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Weekend Butler: The “Feels” Issue: Edward Jay Epstein. A Bon Iver love story. Relationship advice from Esther Perel. An exotic tea. Best, easiest soup.
Published: Jan 18, 2024
Category:
Weekend
EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN
The holiday energy drains. You expect there will be a letdown, and there will be hideous headlines from Gaza and Ukraine, and you have a one-word-fits-all explanation: “January.” But when I opened Facebook one recent morning, I was stunned to see a large photo of my friend Edward Jay Epstein and this, from my old friend Stephen Schiff:
I can’t believe that Edward Jay Epstein is gone. No one who knew him can. And everyone did. Ed was a freelance investigative journalist and the author of many books, but he was also the heart and soul of New York. He sounded like New York, shambled like New York, and he thought like New York, ever the contrarian, ever curious, probing, skeptical. Cheerfully jaundiced, if there is such a thing. Ed enjoyed the company of louche men and glamorous women, of con artists and spies and swashbuckling billionaires, and he was taken up by many of them, though never taken in. No one was less innocent, or more hospitable and kind. He died over the weekend, in the wake of a bout of Covid, alone in the penthouse apartment whose high terrace had provided the stage for so many dazzling parties. Already, the skyline doesn’t look the same.
A few days later, the Times had a full obit, starting with the astonishing story of “Inquest,” Ed’s first bestseller, written when he was a graduate student. “Inquest” was a close examination of the Warren Commission, which found that there was one gunman who killed President Kennedy. Ed interviewed every member of the Warren Commission except for Earl Warren, who guided the others to his pre-determined conclusion. How did Ed get that access? He simply asked them.
I became friendly with Ed when I was doing a book about Michael Milken and I was to havedinner with Mike when he came to New York. There was one other guest: Ed. Apparently we were the only two journalists in the city who didn’t assume the as-yet-unindicted “junk bondking” was a Satanic greedhead determined to drive established firms out of business. That launched a conversation that moved on, over the years, to many other topics and a great many insights I’d never have reached on my own.
Ed died at 88, in what seemed like excellent health — he was regularly photographed at chic restaurants with two or three young women. I believe he slept with none of them; he just collected them. The details of his death troubled me. Alone. Not found for days.
Dying alone is my great fear. In Chapter 2 of “The Next Dalai Lama,” my as-yet-unpublished novel, the man and woman who will marry and become the parents of the Dalai Lama are having lunch at work. They have this conversation:
“When it’s my time to die, I’d like to be in bed… in the south of France… with the window open and a view of fields of lavender.”
“Who’s with you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Somehow I don’t think you’ll be alone,” she said.
“A woman might be holding my hand,” he said. “I don’t know who she is. And it doesn’t matter. What does is how the beginning of my life and the end are a perfect circle.”
What I cut from the book: a conversation in which he says, “If you die first, I want to be there and I want to close your eyes. And if I die first…” No, that’s too much, a friend said, and I heard her. I also heard my history: I moved many times before I was 15, and the first stability I experienced was when I went off to a very traditional New England boarding school.
Maybe, just maybe, I have An Issue. Which Ed’s death triggered, years after I thought I’d dealt with it. Never let it be said the dead don’t speak to us. Writing this, I’m glad I listened. Now for the slog between here and the door….
“THE SMELL OF SUMMER, THE FEEL OF HIS ARMS AROUND ME”
from a message board for a YouTube clip of a live performance of “Halocene,” by Bon Iver:
“I was driving home after talking to a guy I met in the spring of 2011 when we were both about to turn 20. We’d hung out a good bit that summer, and I remember one afternoon, after talking to him all day, I was driving the 50 mile ride home and realized I loved him (and that he was the first person I’d ever truly loved). This song had just come on the radio because the album was debuting, and it played with the windows rolled down and the smell of grass and honeysuckle coming through as these new emotions swirled in my chest. 7 years later those opening notes still hit me like a sack of bricks and it takes me right back to my Volvo station wagon, the smell of summer, and how good it felt to have his arms around me. We never started dating, but remained friends until we fell apart from each other for a while due to life. I got engaged, broke up. He dated girls, broke up with them. Last spring we reconnected like no time had passed. We’re getting married next year and I’ll be walking down the aisle to this. It’s July 2021 and we’re still going strong. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Keep your head up —if you haven’t found your one yet, they’re out there.”
WEEEKEND READING
It’s cold, you’re not going anywhere — why not read a bit more than 240 pages? Maugham is my master. I suggest Of Human Bondage and Cakes and Ale and The Razor’s Edge. And “Revealing Mr. Maugham,” the documentary that couldn’t be more intimate. [To watch the trailer, click here. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime.]
TEA
You can only drink so much coffee. A thoughtful friend gifted me this unusual tea. Click for the Ruby collection from Tea Forte.
A CONVERSATION WITH ESTHER PEREL
I met Esther Perel when I was completing Married Sex: A Love Story. She wasn’t a megabrand then, just a very smart writer who was being read by very smart women and a man — me — who had grappled with the questions in her first book. Now her two books — Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence and The State of Affairs: Rethinking Adultery — have been translated into 30 languages and have together sold nearly a million copies in the United States. Her podcasts and couples counseling sessions for romantic and business partners are regularly ranked in the top 100 in the Apple charts.
Back in 2015 we talked as writers comparing notes. I thought her answers were smart and useful then. I’m republishing our conversation because I still find wisdom in line after line.
JK: It’s been said that when you’re married, you need a cue to have sex.
EP: There is no sex without a cue. People who date have their cues at home, before they meet. You think about where to go, what to eat, what to do and say. Sometimes the cue is short — just before we reach the bar — but sex is never just spontaneous. Spontaneity is a myth.
JK: The Daters may not know that. The Marrieds do. And I’m sure a great many of them believe that marital sex is a loop, a movie they’ve lived before — and they get nostalgic for the yes, yes, yes of dating.
EP: In dating, if you say no, your lover goes on to the next person. In marriage, if you say no, the person stays. The attraction of dating is that you don’t take yes for granted — you’re fully engaged, there’s seductiveness, tension. In committed sex, in marriage, people don’t feel the need to seduce or to build anticipation — that’s an effort they think they no longer need to do now that they have conquered their partner. If they’re in the mood, their partner should be too.
JK: Let’s get practical. What’s the way to exciting sex in marriage?
EP: You must elicit the other person’s desire. And not just five minutes before. You know what happens to sex in marriage? Instead of inviting desire, you monitor it. Especially men: You let her sleep late, you take the kids to the park, and all that time you’re thinking, “Tonight I’ll get some.” That doesn’t work.
JK: Let’s get mental. How does a soccer mom change from a drudge in an apron to a hottie? Drugs? Alcohol?
EP: You take off your apron. You shift identity. The mom doesn’t become sexy; the woman does. You have to retrieve the woman from the mother. And she may need to separate to do that: a bath, a walk. She must cordon off an erotic space.
JK: Women are that different from men?
EP: Women — and men — need to understand that a woman’s transition is often much longer. The caretaker must leave the place of orientation to the needs of others to the place where she focuses on herself. That’s why these rituals are important — they redirect her attention. She needs to know that sex does not mean taking care of her husband.
JK: Porn — help or hindrance?
EP: Depends. For her, far less often. To work, it must put her in touch with her own erotic self.
JK: Viagra — help or hindrance?
EP: A help at first, for some. But useless for 60 to 70 percent of men. And if you don’t look at context in the relationship — it’s of no use.
JK: Is there a magic bullet for couples that cherish monogamy and hot sex?
EP: I don’t have one.
JK: Okay, then, what are the elements of good sex?
EP: First, interest in the person — she can’t feel like an old sofa. And then it has to be sex worth wanting. That’s sex when you don’t know from the beginning how it’s going to end, sex that’s fun, playful, naughty, rebellious, complicitous — and accepted. That is, sex not focused on results. There’s something very full in knowing that your partner accepts you as is. That’s what’s different from dating.
JK: But here’s an irony. In your book, you say that intimacy can be the enemy of lust.
EP: Acceptance doesn’t mean predictability. Sex isn’t always for 11 at night — it’s also ‘meet at a hotel room at noon’. What you feel during dating can exist at home, if you don’t suffocate it.
JK: What do you tell patients who ask if monogamy is the only way?
EP: That’s for them to decide. It may not be for everyone. And maybe not all the time.
JK: I’m baffled. Unfaithful but committed — can that happen?
EP: Are we talking about sexual exclusivity — or emotional loyalty? People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn’t begin to describe the ways that people let each other down.
JK: Are you sanctioning affairs?
EP: No. Not that people need me to give them permission; they’ll have affairs if they want to. But affairs can be powerful detonators. They can invigorate a marriage that’s flat, jolt people out of years of complacency. Fear of loss rekindles desire, makes people have conversations they haven’t had in years, takes them out of their contrived illusion of safety.
JK: In fact, you have written, we never are safe. We don’t “have” our partner. We’re all on lease, with an option to renew.
EP: On some level we trade passion for security, that’s trading one illusion for another. It’s a matter of degree. We can’t live in constant fear, but we can’t live without any. The fear of loss is essential to love.
JK: My wife — she’s not my best friend?
EP: She’d better not be. Friendship has no tension — that’s the whole point. In desire, there must be some small amount of tension. And that tension comes with the unknown, the unpredictable. You can close yourself off at home and say, “Whew, at last I’m in a place where I don’t have to worry,” or you can keep yourself open to the mystery and elusiveness of your partner.
JK: Elusiveness? After years of marriage?
EP: You never know your partner as well as you think. Here’s an easy way to find this out: Each of you opens an email account that you use only to email the other. No daily management stuff allowed. Just two adults in conversation, often about sex: fantasies, questions, memories, no holds barred.
JK: Hotmail — literally! How do your patients respond to that idea?
EP: One guy kept asking his wife, during sex, “Tell me what you like.” She didn’t like the idea of evaluating during sex. She wasn’t hostile to the questions, they just had different styles. I suggested, “Write to him, tell him what sex means to you. Rebellion? Is it where you can be naughty? Do you want a spiritual connection? ” They had a lively correspondence….
JK: What about technique? What about favorite places?
EP: This has nothing to do with where he should put his hand. Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.
THE WEEKEND POEM
“Failing and Flying,” Jack Gilbert, 1925 – 2012
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
WEEKEND RECIPE: YELLOW OR GREEN SQUASH SOUP
Still the one….
Serves 8
1 1/2 pounds yellow summer squash or zucchini
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, sliced
6 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
3 to 4 grinds of fresh nutmeg or dash of ground nutmeg
1 cup heavy cream
Wash, trim, and slice squash.
In a large saucepan, melt butter; gently saute onion.
Add chicken broth gradually, then sliced squash, salt and pepper.
Simmer for 45 minutes.
Puree soup in blender or food processor. Add nutmeg.
To heat, stir in cream with a wire whisk and cook over low heat. Do not allow to boil.
