I have never been very comfortable in my role as a man.

Once, when I was living on 79th Avenue in Flushing, I walked down to Cunningham Park to play in a one-day tennis tournament. Only, I had come on the wrong day. The tournament had been the day before. No one was in the park except a young woman my age: she stood in the broad July sunlight in a loose T-shirt and pale shorts. Her skin was freckled — not just her face, but her whole skin — and she wore her hair long, parted in the middle. We said hello, and as I stood in the quiet, summer heat and she stood in the shy, nimble sunlight alongside the tennis courts, I could see everything that was about to happen.

The freckled woman held her tennis racket down by her legs and laughed.

“I guess we got the wrong day,” she said.

We chatted for a while, I guess — it’s hard to remember now: this was twenty-five years ago, during the 4th of July weekend, 1986 or 1987.

I said: “Well, it’s too nice a weekend to waste doing nothing. Do you want to do something else?”

Neither of us had brought tennis balls to the park. Otherwise, we might have rallied a bit on the courts. So instead, the woman told me her name — Lorraine — and together we walked out of the park.

*          *          *

That same year — or possibly the year before — I was sent to Park City, Utah, for my job. At the time I was working as an editorial assistant at Academy Professional Information Services, near Herald Square in New York. APIS published thin, chintzy newspapers covering various fields in the medical industry. These newspapers had snappy titles like Oncology Today, Cardiology Times, Pediatric Journal. I was assigned to Rheumatology News, which was published eleven or twelve times a year and distributed to medical offices across the country.

APIS had sent me to Park City in the dead of winter to cover a rheumatology conference. But it was really just an excuse for the droll, rheumy rheumatologists to ski: poster and plenary sessions were scheduled until noon, and then the afternoon was free for everybody to play and romp in the snow.

As I’ve said, it’s hard to remember exactly now, but one night I was either walking in town looking for a restaurant to eat in, or walking back to my hotel after having eaten, and I found a mitten or a glove on the sidewalk. I had the feeling that the mitten had only recently been dropped there — only two or three minutes before I found it, say. So I picked it up, thinking I might be able to find its owner. I kept walking — it was the middle of winter, as I have said, and the town seemed very dark.

Soon I found myself in a bar of some hotel (perhaps I was indeed returning to my own hotel?). I was holding the glove I had found. And shortly, a young woman in jeans and a sweater came up and said, “You found my glove!” I remember her now (if my memory is to be trusted) as having long, bright hair and a quiet smile.

We talked for a while. Then either she or I asked, “Would you like to have a beer?” We sat down at a dark, wood table and our beers came — in bottles, I remember — and again, I could see everything that was about to happen.

*          *          *

Also there was this: in 1992 I traveled to Rome. I was a freelancer then. I had just finished a long proofreading or data entry job for some “temp” company in Boston. I had no plans ahead of me. So one afternoon I got on the phone and called the airlines to book a flight.

A week or two later, I was in the air.

In Rome I stayed in an inexpensive pensione in the old quarter. I remember it was up a dark flight of stairs. It was a bit rundown, but overall quite tolerable: I remember there was a common area — converted to a dining room for breakfast — with a meek, brown carpet and drab curtains over high windows.

I guess I spent some time in that room, because I remember an older Italian woman becoming attracted to me the more she sat and talked and smiled. I was 30 at the time. So when I say “older” I probably mean middle-aged: I have it in my mind that this woman was, say, 50. Her skin was aging, in any case, with wrinkles and maybe even a stray, single mole, but she had a warm, European smile and a mild and outgoing attitude. We caught each other’s eye; this woman had a shy, inviting look.

That night, we walked about the old quarter together. It was my first time in Rome, and this is what I remember: She had a husky voice. She smoked. She told me her astrological sign was Taurus. I remember this, because one of the first things I asked her was, “What is your name?”

She spoke a little broken English, and she said, “Aurora. You know what it means?”

I nodded.

She said, “It means — the dawn.” And shortly after, she added: “I am a Taurus, the bull. What are you?”

My birthday is in December, so I told her I was a Sagittarius. Immediately, she smiled — that sly, Italian smile —and I think it was then that she must have taken my hand in hers.

I said:

“What does that mean? That I’m a Sagittarius and you’re a bull?”

But she remained quiet, smiling her clever, European smile and walking through the eternal city, holding my hand in hers.

*          *          *

That one was unpredictable; it could have gone either way. But Lorraine in her pale, tight shorts by the tennis courts in Flushing, and the quiet, willing woman in the dark bar in Park City were doomed.

We continued walking, Lorraine and I, out of the park and up the grey concrete streets of Queens. . . . Someone suggested we go to the movies. . . . Was it me, or Lorraine? We bought a newspaper from a pharmacy or a vending box on the street and searched the movie schedule.

This is what I remember. The movie was “About Last Night.” We took a bus to the theater. Lorraine smiled and asked if I’d like popcorn. We sat in the dark theater together, eating popcorn and watching the movie. I think it must have been very hot outside — that was probably why we decided to go to the movies — and the theater was air conditioned. Afterward, it was late afternoon. We came out of the cinema, into the humid, grey air. I don’t think we spoke much. But we each had to take the same bus back to our apartments. We rode the bus quietly. As the bus approached my street, I asked Lorraine if she’d like to get together sometime again. We exchanged phone numbers. But as I stood to get off the bus, Lorraine said, “Really? This is my stop, too.”

Together, we got off the bus. We stood at the bus stop as the bus pulled away. (Again I could see what was about to happen!) There was an awkward moment — just a moment — and then I shrugged and said, “My apartment is just a block away. Do you want to come up?”

*          *          *

It was exactly the same — only very different — with the woman whose glove I had picked up on the sidewalk in Park City. We were chatting, she directed the conversation with ease and nonchalance: an implicit willingness to welcome a certain kind of stranger into her life — and, naturally, into her bed. No doubt I came across as shy: harmless. (. . . I always come across as shy, harmless!) I must have been talking animatedly with my hands, because I recall knocking over her bottle of beer. I apologized, but she remained calm — stoic. She smiled and wiped the beer from her sweater. I felt like that was it — that whatever chance there had been of hooking up with this woman was lost. But still she wore that sincere smile, that calm, inviting stoicism. “Don’t worry,” she said — or something to that effect. “But I should probably go up to my room to change out of my sweater.” She was a young, pretty, sweet, empathetic woman: knowing what she wanted on a winter’s night in Utah. She smiled at me and said, “Do you want to come up with me?”

*         *          *

These were not the only three, of course. When I was a freelancer in Newton, Massachusetts, an insurance agent came up to my apartment. It was a hot day in the middle of the summer, my apartment was on the second floor, and I was wearing a T shirt and tennis shorts. I needed to purchase my own health insurance because, as I have said, I was freelancing. So I called this insurance company and the agent came over to my apartment.

She was not attractive. She was older — fifty at least, certainly — and her body had begun to sag. She sat on the couch with me and went over her literature — her banal pamphlets and lousy brochures. In the middle of the discussion she looked at me.

“Do you play basketball?” she said.

“No,” I told her. “Just tennis and soccer.”

She seemed to nod. And then she said, “Yes, you have long legs. . . .”

I did not think much of it at the time. But like Lorraine, and like Aurora, and like the stoic, inviting woman in Park City, Utah, as she closed the door to her hotel room and quietly took off her sweater, I think of her a lot, now, twenty-five years later.

*          *          *

Yes, and there were young women sitting next to me on trains, remaining perfectly quiet and then finding another seat when I did not start conversations! Women sitting next to me at Fenway Park, turning their heads to watch me! A friend of a friend who I invited over for lunch and whom I was going to seduce —or rather, who was willing to allow me to seduce her. . . . And what for? Who remembers! I was shy; eager (yes: too shy, too eager!) I was always at odds with myself, wanting to act but not having the nerve: having grown up in affluence and privilege, feeling I could not presume the privileges of a woman. I was like a small boy who wakes up on a sunny winter’s morning and pulls back the curtains to discover a deep snow has unexpectedly fallen overnight: I wanted to romp through the white fields — run my hands rampant through the quiet softness — bend over and taste the fresh purity with my tongue. But at the same time, I did not want to disturb the virgin allure and grace. . . .

*          *          *

Once I was in my apartment with Lorraine, we went back to my bedroom. It is twenty-five years ago now, as I have said, and I can still see everything clearly, there on 79th Avenue. My white linoleum desk along the back wall! My tidy platform bed! The droll carpet skittering to the walls! I was a writer — or attempting to be one, anyway. I had a stack of manuscripts piled on my desk. Lorraine walked over to the desk — a pretext to slough off the nervousness and invite me to join her.

“What are these?” she asked, and skimmed quietly through the manuscripts.

It was the weekend of the 4th of July, as I have said. My roommate was in Boston visiting her boyfriend. The apartment was empty — other than Lorraine and me — and the night seemed ours alone.

I came to Lorraine and stood beside her. I leafed staidly through the stories.

“Stories I wrote,” I said.

“You wrote these?”

“Yes.”

Lorraine stood watching me. I stood beside her, leafing through the stories.

Lorraine waited. I was conscious of myself, then: conscious of myself thinking about myself. . . . What was I waiting for? Could I not presume to act on the assumption that Lorraine desired? What had brought us to this point? Which was the greater frustration — the future guilt I foresaw having half an hour from now, when the act had been completed, or the knowledge that I had the desire to take this woman but the inability to, actually, take her?

The stories, the pages, the papers in my hands: everything grew heavy. Though Lorraine stood beside me I could feel the distance between us growing. But then — who acted? Lorraine moved to the bed, and lay down on the covers. I lay gently atop her (not roughly: gently!), and looked her in the eyes.

And, I noticed something.

I should not have told Lorraine that I noticed something. It was a curious physical quirk in her face. One set of her eyelashes was a different color than the other. That is, the eyelashes on her left eye were brown, and the eyelashes on her right eye were a quiet and blondish red.

And that is what I told Lorraine. Lying atop her, clothed, only a few hours after meeting her.

“The eyelashes of your left eye are a different color than the eyelashes on your right eye,” I said.

I stared at her eyelashes.

“Yes,” she said. “Everyone notices that. . . .”

Seconds ticked by. Lorraine waited. Patiently, quietly, warmly. She waited! I was still looking at her eyelashes, my hand running through her hair. (I looked — I looked!) Then — not meanly, not angrily — Lorraine slipped from off of the bed.

“This is weird,” she said: “Don’t you think?”

*          *         *

And how similar was it in Park City? The inviting woman had taken off her sweater. The details are hard to remember now: one of her earrings had gotten caught in the sweater as she had taken it off. And now she was fingering the earring, making sure it had not been damaged. “My sister gave these to me,” she said. I stepped close beside her. I looked at the earring (. . . again I looked, yes: I looked!).

And that is why I say what I say: I have never been comfortable in my role as a man. I seem unable to permit my seminal instincts to run rampant, lion-like, through the Colisseum of desire and maraude the baser instincts I am slave to. I seem  to possess too romantic a notion: the grace of a woman, the aura of a woman’s warmth — which I fear I can only mar should I physically touch. No: I must first establish some more human, intellectual connection.

*          *         *

Lorraine allowed me to accompany her to the bus; in Rome, Aurora let me kiss her on the cheek (I believe) when we returned to the pensione . . . but I cannot remember even that moment! We agreed to meet for coffee the next evening: that was that. In Park City, the inviting woman realized that I was unable to pursue the course of action she had expected: she saw that I was different. Not dangerous — just different.

We went back down to the hotel bar and shared another beer.

Then, I suppose, we said good night. And, unlike Lorraine, I never saw her again.

NEXT: Other People’s Money (or, Me and Reverend Ike)