He considered each of these things separately, beginning with the latter. Was he homosexual? It was an odd question to ask of himself, as he’d really never considered it before. Now that he did, he needed to define for himself what being homosexual meant. Clinically, of course, it was sexual attraction to members of his own sex. But people were not simply conglomerations of responses, regardless of how much science attempted to reduce them to such.

Regardless, he asked himself if he was physically attracted to other males. Not to Hudson—Hudson had not yet entered the equation—but to men in general. He pictured a man, naked, and measured his responses to what he saw. He imagined the muscles, heavier than those of a woman, the broader shoulders and larger extremities. Then, of course, there was the penis, the penultimate object of sexual arousal, celebrated as the wellspring of masculinity. Did he find penises attractive? It was like asking himself if he found beauty in a liver or a spleen; he couldn’t look at the organ without considering its function and being impressed by it. But was it attractive to him?

He was being far too literal, he knew. He was relying on his training to help him answer a question that was better suited to philosophers and artists, those who were unburdened by the need to understand how things worked on a physical level. He had more in common with a mechanic than he did with a painter or a poet.

Just answer the question. He heard, unexpectedly, Carol’s voice. Then he saw her, standing with her hands on her hips, waiting impatiently for him to speak. But what had she asked? A multitude of possibilities scrolled through his thoughts. She had often been frustrated by his inability to respond with a simple yes or no. He, in turn, had been stymied by her unwillingness to explore all available possibilities. Communication between them had been nearly impossible because of this; she assumed he was being difficult, while he accused her of forcing him into making hurried decisions.

Just answer the question, Benjamin, Carol said, employing the name that reduced him to feeling like a child. It was his mother’s name for him, used by no one else, and Carol’s use of it always indicated that she’d reached the length of her patience.

“I don’t know,” Ben said helplessly. “It’s just a body.”

Carol shook her head and faded into nothingness. Ben was relieved to see her go. But the question had still not been answered, only put off. He was afraid, though, that he couldn’t answer it with anything resembling truth. For the truth was, he had rarely experienced physical attraction. He lacked what he thought of as the typical male obsession with busts or buttocks, had no preference for blonde or brunette, was not a connoisseur of any particular “type.”