I just wanted to get in before the rush and say, as a man, alone in his late 40s, I found your essay profoundly moving. I know from where you speak although with some differences. By Tuesday afternoon when I check in to Salon again the boys who hang out over at Broadsheet will have been by to throw mud at you and I’m sorry in advance, try to forgive them, they’re damaged and it comes out as a nearsighted anger.

I think perhaps, life hardens us. It does not have to make us bitter or alienated, or cold, but it does “set” us. It stiffens and ossifies us and makes it more and more difficult to be anything other than what we have become over the years. The effort it takes to move forward, to seek after new lovers or companions, or even the experiences that might lead to them as we grow older becomes a struggle, more often than not with ourselves, than with the quirks and failings of people we meet. In my life I’ve been married and divorced, I’ve been young and single and older and wiser… and single, and in love in so many glorious ways with wonderful, troubled, heart-wrenchingly, deeply beautiful women, many of whom broke my heart to pieces, and more than a few I know I hurt in my turn. Yet, always I recovered and went on, but now… I’m tired and I’m sore and I’ve hardened in so many ways. Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll meet “her” and the world will open like a flower before me the way it did in the past, but I think not. Perhaps there are only so many flowers in one lifetime. Perhaps alone is Ok too.

Thanks Again.

Elephantman, I think you boys on the right might want to concentrate a little more on your own asses for a change, after all the American people have just spent the last two years kicking them to the curb.

So am I to undserstand that "hiking the Appalachian Trail" is some sort of elaborate euphemism for having a South American mistress... Maybe that explains why when the GOP talks about "Supply Side Economics" I always feel like I'm getting screwed.

What a joy! I'm sure somewhere Paul Wellstone is smiling taday.

Perhaps she wants to take some time off to hike the Appalachian Trail, I understand it's very popular these days among the GOP.

COPS! We're supposed to learn how to interact with the police from watching the FOX networks' classist, racist, voyeristic freak show! You lost me there Gene.

This was Johnny Mac's "first" choice to his VP... the mind reels.