Still only semi-conscious, I began to move. I found I could stand. I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my room, looking at myself—or whoever I was now—for a long time. I noticed that other mirrors had been provided. I adjusted them until I obtained an all-around view. In these mirrors I seemed to have been cloned as well as transformed. Everywhere I turned there were more me’s, many, many more new me’s, until I felt dizzy. I sat, lay down, jumped up and down, touched myself, wiggled my fingers and toes, shook my arms and legs, and, finally, placed my head carefully on the floor before kicking myself up and standing on it—something I hadn’t done for twenty-five years. There was a lot to take in.

It was a while ago, in my early fifties, that I began to lose my physical vanity, such as it was. I’ve been told that as a young man I was attractive to some people; I spent more time combing my hair than I did doing equations. Certainly I took it for granted that, at least, people wouldn’t be repelled by my appearance. As a child, I lived among open fields and streams, and ran and explored all day. For the past few years, however, I have been plump and bald; my heart condition has given me a continuously damp upper lip. By forty I was faced with the dilemma of whether my belt should go over or under my stomach. Before my children advised me against it, I became, for a while, one of those men whose trousers went up to their chest.

When I first became aware of my deterioration, having had it pointed out by a disappointed lover, I dyed my hair and even signed on at a gym. Soon I was so hungry I ate even fruit. It didn’t take me long to realize there are few things more risible than middle-aged narcissism. I knew the game was up when I had to wear my reading glasses in order to see the magazine I was masturbating over.

None of the women I knew could give up in this way. It was rare for my wife and her friends not to talk about botox and detox, about food and their body shape, size and relative fitness, and the sort of exercise they were or were not taking. I knew women, and not only actresses, who had squads of personal trainers, dieticians, nutritionists, yoga teachers, masseurs, and beauticians laboring over their bodies daily, as if the mind’s longing and anxiety could be cured via the body. Who doesn’t want to be more desired and, therefore, loved?