Romancing 'The Monk'

I was the woman who ended his celibacy. But could I give him the peace he once had?

Soon after I started working with him at a small-town radio station,

The Monk cooked me dinner. He wasn't actually a monk anymore,

but I was intrigued that he had been one, in Ananda Marga, an

India-based spiritual organization I'd never heard of before. I was

a lapsed Jew, practically an atheist, and I found this rather exotic.

I was drawn to his air of calm authority, unusual for his 31 years,

and the simple way he lived.

MODERN LOVE

WE were standing in the aisle of a crowded predawn bus, deep

in conversation, oblivious to those around us. He was telling

me about a new staging of “A Streetcar Named Desire” that

was all the rage in the field of queer theory. Stanley was played

by a woman, Blanche by a man. “I saw it at a conference last

semester,” he said. “It was great.”