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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Spin doctoring
Expectations about your health or illness can cause reality to follow suit.
By Susan McCarthy
[07/15/99]

Urge
Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan call girl
About the story and list of characters.
By Tracy Quan
[07/15/99]

A thing of beauty
Should we flush our colons or leave them alone?
By Jon Bowen
[07/14/99]

Column
The cost of free love
After Helen's libertine days turned sour, she began to wonder: Was it about desire or just another way to conform?
By Virginia Vitzthum
[07/13/99]

Ginkgo below
Chinese herbalists consider ginkgo an aphrodisiac. So does at least one man in Dallas.
By Stephen G. Michaud
[07/12/99]

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Thursday, July 8

Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl appears in Health & Body every Monday and Thursday. + About Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl -- with links to all chapters to date. + Read the Diary from the start.

I felt guilty this morning, turning off the ringer on my business phone. Torn between making my self-imposed quota or preserving my raw material, I opted for extra sleep.

I am not used to having my routine disrupted by a love interest. Or a lust interest, whichever this might be. Darling Matt kept me up until 4 a.m. talking, sipping red wine and making love -- then he got up at 8:30, rushed off to the No. 6 train and apparently put in a full day of work downtown. (How does he do it? I'm almost next door to the Lexington line but still have no idea how to use the subway. My Metro Card is still in its plastic wrapper, either expired or growing mold like the yogurt in my fridge.)

More to the point, I cannot function on four hours of sleep. Matthew can because he doesn't feel obliged to look his youngest. Actually, his boyish features are holding him back on the job, because he "doesn't look senior enough" and he thinks staying up late will make him look more experienced and businesslike. (His problems are the opposite of mine: The last thing I want is to look "experienced.") The good news is that Matt is so busy cultivating his patina of exhaustion that he doesn't ask how I spend my days. Or evenings, for that matter ... I love this phase of a relationship.

I woke late to discover umpteen hang-ups in voice mail -- one of my morning regulars was so anxious to get laid that he couldn't leave a message. "Make hay while the sun shines" -- but I was out like a light. This is the story of my love life, isn't it? A boyfriend is a professional liability, eating into precious time and energy that might have been expended profitably. I should keep Darling Matt at arm's length, but that's hard to do. The sound of his voice makes my heart sort of quiver. And I'm starting to keep score: If he calls before I start wanting him to, I'm ahead ... if he calls after, I'm a bit miffed.

Must go and take off this camphor mask before my 6:30 arrives.
salon.com | July 15, 1999

Episode 3: The rules

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