What is wrong with me? It was barely nine in the morning and I was trying to seduce Helen. A few months ago she would have been flattered but now she has a serious boyfriend ( an African of few words going by the name of Sky ), she views my manouevres as deranged, not to say disrespectful of her relationship. And yet, as she puts her head to the pillow at night ( Sky is twenty years younger and probably out clubbing ), I know it is the flattery that stays with her. So, inevitably, and sometimes for pity, I will never stop making a move on Helen. And yet, saying that, I do feel a bit deranged. Have I nothing better to do? As a student, lanky with a wispy beard and bad hair, no discernible prospects, no money and no sporting ability, I still found it very easy to talk women into bed. I didn't care for female feeling, but I was very interested in talking about it and, too young to know the difference, many women slept with me. Of course, I have refined my interests, my mission, over the years but sometimes it collapses into moments like this; moments, standing here, when I feel I would do anything to get closer to their bodies. As for men, my interest in them was solely as a means of understanding myself better and, thereby, getting even closer to a woman's body. If I have any redeeming feature it is this: I knew at an early age that I was a man of no qualities. While all my friends were busy fashioning themselves into novelists, teachers, artists, bankers, I had no illusions about myself. I had no talent for anything and, perhaps more concerning, I was of no actual use to anyone, either. I couldn't fix a car, prepare a meal. Couldn't put up a shelf sans crisis. No, if there is any redeeming feature it's that I knew all this as a teenager. I was only ever interested in my own mind and, even then, only to the extent it served the seduction of women. The one, perhaps, a release from the other. And so it was, with these thoughts, I waited in the dark on Franklin Road, peering into the browned out window, to see if the yoga class had begun.