into account. He grew increasingly uncomfortable and remote throughout the procedure: double mastectomy, reconstruction of the breasts using cadaver tissue, and a messy, gory aftermath involving lymphatic drains.

At the time, Jessie was entirely focused on her own body and its recovery. She didn’t want to die. And how, exactly, was she supposed to negotiate this decision with her lover when no expert she consulted ever mentioned sex?

Looking back, she says she wishes she had handled it differently. Her boyfriend really tried. He stayed. He helped her to the bathroom and brought her Vicodin at 4 a.m.

“If I could talk to women, I’d tell them do not let your man drain you,” Jessie says, referring to the process of emptying and measuring the bloody lymphatic fluid siphoned off by her surgical drains. “That whole area is just a mess. I think my partner couldn’t deal with the act of being a caregiver. And a lot is written about the women’s side of it, but I don’t think men get due credit for what it does to him.”

Jessie’s new breasts, for instance. They looked great under clothing, but artificial — smooth but for scars running like lightning along the surface of the skin — and her partner didn’t want to touch them. Or her.

The couple tried counseling, but Jessie’s boyfriend was reluctant to share his true feelings. He admitted that he felt guilty, yet he couldn’t help being totally turned off. For her part, Jessie was just as capable of orgasm and inclined to be as sexual as before. And she’d developed new hot spots to make up for the ones that were gone: Her cleavage and the region under her collarbone suddenly had become erogenous. She asked her boyfriend to kiss her there when they made love. But he couldn’t do it. There was something too disturbing about her nipple-less breasts.

“I will never forget turning around in the kitchen one night,” says Jessie. “I was doing dishes and I slammed them down and was crying and said, ‘Honey, these things may be plastic, but the rest of me is not. I need you to start touching me again.’”

A few months later, they broke up.

———

The chance that a man will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime is 17 percent — roughly 4.5 percent greater than a woman’s risk of getting breast cancer. One could argue that there is inequality in the way society treats the sexes when it comes to cancer: Do we celebrate prostate cancer awareness month? Stage walks for prostate cancer research? Wear purple ribbons?

No, although that may have much to do with other statistics as well: The survival rate with early detection and good quality treatment is nearly 100 percent for prostate cancer, while the cumulative rate for breast cancer is about 90 percent. According to the National Cancer Institute, the average death from breast cancer occurs at 68, while the median age for death from prostate cancer is 80. All of which means that an increasing number of young women, even famous ones, are opting for genetic testing and preventive mastectomies. (Anyone wanting to learn more about preventive surgeries should go to the Bright Pink website.)

And in terms of medical strategies to cope with the sexual aftereffects of cancer treatment, men are literally decades ahead of women. Surgeons long ago developed nerve-sparing procedures and radioactive seed therapies to reduce the risk of impotence. For men who do have difficulty getting erect after undergoing prostatectomies, doctors respond with therapies, drugs, mechanical devices and support groups.

For women, virtually none of this exists.

“It’s sexism, ageism, paternalism,” says Dr. Michael Krychman, medical director of the Southern California Center for Sexual Health and Survivorship. “Sexual health is the No. 1 quality-of-health complaint women have after breast cancer treatment. Men are studs — we’ll talk to them about sex. But we still have the attitude that a woman who survives should forget about all that and be grateful she’s still alive.”

I’ve seen this imbalance play out among people I know.

About a year ago, I had lunch with a much older male colleague whom I’d always thought to be genteel and discreet. After we ordered, he confided that he’d recently been treated for prostate cancer. I said I was sorry. Our salads arrived. And he began to talk.

For the next hour, I heard about penis pumps and Viagra. He told me his urologist had given him orders to masturbate at least once a day — twice, if possible. Then he described how odd it was to have an orgasm without ejaculation. Excising the prostate eliminated semen, he explained. But he was learning that even without the thick spray he was used to, coming could still feel good.

Later, the man phoned me to apologize. He’d been terribly inappropriate, he said. But I had to understand: From the moment his cancer was diagnosed, healthcare professionals had been talking to him nonstop about sex.

A few weeks later my friend Becky was diagnosed with a hormone-receptive breast tumor. She was in her late 40s — an outspoken woman working in a male-dominated field. The oncologist told Becky she’d need a sizable lumpectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and treatment with Tamoxifen, a combination that often triggers immediate menopause in women over 40.

“Could any of this affect you sexually?” I asked, flashing back to the conversation with my 70-year-old colleague. “Will you lose sensation? Will your libido drop as a result of the drugs?”

Becky had no idea. No one had talked to her about any of this. The one time she’d asked a sexual question of her surgeon — about whether she could leave intact the nerve endings leading to her nipple — the woman shrugged, telling Becky she would do what was necessary to eliminate the cancer. Period.

“We find there is a real difference in the way physicians treat the genders,” confirms Dr. Dixie Mills, medical director for the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, one of the nation’s leading nonprofit organizations devoted to the study of breast cancer and women’s health. “Maybe it goes back to unconscious, ingrained stereotypes. A lot of male doctors won’t talk to their mothers about sexuality, but they’ll talk to their fathers. So they’ll talk to their male patients but not their female patients. Yet we’ve found even some women doctors aren’t comfortable talking to their female patients about sex.” 

This is particularly true, it seems, when the topic is nipples. Virtually none of the literature or education around the topic of breast cancer covers the sudden disappearance of erotic sensation in the breast. There is no attempt, as there is in a prostatectomy, to preserve the nerves. Modern mastectomy simply hacks off the offending tissue and creates a blank area where there once was tingling current.

“It’s a really huge loss sexually, and also in ways you don’t anticipate,” says Meg, a 35-year-old Ohio woman who, like Jessie, underwent a preventive double mastectomy. “For instance, I have no warning when I’m going to get my period. I used to know exactly because my breasts would get sore. For the first couple months after the surgery, I’d be just floored every month.”

Even less-invasive lumpectomies often damage the nerves so nipple stimulation is no longer helpful in achieving orgasm. My friend Becky, who had her surgery in early January, now reports her left breast and armpit are entirely “dead.”

“This happens mostly when the incision is near the nipple,” Mills says. “But rather than talking about this with their patients or cutting into a different area, surgeons just go ahead and consider it necessary. Everyone is so focused on getting the cancer out that sexual issues fall to the bottom.”

One organization is trying to correct that. The Young Survival Coalition, a New York-based nonprofit that supports women under 40 who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, runs seminars and support groups whose focus is on relationships and sexuality. And the offerings have become so popular that older women are asking to join the organization.

”We have sex therapists and counselors who can help them deal with things like vaginal dryness — which occurs in most women after chemotherapy,” says Stacy Lewis, vice-president of programming for the Young Survival Coalition. “For a lot of women, we find it’s simply pain that’s preventing them from having sex.”

In fact, both chemotherapy and many of the drugs used to treat hormone-receptive breast tumors can cause the abrupt onset of menopausal symptoms: hot flashes, mood swings, loss of libido, and vaginal dryness, which leads to painful intercourse. But women at risk for reproductive cancers — particularly young women — cannot use many of the fixes available to the general population, such as HRT (hormone replacement therapy) or topical hormone creams.

There is a non-hormonal drug for female sexual dysfunction in Stage 3 FDA clinical trials. But it could be years before it’s brought to market; at this point, there is no effective Viagra-style therapy for women. Nor have any of the dozen or so women I interviewed been advised by their doctors to masturbate in order to increase blood flow to the area — though it makes sense it might help. Only KY seems to be sensing the growing need for solutions, with its ever-expanding line of female-targeted lubricants.

The only real medical advances for women have been made in the area of cosmetic surgery — making the areas look more normal and functional even if they’re completely numb. Still, design options are far from perfect.

The fake nipples offered to Jessie were perpetually hard and looked terrible under clothing. “I couldn’t see putting a pair of Tic-Tacs on top of these perfectly formed new breasts,” she says.

Despite a modicum of risk, Meg elected to have areola-sparing surgery — meaning the dark, round circles from around her own nipples were retained and reapplied — because her plastic surgeon said it would create a “visual cue.” Breasts without nipples or areolae are like faces without eyebrows. They disconcert, making viewers subconsciously uncomfortable.

A sexual partner — even a devoted husband — might respond negatively on a visceral level, without really understanding why.

In a voluntary study of 300 women, conducted by the Young Survival Coalition, 49 percent said their breast cancer experience reinforced or strengthened an existing romantic relationship.

Happily, this was the outcome for Meg, whose marriage thrived as she recovered from surgery. Her husband attended every one of her doctor appointments, met her as she came out of the operating room, and had dozens of flowers waiting for her upon her return home. In the year since her surgery, Meg found she prefers to wear lacy camisoles during sex, but this is because her breasts no long feel erotic to her. It is not because she feels the need to hide them from her partner.

“My husband was there for me across the board,” she says. “He was 100 percent loving and accommodating and has never indicated any dissatisfaction with my body. I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am in terms of the person I’m with. The story of having a guy who just can’t deal is not atypical. I know so many women who’ve had that experience, and my heart goes out to them.”

But of those breast cancer patients who’ve remained married or coupled, Mills says anecdotal evidence collected by the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation indicates many of them are simply living without satisfying — or any — sex.

“We hear a lot of women say it just isn’t important to them anymore,” says Mills. “But we hear other women say their marriage is suffering, or they’re in a bad relationship but terrified of separating from their current partner because that means they’ll have to get out there and date.”

And what about those women who happen to be single already? In addition to the physical changes — the lack of nerve endings and nipples, the vaginal dryness, the low libido — there’s the sometimes crippling issue of body image. Men are notoriously visual creatures. Jessie is acutely aware of this.

“It’s really hard to seek out new partners because, to me at least, there’s a certain spontaneity lost in the heat of the moment,” she says. “I mean, you’re making out and all of the sudden you have to say, ‘Oh, by the way, don’t want to surprise you, but I don’t have any nipples.’ Talk about a mood killer! You just cross your fingers and pray you have a nice moment at dinner when the topic gets brought up so you can ‘warn him’ ahead of time.”

She pauses, then goes on. “But if you don’t, there’s this black cloud following you around while you’re talking about music, food and politics … When will I tell him? And how will he react?” 

This happens to be two days after my older son’s 21st birthday, which we marked behind two sets of locked steel doors. I’m exhausted and hopeless and vaguely hung over because Andrew, who has autism, also has evolved from sweet, dreamy boy to something like a golem: bitter, rampaging, full of rage. It happened no matter how fiercely I loved him or how many therapies I employed.

Now, reading about this Ohio mother, there is a moment of slithering nausea and panic followed immediately by a sense of guilty relief.

I am not alone.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Andrew started life as a mostly typical child. But at 3 and a half he became remote and perseverative, sitting in a corner and staring at his own splayed hand. Eventually he was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, a label that seemed to explain everything from his calendar memory and social isolation to his normal IQ.

We got him into a good program and there was a brief, halcyon phase of near normalcy — a time I long for still so ardently that I feel hungry for it at a cellular level — from ages 12 to 17. Andrew aced algebra, became fluent in Spanish, played the cello in the school orchestra, and competed on weekends in tournament chess. I occasionally even referred to him as “cured.”

But in the months before turning 18, Andrew grew depressed and bitter. Huge and hairy — a young man who grows a beard by twilight — he suddenly became as withdrawn as he’d been at 4. Many of his old symptoms returned: the rocking and “stimming” (e.g., blinking rapidly at lights), the compulsion to empty bottles of liquid soap. Sometimes he would freeze, like a statue. Classic catatonia, the experts told us. We tried a series of medications, but that only made him worse.

Once during this phase, he beat me. A neighbor heard me screaming and called 911. But I blamed this on the drugs. Despite everything, my son had always been gentle and sweet. This was no twisted adolescent squirrel killer who kept a pile of carcasses under his bed.

On the day he should have graduated from high school, Andrew was instead being treated in a psychiatric ward at the Mayo Clinic. But he seemed to improve, and we were hopeful. Upon release, he was placed in a series of behavioral health centers and group homes. This is where his real education began.

He’d quit progressing in school, but now my son soaked up new information like a toddler learning to talk. Every placement in a succeedingly tougher environment gave him new skills. He shoplifted like a pro, traded his belongings for sexual favors, and dined and dashed so often some local restaurants had his picture posted in their kitchen under the words, “Don’t serve this man.” I told myself at least he was thinking, making his own bad choices, experiencing adult consequences. A part of me was even proud.

But he’d also quit reading, conversing, learning people’s names, or keeping track of the day of the week. He ate like some gnashing beast: stuffing food into his mouth until his cheeks bulged and food dribbled out onto his clothes. And after moving to the rural group home selected by a judge because it was miles from restaurants or businesses where he could steal, Andrew morphed again, the warty monster from a Grimm fairy tale, demolishing everything in his path.

His destruction was utterly senseless yet brilliantly thorough: He submerged his computer, stereo and iPod in water; threw puzzle pieces and Styrofoam cups into the toilet and flushed them, plugging the pipes literally dozens of times a week; and urinated on every square inch of his room: bed, walls, floor, closet, everything but the ceiling and that only because he had not (yet, I suspect) figured out how.

When I asked him why he did these things he would say, eyes narrow like a night creature, “I don’t like being caged.”

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Then came Sept. 2, last fall. This was to be Andrew’s first day of his final year in public school. He hated school — a so-called transition program — because it was demeaning. Lessons about how to cross streets and take buses and punch time clocks. My son had completed pre-calculus; now he was being taught how to make correct change.

But there was nowhere else for him. He’d failed to hold the two jobs my husband and I had found for him; the private job coach we hired said Andrew was the most challenging client he’d ever worked with — right before he quit. We were financially tapped out and the state would not pay for vocational training until Andrew turned 21. Transition school was the only choice.

I’d explained all this. But when I showed up at the group home that morning, he was drinking coffee and pacing and still not dressed. I went into his room, took some clothes from the closet, handed them to him. And hinting at what he was about to do only with a small sigh, as if to say, “I’ve had enough,” my son picked me up and threw me across the room.

I had three broken ribs and a bit of damage to my liver that made my doctor fret. Still, who among us hasn’t wanted to toss our mother across the room when she’s nattering on and making cheerful sounds in the morning? I dismissed it as an aberration until a couple weeks later when Andrew decked his elderly tutor, knocking her onto a concrete sidewalk and breaking her hand. He went on to attack several staff members at the group home, grope the mentally handicapped young women who attended his transition program, and finally to accost his 14-year-old sister right in front of my eyes.

It was Christmas Day. I watched him enter the room and fix his gaze on my daughter. Then he rushed her, and I screamed. My husband — two inches shorter and 50 pounds lighter — somehow intercepted Andrew and knocked him to the ground. After he had been escorted from our family dinner in restraints, we sat at a table heaped with food growing cold, where my elderly parents wept and my daughter shook silently. I comforted them all and after that was done — the meal reheated and people eating — I drank every drop of alcohol in sight, even draining the half-full wine glass my mother always left. The next morning, through a headache of steel knives and bad music, I got on the phone.

I called the man who was supposed to be my son’s psychiatrist to ask for an emergency appointment. Andrew was becoming dangerous, I told the nurse, and he was going to hurt someone. But the doctor was too busy; he was on vacation. There might be an opening in late January. No one else was available, no matter how many numbers I dialed.

Secretly, as if committing a sacrilege, I searched online using keywords such as “autism” and “violence” and “murder.” What I found was confusing. There were roughly a dozen recent articles about heinous acts committed by people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, but each was followed by editorials and letters written by autism advocates vigorously denying a link. There were a few studies from the ’80s and ’90s, but the results — when they showed a higher rate of violent crime among people with autism — appeared to have been quieted or dismissed.

On the other hand there were, literally, thousands of heartwarming stories about autism. A couple of the most widely read were written by me. For years I had been telling my son’s story, insisting that autism is beautiful, mysterious, perhaps even evolutionarily necessary. Denying that it can also be a wild, ravaging madness, a disease of the mind and soul. It was my trademark as an essayist, but also my profound belief.

Now, despite the constant calling and late-night research, I could not accept what was happening. I could not write about it; I could not speak of it. Not even my closest friends knew what was happening inside my life.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

My husband and I were on our way to an inauguration party the night Andrew finally came apart.

It was January, a week of cold so wicked I was dressed in long underwear and wool sweaters, scarves, a parka, and two sets of gloves. It took me a long time to scramble through all the layers when my cellphone rang. But missing the call was not an option. I’d already had four panicked messages from the group home that day: Andrew’s violence was escalating. They were mandated by state law to stay inside because of the weather, and he was going stir crazy, terrorizing the house. No one knew what to do.

“Yes?” I answered.

“I’m so sorry,” is how the voice on the other end began.

It was Andrew’s counselor, calling to describe the situation. My son was in an ambulance circling the Twin Cities, sedated and strapped down to a bed. He’d been in there for a couple of hours and the medics just kept driving; they couldn’t stop because all the psych wards were full.

“Yes,” I croaked again. Other than this one low word, I’d been struck mute.

They’d had no choice but to call the police, the counselor said. After dinner — which was served in the group home at 5 o’clock, leaving long hours to kill before bed — Andrew made a pass at a young female staff member. Petite, blond, around his age. The girl rebuffed him, reminding him probably for the 8,000th time that day about the “no touching” rule. And then he went off.

My son reportedly leapt on her — his 260-pound body surprisingly nimble — one hand around her throat, choking her, and the other in her mouth, pressing down, cutting off her air two different ways. It took four men to pull him off and by this time the girl had passed out.

“Is she all right?” I asked. And this mattered for so many reasons: There was the basic human one, then the legal, also the fact that my own fate hung on the answer. While lying awake earlier that week, I’d made the decision that if my own child were to kill someone I, too, would have to die.

“She’s bruised,” he said, “and scared.”

That’s when I breathed. Nothing irreversibly evil had yet been done.

My husband wanted to turn around. But I was afraid that in the quiet of our home I might sit and think about my perfect, rosy-cheeked baby and actually go insane. So instead we went to the party and, as on Christmas, I drank as if it were a task I need to accomplish. Steadily, with steel. While my husband watched over me with his worried face, I hugged people and talked and tried to participate in a game the host had devised: Obama trivia. What movie did he take Michelle to see on their first date? Which brand of computer does he use? How big are his feet?

I failed to answer a single question and wondered why everyone around me seemed to know these things. Where had I been? Through my shimmering stupor, I surveyed the crowd of happy, shining faces. People were wearing buttons, T-shirts, even necklaces that spelled out “hope.” This struck me as sinister and somewhat rude. Hope was bullshit. Hope was exactly what had been lost.

In the car on the way home, I asked my husband if I had fooled everyone at the party. Was I speaking normally? Did I at any point shout or cry or whimper? He assured me I had not. But for the few moments at the end when I’d looked as if I might collapse, I’d been pale but appropriate.

“I’m sure I’m the only one who knew,” he said, shifting so the seat made its cold, leather groan and taking my hand.

I thanked him and leaned back, thinking dumbly that, of course, there was one thing he didn’t know: I’d been secretly stockpiling the sleeping pills my doctor prescribes like Pez. I had about 80 saved up, which would probably be enough. The ambulance was still out there, driving through the dark night on frosted roads, holding my son inside. For now I could live. But the following morning I recounted my supply, just in case.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Back when Andrew was in junior high school, my mother had a friend whose adult son had only recently been diagnosed with autism. He’d been dysfunctional since childhood, failing at school, unable to make a friend or keep a decent job. At 35 he was still living at home, collecting carts at the local grocery store, and taking anticonvulsants (Tegretol was the unofficial treatment of that era for outbursts) to control the violent urges he’d been having for 15 years.

“You think he’s better now,” my mother’s friend once said as we watched a young, laughing Andrew out the window, playing tag with his brother and sister in my parents’ backyard. “But wait ’til he’s older. Then you’ll understand. “

I hated her and was furious that she wished for our downfall — also that her dumb, psychopathic son had been given the same label as my beloved child. Autism had become oddly fashionable; my mother’s friend was wealthy. Clearly she’d gone “diagnosis shopping.” My son, I vowed, would be nothing like hers. 

When Andrew finally landed at the county hospital, after 10 hours in the circling ambulance and another three in the E.R., I was still looking for a different answer. This wasn’t autism. Surely he had a brain tumor, a seizure disorder, or a delusional condition such as schizophrenia. Maybe, on one of his crime sprees, he’d gotten ahold of some PCP.

But the psychiatrist assigned to my son said no. The MRI was clean; the EEG normal. The doctor’s specialty happened to be schizophrenia, and he saw none of the signs. Street drugs would have left Andrew’s body by now. This was isolation, frustration, hormonal surges, poor impulse control and hopelessness. It was adult autism, the psychiatrist told me: one awful direction it can take.

Monday, I went to see my son. He was in a bare white cell behind a steel door with a window, like Hannibal Lecter. The only thing missing was the mask. Two male nurses and Max, my 18-year-old linebacker son, walked with me into the room. Andrew was beached on a bed, his glasses the only thing on the shelf alongside. I touched his shoulder and woke him, taking his hands after he’d lifted himself to sit. “I’m here, sweetheart,” I told him. “I want to help.”

He looked at me with bug-eyed wonder and squeezed my hands, hard, “I might kill you,” he said. That’s when Max pushed his way between us and ordered me from the room. Sobbing, he wrestled his brother to the bed and held him there.

I spent Tuesday at a friend’s house, as planned, in front of the TV, watching the Obamas walk and wave. Once, when someone asked why I was so quiet, I mentioned that one of my children was in the hospital, quite ill. She touched me and said something kind. I knew she was thinking of something like leukemia and I wanted to tell her I would hack off my right arm in return for something as simple as cancer. The flickering beauty of a sad, pure, too-early death sounds lovely. Instead I nodded, silent and dumb.

The one thing I held onto, through all of this, was the sudden appearance of this county psychiatrist: a small, bespectacled, Dustin Hoffman-ish fellow who’d spent years on a kibbutz before going to medical school in middle age. I found him magnetic, I trusted him. He became my talisman, my Obama, the only reason to hope. It wasn’t that he had any magic solutions — I’ve learned by now that no one does — but he was openly upset, diagnosing Andrew simply as “someone in pain.”

We sat in the doctor’s lounge and he gave me a slice of banana bread to eat while he kneaded his forehead and read his notes. When he asked me what I wanted him to do, I told him: Whatever it takes to make my son stop. The threat of harm to my son’s body was superseded by black stains on his soul. The doctor agreed, but he had made a list in ascending order of risk: Ativan, high-dose Prozac, Depakote, electroshock, Clozaril, Riluzole. A drug called Lupron.

I reached for my single semester of Latin. “Lupron? You want to take the werewolf out of him?”

“Exactly,” said the Israeli. “But it’s our last resort.”

There were days spent in court, one swimming into the next, like a series of nightmares. Because my son was vulnerable, nothing could be done without a judge’s order. Exhausted after this process, my husband and I went to Chicago and spent three days walking in icy sunlight, eating in no-name diners, going to sleep at 9 p.m. By the time we returned, Andrew had been given buckets full of dangerous, doping drugs and two sessions of ECT.

When we arrived at the hospital, he shuffled sleepily out of his now-unlocked room. We gave him money to order pizza (it turns out Domino’s delivers to the psych ward), a sketchbook and pastels, two books. He could have nothing sharp, no cords. This ruled out a CD player, laptop, or ballpoint pen.

I asked tentatively if he remembered what he had done and suddenly he began to cry, tears running down his giant, furry face, jeweling his beard.

“Beware,” he said through ragged breaths. “I’m bad now, I can feel it. I can’t help the things I do.”

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Whether there is a definitive link between autism and violence — between Trudy Steuernagel’s situation and mine — I cannot say.

And even if it exists, the cause is not clear. Our adult son’s behavior could be the outcome of living daily in a world where everything hurts and nothing makes sense. It could be the result (as some scientists have postulated) of excess testosterone on the autistic brain. It could simply be wild coincidence that I ran across this particular story during a time when I was looking for answers. Any of these is possible. I just don’t know.

The chairman of Trudy Steuernagel’s department rose at her memorial service to proclaim, “Autism doesn’t equal violence.” And this probably is mathematically correct: Autism does not always equal violence. But I do believe there may be a tragic, blameless relationship. Neither Sky nor Andrew means to be murderous — of this I am sure — but their circumstances, neurology, size and age combine to create the perfect storm.

It is warmer, finally. Outside my window ice is melting off skeletal trees. I sit in the pale morning light, drinking tepid coffee and reading about this woman whom I suspect I would have liked. A fellow academic and writer, Steuernagel, too, insisted on finding beauty in autism. Her legacy includes an editorial about Sky’s loving nature and relevance, how he led her through life along “a trail of sparkles.”

Mine, I decide, must be in part to break the silence about autism’s darker side. We cannot solve this problem by hiding it, the way handicapped children themselves used to be tucked away in cellars. In order to help the young men who endure this rage, someone has to be willing to tell the truth.

So here it is.

After a few minutes of lying so taut I could practically levitate, I resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to be able to go back to sleep. So I got out of bed and made a cup of tea, went downstairs, slipped a tape into our ancient VCR and rewound to some random point. Then I pressed play and there, on the screen — like an answer — was Erica Kane, wearing an orange jumpsuit, sitting in a solitary cell and talking to a ladybug.

For the past 20 years, I’ve watched “All My Children.” Not every day; not even every week. And usually not in real time, because I find there’s something depressing about sitting in front of a television in the middle of the day. Instead, I record the show — often accumulating a week’s worth at a time — then sit down to watch stretches of it when I’m lonely or anxious or going through a bout of insomnia. “AMC” is my Valium. It’s familiar, dependable; the actors never seem to change. Even better: I can tune in to the middle of an episode after a month’s hiatus and within three scenes know exactly what’s going on. It’s like slipping into a warm bath.

My addiction started in college. I was 350 miles from home at a Big 10 school where I didn’t know a soul. So I went to the student union every day at noon, between introductory physics and world lit, to buy a bag of popcorn and a Diet Coke and ended up on the edge of a group of kids gathered around a wide-screen TV. Many pretended they weren’t watching — especially the big, hairy football players — but if someone tried to change the channel there was a dangerous, collective hum, like the sound before a tornado strikes, and the person handling the remote would quickly back off.

Those were the years of Greg and Jenny, Jessie and Angie, Nina and Cliff. The men were sculpted yet brainy; the women had such dewy skin, it was as if their cheeks had been grafted from infants’. Everyone on the show was in love, dying, divorcing or some combination of the three. And they moved like the players in a Shakespearean tragedy. Just as Romeo killed himself in error after the friar’s assistant came late with Juliet’s crucial message, the young lovers on “AMC” suffered one tragedy after another because of the fickle winds of fate.

Within days, I was able follow the braided story lines and I’d actually made a couple of friends. (Fellow students, I mean.) They filled me in on the characters’ backgrounds: Myrtle was an ex-carnival worker, Palmer the town’s codgery millionaire. Tad, Jenny’s brother, was sleeping with both Liza and her mother, Marion. And minuscule Erica Kane — the indefatigable Susan Lucci, who has been the show’s centerpiece since its inception in January 1970 — was a fashion model with a presence that was strangely huge.

I stopped for a while after college, forgetting all about the soap during the first months of my marriage and entry-level job. But two years later, my oldest child was born. A persistently sleepless little creature, he awoke as if he had an alarm clock hidden under his Big Bird blankets; every night around 1:30 a.m. I would feed and rock and pat him for hours. That’s when I started setting my VCR.

For years, it was a clandestine habit, something I shared in the middle of the night with each of my three infants. They got older and, eventually, the last one quit nursing. When she entered kindergarten, I went to graduate school and became an English professor. You know: the kind who gives lectures on narrative theory and literal emblems and “the inevitability of retrospect,” telling students to fill their minds with a variety of great literature and art. My definition was purposely broad: from “Animal House” to “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Yet even I would not have included “AMC.” Still, I kept up with the soap, sneaking episodes like cigarettes.

We moved to the East Coast. During the day, I taught literature and writing at Brown. Each evening, I’d climb down from my ivory tower and — after tucking my children into bed — I’d follow Erica to Budapest (where she stabbed her eighth husband, Dimitri) and lust after bad-boy cop Trevor, who was tricked into sleeping with his wife’s sister, and watch Edmund marry Maria even though he was still in love with Brooke.

Yes, I recognized the overacting and saccharine music and implausible plot points. I had to look past the vulgar displays of wealth: None of these people seemed to work, but they all lived in castles or penthouse apartments. I even forgave the ridiculous standard of beauty for “AMC” women, its female characters ranging in size from 0 to 4 and each sporting enough hair extensions to cover the heads of every co-host on “The View.” Because, on some elemental level — the same one, I think, that has always drawn me to epics and fairy tales — I was (and still am) riveted and comforted, borne up in some way, by the recurring themes of the show.

The people in Pine Valley, Pa. — the imaginary hamlet where “AMC” is set — are, for instance, constantly tumbling into mine shafts or stuck in cellars or trapped in bomb shelters. Their descent can happen in any number of ways: They might be thrown down an abandoned well by a deranged sister or slip into an underground grotto on their own, only to be trapped when some runaway criminal covers the opening with a rock. The point is that over and over, they plunge, literally, into pits of despair. And then they claw their way back out, breaking French-manicured fingernails and ripping Italian silk shirts, but making it back up and into the light.

There is a redemptive quality to all of this. It has the timeless, allegorical cycle of fall and ascent. No matter how wrong things go, this show seems to say, you can always shake off the ashes — like the proverbial phoenix — and rise again. And no one on “AMC” except the genuinely evil (child killers, for example) ever has to stay in the hell down below.

In Pine Valley, as in the New Testament, the main character never stays dead for long. Characters on “AMC” keep rising miraculously from their graves. They come back to the fold as angels or — more often — cases of mistaken death. Tad (middle-aged now, and a good man) was lost once in a river current and presumed dead; his wife Dixie’s car went off a Swiss cliff. Yet each of them returned, years later, unharmed with some outrageous yet perfectly satisfying explanation: Tad, who’d had amnesia, was “adopted” by a California family and became a winemaker. Dixie gave birth to a baby girl and was tricked into giving her away, then stayed hidden out of shame. (Recently, Dixie died again — this time supposedly for real — but she returned, backlit with a heavenly haze and wearing long, flowing robes, to comfort Tad and help him retrieve their lost child.)

Back when we lived in Providence, R.I., one of the hottest story lines on “AMC” had to do with Bianca Montgomery, Erica’s daughter by Travis (her fifth and sixth husband), who had come out as a lesbian. Bianca happened to be born on the same day as my oldest child — I recall watching the episode from my hospital bed — yet while my son was only 14, Bianca had already grown into a young adult who had sex with other women and traveled the world. Bianca and Erica were reconciled after years of being estranged, following a custody suit that Erica lost because it was disclosed that she’d committed adultery with Travis’ brother, Jack.

A then single parent of three, working odd hours in a strange, new city and providing far less for my own three than I would have liked, I found it soothing that no matter how badly you bungled at child rearing, the bonds between a mother and her offspring held strong. If Erica could lose her daughter for a decade, then win her back after a few enlightened encounters, I could certainly make up for too many nights grading freshman comp exams.

A couple of years passed. My kids started staying up later and eventually discovered my long-kept secret, holding it over my head like some accidental murder I’d committed while tweaked out on meth. “If you don’t let me go to the movie with Helen,” my daughter would say, “I’m going to tell everyone about you and ‘All My Children.’”

I’m ashamed to admit, sometimes this worked.

But then a funny thing happened: Writers I admired began to admit they were also rabid soap opera fans. The most well known probably is David Sedaris, who did a series of commentaries for National Public Radio on his love for “One Life to Live” that earned him an honorary dressing room on the set of the show. Today, soap fandom is viewed as trendy and eccentric among many authors, the equivalent of a famous chef’s admitting to a love for Cheese Nips or Spam. Cultural critics even talk about the “Dickensian” quality of daytime television and how this appeals to literary types.

Does this make me feel better? Of course it does. I’ll admit, I’d far rather have something in common with David Sedaris than a soap junkie who has nothing better to do in the middle of the day.

I suspect, however, that secret soap watching is a fetish shared by many professionals. According to the Nielsen stats, “All My Children” has 2.6 million regular viewers, yet only 817,000 of those are the targeted females between the ages of 18 and 49. Add to this a 68 percent increase in viewership as a result of TiVo, and it looks less and less like nursing home residents account for the other 1.7-plus mil.

In the July issue of Elle, writer Laurie Abraham confessed her addiction to “All My Children” — which she watches each weekday when it airs, after a morning of work — calling it her “amulet against failure” and “a cleansing sorbet for the brain.” She also wrote that rugged male characters such as Zach, a just-this-side-of-the-law casino owner; Ryan, a clean-cut motorcycle-riding sportsman; and Aidan, an Irish-born detective who recently engineered a rescue mission in Sudan, were added to help cultivate a growing male audience. Most straight men don’t talk about the soaps, but the evidence says they’re watching.

A case in point: I published an essay last year that referred, in passing, to Erica Kane and received an “anonymous” e-mail from a middle-aged patent attorney identifying himself only as Jackson — Erica’s former brother-in-law and 10th husband, the one who resulted in her losing her custody suit — and confessing that he locks his office door each day at noon so he can spend his lunch hour alone, sitting on his leather couch, watching. He was terrified someday his secretary would find out.

Life has been better, I wrote back, since I stopped hiding my habit.

I no longer fight the fact that this simple and totally free form of entertainment provides a hopeful, mystical counterpoint to everyday life. Take, for instance, that night I slipped down to the basement — my son in jail — to find Erica in her own prison, carrying on a conversation with a ladybug.

Now this may not sound like something a hardheaded sex goddess, former fashion mogul and modern-day talk show host would do. But it’s a leap you have to make because it demonstrates another theme of “All My Children”: the inherent value of every creature, large or small. It’s rumored that Agnes Nixon created the show nearly 40 years ago as a spiritual alternative to other soaps, and that the title is a biblical reference, the children in question being God’s. (Note: When I called Mike Cohen, the ABC/”AMC” media rep, to ask if the soap opera is based on Christian principles, I got the brushoff. “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said.)

I took a sloshy sort of solace from the conversation between Erica — who’d been thrown in solitary for reasons I never learned — and that insect she held in her hand. I don’t remember much of it. But there was something about how everything happens for a reason and her jail stay had taught her something valuable about life.

Here’s a woman who has been married and divorced nearly a dozen times, who has been abandoned by her father, raped by a family friend, bankrupted repeatedly and addicted to drugs. She found out her beloved daughter was a lesbian — which, in one of “AMC’s” putatively groundbreaking moments, she initially rejected then embraced — and discovered the fetus she’d meant to abort actually was “salvaged” and carried to term in the body of another woman. (You doubt the show is Christian, Mr. Cohen?) The point seems to be that whatever happens, Erica Kane carries on.

This, to me, is the narrative’s basic wisdom. I’m not usually fond of the issue-oriented story lines focusing on domestic violence, transgender issues, cochlear implants or autism. But occasionally “AMC” does manage to cut through the wealth and excess and drama, getting to something meaningful and universal that I believe adds to our world.

Take Stuart Chandler. An undiagnosed artistic cipher with little sense of the world, Stuart is his twin brother Adam’s touchstone, conscience and heart. Both roles are played by David Canary. (Canary is, in my opinion, an actor of London stage quality. Just watch him in a scene where he is actually Adam pretending to be Stuart, juggling the features of both men and magically giving viewers complex, subtle character cues.) Adam and Stuart embody, in their entwined, mirror-image way, man’s darkness and light. It’s a worn device, granted, but in this case well used. And for years, I have watched their drama unfold: the intelligent yet ruthless Adam being held in check by his softer, slower brother, and Stuart’s needs — for money and life-skills counseling — clearly overshadowed by his creativity and goodness and art.

This, I like to think, is what many “AMC” viewers are hanging onto: the value of a rumpled, white-haired man who stutters and paints, his Boo Radley brand of decency and the fact that there is a mythical town tucked in the mountains of Pennsylvania where he has carved out a place. Even the mighty Erica seeks out Stuart when she needs guidance. When she isn’t consulting a ladybug, that is.

During the early morning following my son’s arrest, I watched two and a half backlogged episodes, and this took me through almost until dawn. Then I fell asleep on the couch and rested peacefully until 7 a.m., when it was time to get up, call an attorney and resume the business of my own life, where I don’t live in a castle or run a multimillion-dollar cosmetics company. But all my children are beautifully, painfully real.

But over the next several years, there were signs he was, in fact, losing the battle. Bills for joint credit cards I’d never signed for would arrive. My husband lost dozens of jobs. Money disappeared. Occasionally, he too would disappear, then come back days or weeks later, gray-faced and contrite, unable to explain where he’d been. But according to the people I met at Al-Anon, all this was typical. They would sit in their church basement circles, smiling grimly and drinking decaf out of Styrofoam cups.

“The horns in his head fit the holes in yours,” one woman told me. This struck me as oddly, perversely sexual. Also true.

And it seemed reason enough to stay with a man who was smart and funny and good most of the time, until I came home from a late class and found him at the dining room table pouring tequila shots for himself and our 9-year-old son. That night was the end.

It was a cool, rainy spring. My children and I lived in a big, old Craftsman house with a porch swing, and that’s where I sat at night, under a blanket, staring for hours at the hazy moon. During the day, I acted frantic and happy. I taught my freshman composition classes and took extra freelance writing jobs and told the kids that everything would be fine. They knew I was lying. I never slept, my hands shook, I’d dropped more than 20 pounds.

One afternoon about a month after my husband moved out, I was at the elementary school when a little girl passed by, weeping. Suddenly I, too, began to cry and once I’d started I couldn’t stop. I was making a scene; children were staring at me on their way to the bus. Then a woman appeared, shapely and dark-haired with a low, wet, whispery voice. Before I could object — tell her I was fine, pick up my kids and leave — she steered me through a door, into the school’s utility room, and hugged me hard against her soft body. After she let go, she pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her sweater, lit a couple and handed me one.

It was the most gallant thing anyone had done for me in a long time. Of course, I knew I shouldn’t be huddled behind a furnace, smoking my first cigarette in a dozen years with a kindergarten teacher. But it was warm and snug and deliciously naughty. I poured out my story, telling Gisele (although that wasn’t her real name) all about my divorce, about the man I still loved who drank and drugged and spent all our money until there was simply no way to stay married anymore.

I breathed in the haze of her smoky, sweet perfume and went on babbling all about my children, especially the middle one, who’d suffered most because he felt guilty, like he was the reason his father had to leave.

Her eyes as dark and melty as a Labrador’s, Gisele leaned down to kiss my cheek. “When can I meet them?” she asked.

I brought her home that night. And our house lit up.

Prior to Gisele, dinnertime was sad. The children and I sat around a table that felt strangely off balance, their father’s absence even larger than his presence had been.

But now, Gisele would drive over after work, picking up the kids from their various activities along the way. She brought flowers, as well as wine and cigarettes that we would share on the corner of the porch while the children watched TV. A wonderful cook and a lusty eater, Gisele drank brandy and played games with the kids while I cleaned up. Then I would pour myself a cup of leftover coffee and watch from the kitchen doorway: my 5-year-old daughter on Gisele’s lap, my 9-year-old son consulting her about his homework, my timid older boy approaching her — actually reaching out to touch her — and getting caught up in a raucous hug.

She had a husband of her own somewhere in the background, an older guy (46 to our 34) who was underemployed and overly fond of pot. He was sweet and laconic but so stoned by evening’s end, he didn’t much notice whether or not she was home.

March warmed into a lilac-filled April. Nearly every night it was the two of us, Gisele and I. Raising my children, making elaborate meals, sitting side by side on my front porch swing. I’d gained back 10 pounds and started to feel actual hope.

One chilly night she put her arm around me and said, “I’m straight. At least I thought I was. I’ve never been in love with a woman before.”

There was a haunting ache in my thighs. “I haven’t, either,” I said. And suddenly everything made sense.

I’d always believed that liberated people were essentially bisexual. Plus, my closest friend in grad school was a lesbian with a shaved head and a gap between her teeth, a beautiful creature who looked like a cross between Sinéad O’Connor and Dennis the Menace and lived with her life partner on a five-acre hobby farm. Their place was homier than anyone else’s I knew: books and braided rugs and tasteful framed posters on the walls. When my friend’s daughter came for the summer, she went horseback riding and lived in the warm enclave of two gentle, forgetful, artistic moms.

Compared with the last dark days of my marriage, this looked idyllic. And it’s exactly how I imagined life would work out for Gisele and me. My children loved her; they could count on her. I was arriving home to find domestic notes — “Gone shopping. Max needed pants. Love, G” — tacked to the refrigerator.

She took my hand one evening near Easter. It was warm but not yet muggy, and the crickets were playing their song in the bushes below. “I’m ready,” she said. And she told me how she’d made a plan: Saturday, while my kids were with their grandparents, we would watch “Henry and June,” paying special attention to the love scene between Uma Thurman and Maria de Medeiros, the dark-eyed Portuguese actress portraying Anaïs Nin. We would split a bottle of wine. Then, we would go to bed.

I agreed.

The weekend came. I was painfully nervous; being alone with Gisele felt strange. We loaded the movie into my ancient VCR and poured two glasses of Rioja. The women on the screen danced and drank and smoked. They slid together, manicured fingers stroking soft skin, graceful necks intertwined, tongues touching.

Suddenly, Gisele’s hand was on my leg. It traveled up, farther, high along the inside of my thigh, and I felt … nothing.

Disappointed, heart pounding with shame, I concentrated. I was an open-minded woman! I was in love! I could be turned on if I just committed myself to the task. But while the actresses moved silkily together and groaned with unabated lust, I remained like a block of wood.

Gisele leaned toward me with an open mouth, but she must have seen the stricken look on my face. She retreated kindly. It was too fast, she said. I just needed time.

So we went on as before. The awkwardness faded after a few days, but for me even the small stirrings of electricity were gone. Now that the mystery was over, so was the thrill. I’d come within a millimeter of kissing Gisele, but rather than daydreaming about that breathy closeness, I felt like someone who’d swerved at the last minute and narrowly avoided hitting a tree.

Still, by most standards ours was a healthy relationship: I had someone in my life who loved me reliably, who was around to help when one of the kids was sick or having a tantrum or needing to make a diorama. Sure, there was the matter of her husband. I felt guilty about this, but Gisele assured me that their marriage had been failing for a long time. Besides, she and I weren’t actually doing anything that couldn’t be filed under the category of best friends.

This, however, was fast becoming a problem. One night, Gisele came home and admitted she’d been contemplating an affair with a male teacher at her school but said she wouldn’t have been tempted if I’d been able, or willing, to love her in every way. I was torn. While I was pretty sure by this time that I simply preferred men — their shape and smell and muscular forearms — I also knew that I’d miss Gisele terribly if she were no longer around.

More important, my children had grown attached to her. I had not just allowed but also encouraged them to do this. And I couldn’t bear the thought of excising a second caring adult from their lives.

So this time, I devised a plan.

I had a teaching job coming up in Baltimore and would need to drive out in early June. Gisele would be done with school the day before I was to leave. Would she like to accompany me? I asked. Alone together on the road, we could work out the true nature of our relationship. She agreed.

The day we set off was sunshiny and warm. We took turns driving, stopping for coffee every couple of hours and listening to “best of” tapes from the ’70s. When night fell we got a hotel room with one double bed, sleeping in our T-shirts and underwear curled together like possums.

We traveled well together, and I added this to my mental list of assets, resolving to try even harder to make this thing work. Perhaps, I thought, the change of scenery would allow me to loosen up.

The second night, we stayed at her family home. I met her mother, father and younger sister. Shortly after a late dinner, I went to bed. Around 3 a.m., I awoke coughing and went out to investigate. The smoke was so thick in the kitchen, I thought at first there had been a fire. But it was only the three women — mother and two sisters — sitting around a table with an overflowing ashtray and a mostly empty liter of booze.

We moved on, staying the third night in an Allegheny mountain hotel. After a cheap meal in a diner, Gisele insisted on stopping at a local grocery store, where she loaded up on chocolate, cheese, ice cream and beer. Back in our room, she told me about the eating disorder that was often triggered by time spent with her family. Then she spread everything out on the bed, switched on the TV and ate until she was glassy-eyed.

We arrived in Baltimore the next evening. By this time, there were several things bothering me. Gisele had been difficult to awaken that morning and had refused to talk or eat all day. She’d needed to pull over every half-hour or so for a cigarette and bathroom break. She’d gone through an entire case of Diet Coke.

But once we reached the city she became cheerful again. It was our final night together — Gisele would be flying out the following day — so we decided to go out to a really nice place. On the deck of a restaurant overlooking the Inner Harbor, as we ate table-tossed Caesar salads and an enormous platter of fresh, steamed crabs, Gisele told me all about her recent bankruptcy. Her second, she said, shrugging, as she reached for a snow-white leg.

Then she signaled the waiter with one finger and ordered another double Courvoisier. Her fifth.

By the time the bill arrived, night had settled over the water and Gisele had switched to coffee with Baileys Irish Cream. There were lights twinkling from the trees of the Hard Rock Cafe. I opened the folder to look at the total — a number too ridiculously high for me to think about at that moment — and slipped in my Visa.

Then I took Gisele’s hand and held it under the table and we sat that way for a long time, listening to the happy restaurant buzz and the soft sound of the lapping waves. She stroked my wrist, which was comforting. And finally, slowly, I understood. Gisele and I might never have been technically compatible. Sexually, we didn’t match. But the horns in her head fit perfectly into the holes in mine nonetheless.