“They’re so beautiful this year,” she said. She sighed. “I wish I could be there.”

This was the spousal equivalent of a Bat Signal, a distress call from a sinking midlife ship. Regina’s 40th birthday loomed only three weeks away. We’d been trying to figure out what would be an appropriate celebration. A party didn’t seem like a good idea. While I wasn’t entirely happy about the fact, we’d pretty much turned the corner from the party period of our life toward the middle-years, middle-class, middlebrow New Age fruitcake period.

The very real possibility of a darkly unrecognized milestone loomed; our life had become a thick catalog of reluctantly managed expectations. But there are times to sit around and mope about your lousy cash flow and increased feelings of irrelevance, and then there are times to damn those things to hell. My wife needed to have an adventure for her 40th birthday, and I needed to make that happen, whether I went with her or not. Regina and I have friends who vacation in Europe with their children, who love showing off photos of their progeny discovering Morocco or Vietnam. That’s not our world, not even close. Date nights almost never happen in our lives; it’s been more than a year since we paid for a baby sitter, and I can only leave the kid at my sister’s so often. But stagnation is marriage’s greatest enemy, so sometimes Regina and I go on trips without each other.

I understand why some couples don’t like the idea of traveling apart. There’s the thought that you’ll be missing out on all the fun, or that an attractive stranger might walk into the bar (which happens in Jennifer Aniston movies, but not so much in real life). Realistically, though, how are two middle-aged people with limited income and children to support supposed to have long-term romantic getaways? They’re not. Allowing your partner to travel alone means acceptance of your modest circumstances. To follow dreams, sometimes you have to give up illusions.

To me, Regina’s crop-circle travel desire seemed odd, but who was I — someone who still vaguely imagined getting asked someday to be a celebrity judge at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam — to say anything? I didn’t want to change her or hold her back; I wanted her to be happy on her own terms. Adult responsibilities shouldn’t force you to submerge some vital part of your identity. If you even think about suppressing those impulses in your partner, that’s the beginning of the end for a happy marriage. Regina took her trip. She didn’t call home very often. When she did, she sounded ecstatic, and, on more than one occasion, a little tipsy. Her compatriots on the tour took her to the pub for her birthday and bought her a cake. Then she came home 12 days later with a thousand photos, a few friends for life, and semi-conclusive proof that the truth was out there. It had been, she said, one of the most important and redemptive experiences of her life. “Thank you so much for doing this for me,” she said. “My pleasure,” I said, and I really meant it.

From all the middle-aged fruitcake yoga I’d been doing I’d somehow gleaned the sentiment that the sum total of happiness in your life can be measured by the amount of happiness you bring to others. By merely sending Regina on a trip, I’d made her life better, and that made me feel good. But just because I’d done something nice for my wife didn’t mean I’d suddenly transformed into an exemplar of selflessness.

Regina grew up Southern Presbyterian, trained to suffer silently and never complain. I was brought up, on the other hand, to whine about every slight problem, real or perceived, as though it were an injustice of Jim Crow proportions. My 40th birthday came six months later, and I wanted my own adventure.

I like taking trips with my family, but that usually entails dealing with spills, fretting about bedtimes, and sitting numbly on park benches wondering where the time’s all gone. These things comprise the matter of life, and shouldn’t be traded, but they also don’t afford the fresh experience of solo adventure. It stirs the imagination. For a few days, or weeks, you can revive your youthful illusions of wonder. You can eat what you like, go where you like, and use the toilet whenever you want without anyone screaming your name across the house.

For my 40th birthday I went to Boulder, Colo., for the entire month of June, to attend yoga school. Regina had given me the precious gift of time, and it didn’t cost her anything because I raised all the money for the trip online. But my experience wasn’t as drenched in transcendent fabulosity as my wife’s had been.

Just before leaving, I shredded my left hamstring. My industrial-size bottle of Advil and I ended up renting the spare bedroom of a semi-reformed Deadhead’s condo located next to a trailer park, which I limped through to yoga class every morning at 7:30. My month of freedom, which I’d imagined I’d spend cruising around on my bike stoned and strolling up mountain paths in a state of sainted bliss, was instead defined by cooking frozen salmon burgers in a pan, watching the basketball team I hate the most win another NBA title, and reading arcane and inscrutable documents of ancient Indian philosophy while squirming in pain on a used mattress in an unadorned room. It was an often sad and exhausting time. For the first time in many years, I felt lonely, and I missed the cozy confines of my domestic life.

I needed my family. That’s a nice feeling to have, even if it’s painful at the time. Solo traveling, it turns out, gives you a tangible and surprising gift: It creates actual longing. Less than half an hour after the program ended, I was waiting at the bus depot for a ride to the airport, and four hours after that, I was finally, gratefully home.

Of course, we don’t always travel alone. The weekend before I’d left, Regina and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. We’d been intending to revisit the four-star resort in the Smoky Mountains where we’d spent several lovely days of our honeymoon, but finances wouldn’t permit that. So instead, I got us a midweek rate at a small hotel in Desert Hot Springs. We left the kid with a friend for a couple of nights and drove out. For 48 hours, we soaked and relaxed, and took a daylong hike in Joshua Tree National Park. We drank champagne and did anniversary things. Just like old times, we put on our boots, drove out to a honky-tonk, and ate mediocre barbecue. We had a really fun and memorable time. Best of all, we had it together.

This, in yoga terms, is called Samadhi, the divine perception of universal consciousness, though the realization may have come to me because I was in the middle of a five-day drug bender. I’d bought some full-melt sativa hash capsules at my neighborhood medical-marijuana dispensary before coming to town, had taken two caps before getting on the plane, and had refried my brain first thing three consecutive mornings. Visions like these were happening regularly now; my synapses had begun to fray around the edges.

All I needed was to lie down for a couple of hours with a wet washcloth over my face, but I’d made plans to meet a friend for an early evening yoga class at her favorite studio. Once again, yoga had imposed itself upon my life. After a harsh period defined by career disappointment and excessive doughnut consumption, I’d taken up the practice and had been at it for four years, pretty steadily. While yoga’s magical transformational properties hadn’t entirely taken hold, I did feel a little better, overall. So I kept going. Sometimes, instead of meeting friends at bars, I’d meet them at yoga studios. My friend was excited to share this experience with me. Doing yoga at Jivamukti, she said, had made her life so much better.

“Fuck yeah!” I said, when she asked me. “I love yoga!”

Jivamukti (a Sanskrit word that means “liberation while living”) is a yoga method that combines physical postures with scriptural study, music, chanting, meditation, animal rights, veganism, environmentalism and political activism. The practice is adored by many and considered the height of pretension on Earth by others. Later, when I mentioned it to a friend, she referred to it as “Jive-Ass Monkey.” Of course, I knew none of this when I got off the elevator and entered the Jivamukti den, high as an Underdog balloon. I was planning to simply take another class on another chilly spring afternoon. My friend and I would do some yoga, towel off in separate locker rooms, and then go get some tasty noodle soup.

I entered a room the size of a soccer pitch. Students set up their mats so they were nearly touching, in rows of ten. My preference would have been to hide in the middle-back. That way, the teacher might forget about me. But my friend plopped down in the front row, close to the door, so I had to splay next to her. Across the aisle from us, an equally deep number of full rows took shape, like an opposing phalanx in some sort of yoga war. I was used to studying in small rooms with no more than 20 people, and often fewer than 10. This felt about as intimate as getting on the subway.

Several short women wearing white, v-neck blouses walked around the room, hands behind their backs, examining the scene. They looked kind of like massage therapists to me. I grew hopeful — a massage sounded pretty good. Maybe I shouldn’t do yoga today, I thought. Maybe I should get a massage instead.

The instructor entered. She was tall and lithe, and she moved with a healthy, almost ethereal confidence. A few freckles, perfectly placed, dotted her angular face. You’ve had many yoga instructors who’ve looked like her, except that she was hotter by a degree of ten. She walked into the center of the room.

“OK, the thing you have to understand about the world,” she said, “is that most people are totally selfish, right?”

Well, that was always a good conversation starter.

“If you’re being selfish,” she continued, “if you’re only thinking about yourself, then you’re hurting the world. And what you have to understand, you guys, is that the choices you make, right, totally affect the environment. And that you have a responsibility to the world to make the right choices.”

Usually, my yoga teachers never gave a rap longer than, “I’ve had kind of a rough day, and I’ve been thinking I need some yoga to center myself, so let’s get started.” But this went on and on. I wasn’t then aware that Jivamukti instructors are required to give a 15-minute dharma lecture before class. They’re told to stress the yamas, or codes of conduct, for yogic living. These include: Non-harming, non-stealing, non-lying, non-attachment, and the always unpopular sexual continence.

“I like to think of myself as an ethical vegan,” the teacher continued. “And that informs my yoga practice, and it helps me to heal the world. Did you know, you guys, that research has shown if you eat meat, you’re doing more harm to the environment than if you drive an SUV? Think about that while you’re doing your yoga. If 98 percent of the people who drove SUVs stopped driving them tomorrow, it still wouldn’t help the environment because of all the damage that meat-eaters do. So when you’re eating meat, think about all the harm you’re doing to the world because you’re selfish and greedy and don’t think about others.”

This particular dharma lecture confused me. Weren’t yoga teachers supposed to present themselves as humble servants of a higher power rather than moral paragons above reproach or laughter? Also, while I’ve had some raw food episodes in my life, and understand and appreciate the philosophy behind veganism, her science was almost as faulty as her manner was condescending. Someone needed to take her down a notch. The right time to do it, I figured, was during a yoga class attended by a hundred of her followers, while I was toasted to the nines.

“Bullshit!” I said.

My friend looked at me, pained and nervous, pleading with her eyes for me to stop. The teacher heard because she was right in front of me.

“If someone disagrees with what I’m saying,” she said, “they’re obviously not well-informed and are speaking from a position of insecurity.”

“I’m not the only one,” I mumbled under my breath.

This wasn’t going to go well. She huffed haughtily and resumed her dharma talk. Finally, our physical practice began. It pushed way beyond any level I could handle. The flow moved too fast, and many of the positions were new to me. I stumbled around, flinging sweat off my head onto other people’s mats, huffing and sighing. The instructor, by now, had me in her crosshairs. She kept giving me adjustments, though the most effective adjustment might have been to put me in a chair and leave me there.

“Maybe you should practice a little bit before you start criticizing,” she said.

“Maybe I should.”

“Maybe you should.”

“That’s what I just said.”

She walked away. I don’t think I was her type of student. Then again, I’d yet to find a yoga teacher who was naturally drawn to sarcastic, incompetent fat asses. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the practice. Then the teacher’s voice lowered about two octaves, and she started talking much more slowly. In fact, it sounded like another voice altogether.

“Now,” said the voice, “keep your heart open — wide open — and move your shoulder blades apart as you slide your hands into warrior two.”

I opened my eyes as I moved into the pose. One of the women in white was now guiding the practice. This teacher had assistants, for god’s sake.

“Is this some sort of cult?” I said.

My friend, realizing she’d made a horrible mistake by inviting me, drew her lips together with a loud SHHHH.

Yoga teachers don’t need assistants, I thought. Sure, if you’re Patthabi Jois or B. K. S. Iyengar or some other nonagenarian whose near-divine presence has made practice possible for millions of people, you’ve earned the right to sit quietly while your senior disciples do the heavy lifting. But for the love of Krishna, if you’re a sexy Manhattan broad at the height of your powers, don’t pawn your extra vinyasas off on underlings!

At some point, after she’d retaken control of the tiller, the instructor made a joke. By now, we were doing the seated poses, so I could at least breathe. I don’t remember the joke, but, for some reason, I laughed.

“Oh, so the comedian thinks I’m funny,” she said. “I must be doing something right.”

Lady, I’m no comedian, I thought. I’m a comic writer. There’s a difference.

Finally, we got to savasana. Boy, did I need it. I lay down on my rental mat and prepared for ten minutes or so of sweet relief from the nightmarish yoga journey I’d just endured. Then I heard a voice. Some sort of recording was being played. The voice was British, with the hint of a Middle Eastern accent, and as preachy as Noam Chomsky being interviewed by a college-newspaper editor.

“The United Nations estimates,” said the voice, “that more than four hundred thousand people have died in Iraq since the start of the Gulf War. The estimated profits made by U.S. corporations since that time have equaled …”

“Are you kidding me?” I said.

“Please don’t do this,” said my friend, rapidly becoming my former friend.

“In 1980,” said the tape, “Saddam Hussein met with Donald Rumsfeld …”

I stormed out, mat in hand. Sure, I was against the war in Iraq and all, really against it, big time. I’d organized a group to march against George W. Bush’s first inauguration, for god’s sake. My lefty bonafides didn’t need proving. But the last thing I needed to hear during savasana was a recitation of recent U.S. war crimes in the Middle East.

I went into the lobby and gave the desk clerk the crazy druggie eye.

“WHO DOES THAT TEACHER THINK SHE IS?” I said.

The desk people ignored me. “I WANT TO FILE A COMPLAINT!” Still, they ignored me. “THAT WAS AWFUL, WHAT WENT ON IN THERE! ALL THE POLITICAL RANTING! THIS IS YOGA, DAMMIT! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! THIS PLACE IS A NIGHTMARE!”

It didn’t occur to me that the people working behind the desk at Jivamukti might side with the teacher in any disagreement.

Five minutes later, my now former friend came out of class. We went downstairs to the street. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said.

“That bitch,” I said.

“I don’t care if you disagreed with her. This place is important to me, and you embarrassed me in class.”

“But …”

“That was totally humiliating for me.”

My friend wanted an apology. So, about six months later, I emailed her one. The incident continued to trouble me, though. The teacher had preached, didactically and unpleasantly. But what I’d done in response, I finally realized, had been totally wrong and disrespectful. It took months for me to look Jivamukti up online, to understand that I’d gone blindly into one of the founding studios of modern yoga, thrown a fit worthy of a toddler so far gone that no shiny object could distract him from his rage, and left with nothing in return.

Before the yoga, I’d behaved that way fairly often. It was about as far from my best self as I could get. In fact, I’d even go so far as to call it my bad self. But even serious yogis, I was learning, are often tempted to get down with their bad selves. Trying to contain it was the true yoga practice, the real discipline and dedication, and getting there, I began to understand, would take a lot more practice, and maybe a little less drugs.

Michelle got a lot of press leading up to the games, and not just because she was the 2009 U.S. freestyle skiing champion with a batch of international victories under her jumpsuit. On a U.S. Olympic team that includes a “Dancing With The Stars” champion and a longhaired snowboarding corporation, Michelle gets a perfect score from the eccentricity judges. As the Wall Street Journal reported in October, she stands two classes short of a degree in chemical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines, and uses her scientific skills to run a natural perfume company called Phinomenal. She mixes her potions herself in a Denver lab next door to a warehouse where she trains for mogul runs by jumping on a trampoline. Her company’s name, explained the WSJ, derives from the phi, or the number 1.618, otherwise known as the “Golden Ratio,” which appears in the length of plant stems, DNA strands, and serves as the architectural basis of the Parthenon. Before competing in a race, Michelle spritzes a blend called “Confidence,” made of Bulgarian rose oil, Italian Bergamot and Florida grapefruit, on the back of her neck and behind her ears.

All of this is true.

When I last encountered Michelle, at a family wedding in the summer of 2008, she was two years past competing in Torino (where she finished 18th after an unfortunate stumble) and had endured three surgeries on each knee. Yet, as she entered her mid-30s, she was still poised to make a medal run in Vancouver. But she spent more time talking about her fragrance line than she did about her chances at making the Olympics, and she did so in a tone so enthusiastic, so chirpy, and so optimistic, that I, despite a series of brutal hangovers that plagued me all weekend, almost found myself sharing her enthusiasm for life.

One morning, on the lawn of the house where we were staying, she led more than a dozen family members through a semblance of her brutal daily workout. Not about to humiliate myself in such a forum, which featured more organized lunging than makes me comfortable, I watched from an upstairs window, thinking that Michelle was one of the coolest, weirdest, most interesting people I’ve ever encountered. How could you not root for someone like her?

So when my stepcousin, in town with his family last weekend, told me that Michelle had qualified for the Olympics, I knew my viewing agenda was set. She’d finished fourth out of four American women in her event, but that still put her in the top eight in the world. “She definitely has a chance to medal,” he said.

I kept that in mind as Michelle took to the hill last night. Honestly, I hate skiing, and therefore had no idea what I’d be watching. When I saw that Michelle had to go down a steep, slushy black diamond run punctuated by two over-iced ramp-like ski jumps, I thought, I wouldn’t even try that on Xbox. My respect for her grew a thousandfold.

And then she launched her qualifying run, all five feet, 105 pounds, and 35 years of her. It included some kind of 720-degree spin that just looked amazing and seemed to really impress color announcer Jonny Moseley, who knows a thing or two about such matters. Michelle had been a competitive figure skater in a former incarnation, Moseley said, and “she’s always been a great spinner.” She ended the qualifying round in seventh place, and her Facebook update read, “I landed my 720, qualified in the top 10, going for gold!!! Thanks for all your support and positive vibes!!”

Go Michelle!

It was 11:05 p.m. before she made another appearance on the screen. Canadian ace Jenn Heil and two quirky American gals, Shannon Bahrke (with her pink hair and her own business roasting coffee beans in her garage), and 23-year-old Hannah Kearney had run stronger than Michelle in the qualifying, and a few others stood between her and a medal. Thus, Michelle took the Olympic stage for almost certainly the last time. Less than ten seconds into the run, on her first jump, she tried another 720, and executed it quite well. But then she landed, moved into her first mogul turn, caught a ski in the slush, and hit the skids, taking an awkward cross-hill tumble. She then got up nobly and cruised down toward what would eventually be a 17th-place finish. Her tremendously risky jump, and the knowledge that she’d gone for it all, would have to be its own reward. (Kearney won gold; Heil, silver; Bahrke, bronze.)

It had been a tough week for Michelle. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported, her husband Mike Hormell was banned from the Olympics after officials say he attempted to watch her practice without proper clearance. Michelle claimed that Mike had the paperwork but Olympic officials say they didn’t have it; appeals to the USOC went unheeded. This must have disappointed her deeply. I can’t think of a sweeter and more supportive person than Mike, who stands quietly, calmly, and good-humoredly in the face of Michelle’s awesome whirlwind. But she still went out there and pushed herself to the true Olympic edge.

I also know for sure that Michelle had many other loved ones watching her on the course, from parents to cousins to children of cousins, to the children of cousins’ children. My family always puts in more than a token appearance. And the rest of us were watching her at home, admiring her spirit, and proud to call her, um, third stepcousin twice removed or whatever. As someone who may or may not be my relative posted on her Facebook page: “Way to fight it out, Michelle! It doesn’t matter how you fall but you got up and showed you are a true champion!!”

Indeed. Michelle Roark is the best, and around the country and maybe the world, all the Roark/Dougherty/Porter/King/Pollack/Allen/Hummel/Smith/ Schein/Deimerts are full of love and pride tonight.

Now everyone else buy her perfume, because it smells really good.

I put the salvia in my freezer and didn’t touch it for almost two years. Then I had a free midnight, and it occurred to me to try some. I took a pinch of salvia from my bag, rolled it into a ball and stuck it under my tongue; all the Web sites say that sublingual absorption leads to stronger trips. It tasted bitter but not much worse than, say, collard greens. I gave it a chew and placed it under my tongue for another 30 seconds. I repeated this process a few times until I’d created a slightly acrid green brew in my mouth; I sloshed it around and kept chewing. By degrees, I felt nauseated, like I’d eaten vitamins on an empty stomach, but my gut held. After 20 minutes, I spit the whole megilla into the toilet, put some bhangra on the iPod, lay down on my guest bed, and closed my eyes.

Almost immediately, I had visions. Great, thick green vines, ancient beyond measure, stretched out into infinite space. A being that looked like an Aztec God flew above, spewing fire. I saw my head splitting open. Red goo poured out and melded into what appeared to be the cosmos. I had another vision, of me dancing with my son, which was a bit more pleasant. A large hole opened in the universe. I flew toward it. A beautiful woman in a white robe took my hand and guided me through. This, I later learned, was the “salvia spirit,” who appears in most salvia-inspired visions, or at least the ones that get chronicled on Erowid. She’s also repeatedly depicted in online “salvia art”. I opened my eyes, and the trip was over. Ten minutes had passed.

The next night, I repeated the dose. While I had a few small visions, I mostly felt that my body was stretching out beyond its boundaries, moving into infinite space. The night after that, I did a third consecutive salvia chew. Nothing came of it, and around 1 a.m., I fell asleep.

Approximately two hours later, I snapped awake, aware that the room had shaken with a tremendous thud, as though something very heavy had landed. A massive stone warrior, looking vaguely like a lost piece of Mesoamerican art, stood in the middle of the room. “Don’t mess with what you don’t understand,” he said to me. Terrified, I closed my eyes, and saw the woman again. I seem to recall begging her to show me the secrets of the universe. She spoke for the first time as well. “You take yourself too seriously,” she said. The sensation of traveling through space returned, and then I fell asleep. The next morning, when I woke up, I was seized with the urge to see how my fantasy baseball team was doing.

On a scale of drug harshness, salvia falls on the mild end, stronger than weed but weaker than ecstasy, and it doesn’t even register in the same league as the hard drugs like cocaine and heroin and meth. It should be classified as a mild hallucinogen. Well, perhaps “mild” isn’t the right word, since the effects are intense, but it’s short-lived. I haven’t done psychedelic mushrooms or acid in nearly 20 years, but I remember those trips as being very, very long and annoyingly open-ended. You never knew exactly what you’d see or experience, though you were pretty much guaranteed to sweat a lot and have a nasty backache the next day. Salvia, on the other hand, is quick, focused and almost uniform in its effects. Salvia is non-toxic, and too intense to be addictive. Anyone who does it more than once a month should literally have their head examined.

People who hate drugs have been busy excoriating salvia this year. Salvia is currently illegal in Delaware, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia, and bills are on the table in many other states. In Ohio, a 12-year-old-boy, who said he uses salvia, shot and killed another boy, though there’s no clear evidence that the shooter was on salvia at the time. In 2006, a Delaware teenager, who’d written about salvia in the past, committed suicide, prompting that state’s ban. Tragic as those events may be for the people involved, salvia does not appear to have torn apart our precious social fabric. It barely even scratches around the edge. The “salvia trip video” is a standard bearer on YouTube, but you end up watching either giggling Jew-froed teenagers or bearded grown-ups falling back into their couch and saying, “Whoa.” There are few things more boring than grainy footage of someone else’s drug trip, and I don’t think the proselytizing is going to get more high-end any time soon.

My recommendations, for all that they’re worth, are as follows: Salvia isn’t a drug for the young. No one under 21 should ever touch the stuff, and if anyone else is going to use it, do so wisely. First-timers might be helped to have a sober “guide,” preferably one experienced with salvia, nearby. It’s good to have someone to talk with when you’re done; also, if you forgot water, you’re going to want someone to get you some, because you’ll come back really thirsty. Users know well enough not to make any big plans for a couple hours after the trip. The intense effects only last a short time, but you should never, ever drive after using salvia.

I’ve continued to do salvia a couple times a year. That’s all I need, and all I can really handle. After I moved to Los Angeles, I spent some time looking around the drug boards for a reliable source. I found a vintage clothing store on Melrose with a quasi-legal head shop hidden in back, behind the winter-coat rack, the last place anyone ever looks in a Southern California vintage shop. There, a one-armed Lebanese man sold me a couple of discounted packets of 25X salvia extract, an extremely concentrated form of the drug that transports you to salvia land very quickly. One small pipeful, and you’re gone.

“You need to be careful with this,” he said.

“I know what I’m doing,” I replied.

By now, I’ve gotten over the intensity of the trip, the descent (or ascent) into another dimension. I know, for the most part, what to expect; it barely even seems weird to me anymore. Unlike my early trips, which were just random explorations, now I only go to the salvia if I have an intractable problem, if my life seems blocked somehow, or if I have a complicated existential question to ask. There’s always a purpose, however obscure, for my visits.

I have a salvia routine. After the family has gone to sleep, and the house is very quiet, I go down to my basement office with a glass of ice water. I turn on some mellow music and sit in my big blue easy chair. A small pipeful of salvia concentrate waits for me. I smoke the bowl. My head and chest start to throb. I sink back in my chair and close my eyes, trying to keep my question of the day at the forefront of my thoughts. A trip through the vines follows. I pass a phalanx of guards, who look like the caterpillar in the “Alice in Wonderland” cartoon. Sometimes, I travel over arid plains or behold mountain views of indescribable beauty. But eventually, I always get to that secluded glen where the salvia spirit is waiting, on a vine-covered throne. She’s usually in a damn good mood, and is always glad to see me. We commune for a while, she shows me unusual things, and while I don’t directly ask my question or express my concern, I keep it floating around the edges of consciousness. She’s always gently mocking, in a “foolish human!” kind of way, and her response always leaves me feeling a little bit better.

Gradually, the visions fade, my heart starts beating more normally, and I open my eyes. For a few minutes, everything seems gauzy and pixelated, as though I can nearly see the other world just beyond my field of perception. Then the salvia trip ends without harm to others, or to myself.

“I would say that I’m neutral on the topic as well.”

“They don’t use anesthetic, Neal. They cut off nerve endings and it decreases sexual sensitivity. In two words: It’s barbaric. I can’t do it to him. I just can’t.”

“You must leave me to think on this question for a while,” I said, and yes, I do talk like that sometimes.

I went to the usual source for village elders who are trying to solve a tough ethical problem: An article in Mothering magazine. Regina had helpfully supplied the link for me. It said that Western cultures, until the nineteenth century, had no tradition of circumcision. The Greeks and the Romans passed laws forbidding “sexual mutilation” after coming into contact with the cultures of the Middle East. It became more common during the anti-masturbation hysteria of the Victorian era. Doctors claimed that circumcision cured everything from epilepsy and tuberculosis to headaches, eczema, and bed-wetting. At this point, the article became truly interesting and relevant, if a bit didactic and terrifying. It called circumcision a “radical practice” that didn’t begin until the cold war era, “part of the same movement that pathologized and medicalized birth and actively discouraged breastfeeding.” Until the 1970s, hospitals didn’t even have to seek parental permission to perform the surgery.

The foreskin, the article continued, is a natural part of the human anatomy, and there’s no reason it should be removed. And then the kicker: “Parents should enjoy the arrival of a new child with as few worries as possible. The birth of a son in the US, however, is often fraught with anxiety and confusion. Most parents are pressured to hand their baby sons over to a stranger, who, behind closed doors, straps babies down and cuts their foreskins off…”

That was about enough. The article was actually shrill beyond measure. I knew there was a reason I hadn’t taken women’s studies classes in college. Still, I thought, maybe circumcision is wrong after all. Maybe everything I’d always thought about my penis, and, by extension, the world, is also wrong. For the first time in two decades, I’d been forced to stare my Judaism right between the ringlets. I’d arrived at my first Reb Tevye moment; I was no longer the tailor Motel Kamzoil.

On the one hand, I thought, Jewish men get circumcised. It’s what we do, or what gets done to us. I’ve been circumcised my whole life, and my dick works fine. Hell, I thought. It works better than fine.

On the other hand, maybe Regina was right. Maybe circumcision really did decrease sexual sensitivity. Was that something I wanted to deny my son? Wouldn’t his life be painful enough? Wait a second. My son wasn’t even born yet, and I was already thinking about the quality of his future orgasms. Something felt improper.

This was a very hard decision for me, so I did what any good Jewish boy would do in such a situation.

I called my mother.

“Hey, Mom,” I said.

“Neal! Honey! It’s wonderful to hear your voice! How are you?”

“OK.”

“And how’s Regina feeling?”

“She’s hanging in there.”

“Poor thing.”

“Yeah. Listen, Mom, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Of course, honey.”

“Regina and I were thinking about not circumcising Elijah…”

It’s hard to describe exactly what my mother’s voice did at that moment, but “convulsed” is probably the closest word I can find.

“No, oh, no no no Neal. Don’t say that to me. We’re prepared to take anything. But you have to circumcise him.”

Prepared to take anything, I thought. What did that mean?

“Regina did this research. And…”

“I don’t care about Regina’s research. She’s not Jewish.”

“But we were thinking…”

My mother began to openly weep on the phone.

“Oh my God, Neal! I can’t believe you’re doing this to me! You have to circumcise! You have to!”

“My wife…”

“Your wife is immaterial here. You can’t betray six thousand years of Jewish tradition.”

Suddenly, my generation’s sin of intermarriage lay fully on my back. The fate of the entire diaspora rested on my decision. I saw a God I didn’t particularly believe in waving an angry finger at me. An innocent medical inquiry had turned into Sophie’s Choice.

“You can’t forsake your people,” my mother said. “Promise me.” I began to quiver.

“I promise, Mother,” I said.

“And please don’t tell your grandmother about this. She wouldn’t understand.”

“Yes, Mother.”

I sounded like Norman Bates, saying, “Yes, Mother” like that. When I hung up the phone, I went into the bedroom, where Regina had propped up her feet.

“Well?” she said.

“My mother says we’d betray six thousand years of Jewish tradition.”

Regina had been ready for that answer. “Oh, does she, now? We’ll just see about that! I will not circumcise my son! I will not put him through that pain! I can’t bear it!”

“Yes, dear.”

Now, just as my mother had five minutes earlier, my wife began to weep.

“You can’t make me do it, Neal! You can’t! Promise me!”

“Yes, dear.”

“Hold me.”

“I need some time to think.”

I went to the back of the house and closed the door. My parents had said some other strange things to me during the pregnancy. On one family visit, they’d been teasing me, saying that Elijah would probably end up being a “Republican engineer,” whatever that was. I said that I’d love him no matter what he became.

“Now you know how we feel,” said my mother.

Nice.

Regina pounded on the door.

“Neal! I’m furious with your mother! I’m not Jewish and she’s going to have to deal with that! We have to talk, now!”

At that moment, I wanted to buy a plane ticket to Uruguay and never come back. I’ve always wanted to go to Uruguay because I know that if it got boring, I could be in Brazil or Argentina by lunchtime. But there I was instead in Austin, Texas, and my rational brain had ceased functioning. Something deep, primal, and lizardy emerged. I clawed at my face and pounded my head against the door. What the fuck was wrong with these people?

I subsequently waged a subtle family campaign that mostly involved calling my sisters and saying, “You won’t believe what Mom said to me.” Regina told some friends, who were suitably appalled, but powerless. My parents were more systematic. They called every member of the family and all of their friends, no matter how distant, to tell them of my potential betrayal. Aunt Estelle e-mailed me to say something like: “We have no idea what’s going on with you and your parents. If it were up to us, we’d probably circumcise, but we support your decision either way.” That was sweet of her, but the message indicated that my parents were near hysteria. Regina’s family, meanwhile, was politic. My sister-in-law said that it would probably be good if Elijah “looked like Daddy,” but went no further than that. They were good Protestants and they stayed out of our affairs.

A week went by. I couldn’t bear talking to my parents. My brain was a fetid goulash of guilt and resentment. Through a sister, I learned that my mother had said, “I guess I never thought about the fact that Regina wasn’t Jewish before.”

It’s not as though my parents are super-Jews themselves. They go to synagogue, but only occasionally. When they do, they usually complain that everyone there is old and that the dinner they went to with friends afterward was “just OK.” I was Bar Mitzvahed because that’s what Jews did, not because of some familial covenant with God, or so I thought. Regina’s mother, on the other hand, is a devout Sunday churchgoer who prays before dinner and plays in the church handbell choir. One afternoon before Regina and I were married, her mom blurted out poolside, “Neal, how Jewish are you?”

I said, “Um, ahm, I had a Bar Mitzvah and my family, um … we don’t go to temple all the time, but…”

Regina later explained to me that this was the wrong answer. I’d had my anti-Semitism antennae up, but her mother didn’t care what my religion was, as long as I was religious. For her, devotion trumped sect. She didn’t particularly want to see her daughter with a devout hedonist; the grandson of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, on the other hand, would probably have been fine.

Our wedding had been deliberately, almost absurdly secular. My mother said, “I will not set foot in a church,” to which I replied, “What are you, the Bride of Dracula?” But honestly, I didn’t want to get married in a church, either, so a lawyer friend of Regina’s family married us in her mother’s backyard. The ceremony featured a brief denomination-neutral Scripture reading, a testimonial by one of Regina’s bridesmaids that mentioned Kahlil Gibran in defiance of my wishes, a Roy Orbison song, and a recitation of The Owl and the Pussycat. Faith wasn’t part of our lives, and it was off the table at the wedding. But with Elijah’s birth pending, our secular chickens came home to their secular roost.

My father called. I was in no mood to hear from him.

“We’re very upset by this,” he said. “Your mother hasn’t slept.”

“Tough. I’ve got other problems.”

“You listen to me, young man!”

“No. You listen to me!”

“We’ve decided that if you don’t have him circumcised, he won’t be our grandson.”

There is no other hand!

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“We demand it.”

“You’re in no position to demand anything.”

“We haven’t said anything about you moving to Austin, of which we disapprove, or about that terrible house, or about the kid’s stupid name…”

That was it.

“Stupid name?” I said. “Fuck you … Bernard!”

And then I hung up. More face-clawing, head-pounding, floor-pounding, and Cro-Magnon yowling ensued. Meanwhile, Regina was already a week overdue, and going on about how the stress of Peeniegate would harm Elijah’s brain chemistry. That was baggage I wished she hadn’t carried on.

She and I lay in bed and talked seriously. What I felt toward my parents went far beyond anger, past resentment, veering toward something close to temporary hatred. This was our first major decision for our child, and my own mother and father were trying to completely take it out of our hands, based on arguments that we found superstitious and naove. But I also had a larger family to consider, aunts and uncles and cousins and sisters, and, beyond that, a generation of nieces and nephews and second cousins to come, not to mention “six thousand years of Jewish history.” If we decided not to circumcise, it might very well rip open a wound in my family life that would take decades to heal (though by writing the previous five pages, I may have just done that anyway).

“We have to,” I said.

“I know we do,” said Regina, and she began to cry.

That evening, I called home.

“We’ve decided to circumcise,” I said.

“Good,” my father said. “I feel like that will connect him to my father. And my grandfather before that. And down through the generations.”

He was sincere, and I almost found myself touched. But I must have missed that lesson in Hebrew school. Our traceable family goes back to rural Germany in the eighteenth century whether or not I let someone cut off the cover of my son’s glans. After the argument was settled, my mother sent me an e-mail that read, in part, “I hope you will always remember how you treated your parents.”

I chose not to reply.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

The earliest days of Elijah’s life were full of decisions, not as emotionally overwrought as those brought on by Peeniegate, but still difficult. I started to wonder when the “fun” part of fatherhood would kick in. That first night in the hospital, Regina was immobile on camel tranquilizers. I slept, or was supposed to sleep, on a mat on the windowsill of her room, which would have been the perfect size for me if I were Billy Barty. But there was to be no sleep. I spent most of the night trying to figure out how to clean up the steady stream of black tar-like poo that was oozing out of Elijah’s asshole. The nurses were sympathetic, since they deal with dozens of new dads every week who cry for help when the defecation starts. They’re used to seeing a wastebin full of goo-smeared paper towels.

To my parents’ infinite credit, they’d landed in Austin by ten a.m. the day after Elijah was born. I saw them out the window of our room. They had silly grins on their faces, and my dad was carrying an enormous mustard-colored teddy bear with a red bow around its neck. By the end of the day, the bear was on the windowsill, Regina was sitting up, and we were all taking turns holding this sweet-smelling sack of wheat on our shoulders. I took special pleasure in rocking in the chair the hospital had provided, singing a song of my own devising to Elijah. It went like this:

“He’s Elijahroo/He’s a piece of poo/Watcha gonna do?/Whoop-de-whoop-de-whoo!”

Elijah seemed to like that. He also liked it when we all sang his “theme song,” to the tune of the theme from Bonanza. It went: “Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dumElijah! (Ba-ba-ba-ba) Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum. Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dumElijah! (Ba-ba-ba!) Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum!” And so on.

Elijah began to wail for no discernible reason.

“Oh, Elijah,” I said. “Don’t be such a goddamn baby!”

For me, all was happy cell-phone calls and merry e-mail. I’ve always been fond of occasions that force people to talk to me nicely whether they want to or not. By those standards, this was the preeminent moment of my life. One e-mail, from someone with whom I hadn’t been in touch lately, said, “We love you and we love your baby!” Now that was how people should talk to me, I thought. I was a man now and I’d earned respect the hard way, so I definitely deserved a nap.

After forty-eight hours in the hospital, Regina was up and lurching about. Elijah hadn’t malfunctioned. I have no idea when it’s appropriate for the father to leave the hospital, but I knew that I’d be of much greater use to my family if I got a good night’s sleep in my own bed. Regina didn’t protest much. “I’d rather have you refreshed and helpful than grumpy and insane,” she said.

I picked Hercules up from the neighbor’s and let him give me a big long stinky slurp, while I said things like “You’ve got a new wittle baby brother, yes you do, yes you do…” The house was empty and quiet. I sat in my blue easy chair and reveled in my domain while watching Turner Classic Movies. I made myself a cup of peppermint tea. I took a bubble bath. I treated myself so well you’d think I’d just given birth. By ten p.m., I was in bed with the dog, fresh cotton sheets, and a genre novel. This would be the most peaceful night of my life.

At midnight, the phone rang.

“The nurses are in here,” Regina said.

“OK.”

“They say he’s lost weight.”

“That’s normal. He’s a huge baby.”

“They want to supplement with formula.”

“Ridiculous. Just tell them no.”

We’d done some reading that said formula, while containing all necessary nutrients, didn’t have the same disease-blocking attributes as mother’s milk. Regina was determined to make Elijah the world’s healthiest child.

“They’re going to do it unless our pediatrician tells them otherwise,” she said. “And he’s out of town.”

“Oh.”

“It’s gonna hurt his immune system,” she said.

“One dose of formula is going to hurt his immune system?”

“What should I do?”

This was a snap decision that required wisdom I didn’t possess. I tried to think of a smart Jewish man from history, like Solomon, and what he would advise. Let’s see. Offer to cut the baby in two, and the person who protested the loudest would … that one didn’t work.

“I’m not sure.”

Thus, Elijah got supplement he didn’t need, and we’d once again learned that the whole point of the world was to unintentionally conspire against its inhabitants. Everyone else, the postpartum nurses at St. David’s Memorial Hospital in particular, was trying to destroy our family. For that last twenty-four hours Regina was in the hospital, they became our enemy. First they made our healthy child eat out of a formula tube. Then they said they wouldn’t let us check out of the hospital unless we agreed to take him to the pediatrician the next day. After we agreed, they still wouldn’t let us check out, because we’d forgotten to record the last time Elijah had urinated.

Amazingly, he did pee, and the next morning, we drove to our pediatrician’s office. We’d chosen a nice guy named Rivas, who was about our age. It was sobering to realize that doctors were no longer older authority figures. Rivas bounced into the room.

“How are we all feeling?”

At that moment, I felt about as mentally sharp as a mushroom, but I said, “Fine.”

“He didn’t mean you,” Regina said.

“Right.”

We laid Elijah on a cushioned table. Rivas leaned over him.

“Why are you here again?”

“The nurses told us to come,” said Regina.

“This child is healthy. I’ll see you in three months.”

Now, with other health issues out of the way, circumcision loomed. More than two years later, we learned about a guy from Houston called “Max the Mohel,” a pediatrician from Houston who performs pretty much every bris in Texas. Since the vast majority of these ceremonies occur within three hours from his home, that’s not quite as big a challenge as it sounds. We didn’t learn about Max the Mohel in time, but we wouldn’t have used him even if we had. Strangely, my parents didn’t want a bris. All they cared about was the surgery. It’s not like we knew anyone in town to attend a bris anyway; we’d only been living there two months. Also, perhaps I mentioned earlier that Regina didn’t want it done at all.

Our pediatrician refused to perform the operation. He recommended a urologist to us. Eight days after Elijah was born, we went to the urologist’s office. This is how it works, he said. He would put Elijah on a board and strap down his hands and feet. Then he’d slide a metal ring over the top of the penis, which would cut off the circulation to the foreskin and gradually kill the nerve endings. Over the next week, the foreskin would gradually turn black, and then it would rot off, and then Elijah would be permanently connected to his ancestors.

When Regina called about the procedure, they told her that the doctor used topical anesthetic. That made her feel a little better. When we were actually in the doctor’s office, we asked him about that.

“Of course we don’t use topical anesthetic,” he said. “Everyone knows that stuff doesn’t work.”

We wouldn’t put our son through pain without anesthetic! But by then, it was too late. The doctor took our baby from us and told us to wait in the hall. A few minutes after the procedure, he said, he’d let Regina in to nurse. I went into the waiting room, sat with a six-month-old issue of Sports Illustrated, and tried to remember a time when I wasn’t an adult.

Regina and Elijah came out. He was screaming. She was bawling.

“Babe…”

“Let’s just go!”

And so I drove us home, which was strange enough considering that Regina usually does all the driving, but even stranger because my newborn son was in the backseat howling because someone had just lopped off the tip of his penis, and my wife was holding him, weeping as though her soul was being ripped from her body, and my heart and throat and face felt clogged with sorrow and grief and mucus and shame, and I could barely see the road through a film of tears and I thought, Oh, this is just fucking great.

About an hour later, my parents, who had since returned to Phoenix, called to see how Elijah was doing, both on the line at the same time.

“How’s Elijah?” my mother asked.

“He’s asleep. He cried a lot.”

“He’ll be fine. It didn’t hurt at all.”

- – - – - – - – - – - -

From the book: “Alternadad” by Neal Pollack. Copyright (c) 2007 by Neal Pollack. Published by arrangement with Pantheon Books, a division of Random House Inc.