I was writing the story when Howie showed up again, reading it over my shoulder. “That’s good,” he acknowledged. “Any of it true?”

I considered that. “Well, the attack did take place tonight.”

Howie chuckled wearily. “You know, it almost makes me nostalgic for the days of real fake news.”

Three nights later, I had a revelation: If I ever write another book, it is going to be entitled Thoughts After Sex: A Personal Memoir. Those postcoital moments might well be when we are the most emotionally vulnerable. Defenses get stripped away and the subconscious sneaks out to play. What you are feeling in those few seconds is as close as you may ever get to touching your soul.

Obviously, that’s the problem with it. The safest thing to do, I’d learned, was to sigh in a way that indicates great satisfaction, then mumble something that includes the word amazing. Best would also be a good word choice. The problem with turning this idea into a book is that I don’t actually remember a lot of those conversations, and it’s an awkward time to take notes. I do know those thoughts have ranged from how soon it would be appropriate to get dressed and leave to what I was feeling as I lay there that night next to Jenny—I could stay right here forever.

Sex was the last piece of the puzzle when I started my second life. I had accepted as a general concept that my life was changed forever, but filling in the details was a day-to-day process. The military has a very good rehabilitation program, unfortunately honed through experience, but it stops short of sex. The staff assured me all my parts were working, which to me offered all the security of a test pilot’s preflight check.

I had zero-point-zero idea what to expect when I got out of the hospital. I was realistic; I knew there weren’t going to be any more moonlit walks on the beach. I did what many people in my situation have done: I compensated. Maybe even overcompensated. I threw myself into new challenges, sometimes literally. When that happened, I picked myself up and tried again. I experimented with new things. I began working out at the gym to strengthen my upper body. My shoulders filled out, I sprouted muscles, but it turned out that the upper body part that most benefited from those workouts was my head. I bought a racing chair and eventually ran three marathons. Just to prove I could do it. I went to work learning how to “do journalism.”

And there was that other unmentionable. I wasn’t quite back to staring at the phone trying to gin up courage to call a woman, but my confidence had taken several steps backward. I was tentative at first about dating, having no experience in how to act or react. Women surprised me, but that was nothing different—women have always surprised me.

Going through that first time, for the second time in my life, was equally anxiety-provoking, then thrilling, and concluded with the same sense of relief. I’m not going to describe it; I’m not good at writing sex scenes. I’ve tried in an aborted novel. My problem was I could never get beyond the awareness that my mother was going to be reading it. Nothing kills a passionate sex scene more than that.