Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do-they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.

In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own sexuality, which is differen…