HIS MOTHER AND FATHER told him that children love their parents. His grammar school teachers told him the same thing, adding that the love of children for their parents is like the love of human beings for God. He did not love God or his parents and because of it felt something was wrong with him. The first love he thought of as love was for certain girls. Some of these did not know he loved them. In the sixth grade he sent an unsigned declaration of love to a girl whose father was a prize fighter. She was quiet and gentle, and he considered these qualities all the finer in light of her father’s occupation. In the seventh grade he fell in love with a girl named Helen, whom he kissed at graduation parties, took skating, and in the summer named a rowboat after. In the fall, however, she dropped him. He recognized love by the aura of pleasure that surrounded everything to do with the particular girl: her neighborhood, clothes, friends, books, pets; odd parts of the girl, like the nose and fingernails, seemed perfect. In high school he was always in love with one girl or another, and when he was fourteen he fell in love with the girl he married eight years later. This girl at first was passive and undemonstrative. He thought of her as a clean slate on which he would write his beliefs. She was so much in his mind that when traveling alone around the city he sometimes paid two fares by mistake. When his first child, a girl, was born he was not prepared for the responsibilities of fatherhood, and although she closely resembled him he resented her. But when she began to talk and he saw that her character, too, was like his he began to love her. His second child, also a girl, did not resemble him in any way, and he ignored her. There were so many difficulties in his marriage that after a few years he could not say to himself that he loved his wife. He had an affair with a woman who was also unhappily married. He did not know whether he loved her or not, although many times he told her he did, especially when they were making love. He enjoyed hearing her say that she loved him, but he did not feel the same concern for her that he remembered having felt for his wife. Still, when the affair ended he was bereft and thought that probably he had loved her. After he and his wife were divorced his younger daughter phoned to ask if he loved her. They talked for an hour, wept, and he told her that he did; only then did he know that he did. After his father died he had a recurrent dream in which he tried to save his father from death; sometimes he succeeded, and sometimes he failed; but the dreams were so intense that he came to believe that probably he had loved his father too. As a new bachelor he had many affairs. The sudden release of emotion that accompanied them was gratifying; he wanted to remain capable of it but also keep it under control. He explained to a woman who wished him to love her: “If I love you you will have power over me. If I love you a little you will have a little power over me. If I love you a lot you can kill me.” “But why would I kill you if you loved me and I loved you?” He didn’t know the answer. “You could love me secretly,” she said. “Maybe I do,” he said; but he didn’t; and, soon after, the affair ended. As he moved from woman to woman he saw that his first feelings about a new woman derived from his last feelings about the previous one, and this knowledge destroyed the effect. One day he had a professional lunch with a young married woman. As he was shown to her table he began to fall in love with her. They talked well, and his love increased in surges, like blood filling an excited penis. During the next two weeks he called her many times a day. He met her after work and drove her home. In the evenings he wrote her long letters and had them delivered by messenger next morning. In his apartment he drank and walked about, raising his hands to the ceiling and making sounds of pain. She left her husband, and they lived together. She is unhappy and yearns for her former life. She criticizes everything he does and everything she considers him to be. She will fall in love with a young widower and leave him. His strongest feelings thereafter will be toward his daughters and toward young men who remind him of his past self.