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chop like the God who made the water and the son who came to walk on it—and then he said that he too had had to make do without a father’s guidance, at least once he went to college and broke free of a stifling paternal influence. His father had seen him as anengineer—could I imagine that?—but he himself had preferred biology. Biology was his passion. And he made a casual gesture to the cramped office behind him, and the great standing racks of insects pinned in trays. “Did you know,” he added, “that I’ve identified sixteen new species of gall wasp?” And he let out a chuckle. “If it was up to my father they’d be unknown today.” His eyes were shining. “Poor things.”
    Our conversation—it was just that—had developed its own logic and rhythm. It was uncanny. The longer we spoke, and it was almost like speaking with your inner self or confiding in the family doctor behind closed doors, the more he seemed to know what I was thinking and feeling. And it wasn’t simply that he was a master at what he was doing, but that you felt he really and truly sympathized, that when your heart was breaking, so was his.
    Which brings us to the real content of the interview: my sex history. We talked for perhaps fifteen minutes before the first question insinuated itself, as casually as if it were no more charged than a reflection on one’s parents or upbringing. We’d been talking about my playmates when I was a boy, and I was lost in nostalgic recollection, faces and places and names drifting like gauze through my brain, when Dr. Kinsey, in his softest, most dispassionate tones, asked, “How old were you when you first became aware of the anatomical differences between girls and boys?”
    â€œI don’t know. Early on, I suppose. Five? Six?”
    â€œWas there nudity in your home when you were a child? On the part of your parents or yourself?”
    I took a moment, trying to recollect. “No,” I said, “no, I don’t think so.”
    â€œDid your parents make you put your clothes on when you appeared naked?”
    â€œYes. But again, this would have been at a very early age, probably two or three. Or no, later. There was one incident—I must have been five, five at least, because it was before we’d moved to the house on Cherry Street—a hot day, bathing with my mother at the lake, and I came out of the water and removed my wet trunks. She was angry with me, and I remember I couldn’t understand why.”
    â€œWere you reprimanded then?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œPhysically?”
    â€œI must have been. Not the first time, though.”
    â€œWhat were the other occasions?”
    Each question followed logically from the one previous, and they were very much rapid-fire: as soon as Prok got and recorded his response, he was on to the next, and yet you never felt as if you were being interrogated, but rather were part of an ongoing conversation focused on the most fascinating subject in the world: yourself. And the questions were always formulated so as to achieve the most precise—and unambiguous—answer. So it was not “Have you ever masturbated?” but rather “When did you first masturbate?” and “How old were you when you first saw the naked genitalia of your own sex? Of the opposite sex?” All the while, as the interviewee progressed in recollected age, so too did the questions delve ever more deeply into his sexual practices, going from the relatively innocuous data-based queries (“How old were you when you first began to sprout pubic hair?”) and calculations of your height, weight and handedness, to “When did you first experience coitus?”
    My nose was dripping—I too had contracted the cold that held the campus in its thrall—and I was on my fourth cigarette and entirely unaware of where or even who I was by the time this last