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person like Natalie was such a fall guy for the ape act. But true appreciation is the spur of genius, and the ape act definitely reached its highest moments that afternoon, with the assistance of the bananas.

    Then we did some cliff climbing and some rock throwing, and built a sand castle. Then we came back and built up the fire, because it was getting colder, and watched the tide get closer to our sand castle, and talked We didn't talk about problems, or parents, or automobiles, or ambitions. We talked about life. We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer. And the sea was there, forty feet away and coming closer, and the sky over the sea, and the sun going down the sky. And it was cold, and it was the high point of my life.

    I'd had high points before. Once at night walking in the park in the rain in autumn. Once out in the desert, under the stars, when I turned into the earth turning on its axis. Sometimes thinking, just thinking things through. But always alone. By myself. This time I was not alone. I was on the high mountain with a friend. There is nothing, there is
nothing
that beats that. If it never happens again in my life, still I can say I was there once.
    While we were talking we were sifting through the sand around where we sat for bits of jade and agate. Natalie found a black rock, flat, perfectly oval, and sand-polished. I found a lens-shaped agate, white and yellow; you could see the sun through it. She gave me the black rock, and I gave her the agate.

    While we were driving home, she fell asleep. That was neat. That was like coming back down the high mountain quietly in the sunset, I drove well and carefully, quietly.
    It was way past seven when we got home. We'd let time go on the beach. She slipped out of the car, still looking sleepy and windburned, and said, "It was beautiful, Owen," and went into her house smiling.

    T HE FIELDS WENT out of town over New Year's, and I didn't see Natalie till the day started again. I waited for the bus with her. While we were hanging around there, I said I hoped her getting home late hadn't made any trouble with her father. She said, "Oh, well." And we talked about Ornstein's book; she was interested in his explanations about the silent half of the brain, where the music is.

    But if I wanted to blame anybody but myself for what went wrong, I guess I would blame Natalies father.
    When she said "Oh, well," of course it meant that he had made some kind of stink, and she didn't want to talk about it, she preferred to ignore it or forget it. But what had he made a stink about, anyhow? She goes to the beach and eats lunch and finds an agate and comes home. This is wicked? This is sin? What did Mr. Field have on his mind, anyhow?
    It was perfectly obvious what he had on his mind.
    That it wasn't what we had on our minds made no difference to him. You know these young people. All they're after is kicks.
    So, OK, I wasn't corrupted by Mr. Field's obsessions. I wouldn't even have thought about them, if I hadn't been corrupted already. That's a funny word, isn't it, corrupted? My dictionary says it means "To turn from a sound into an unsound condition...." That's all I mean by it. I just got to thinking unsoundly.

    The thing is, the way a lot of people talk, and the way a lot of movies and books and advertising and all the various sexual engineers, whether they're scientists or salesmen, tell you the way it is, is all the same. Man Plus Woman Equals Sex. Nothing else. No unknowns in the equation. Who needs unknowns?
    Especially when you haven't had any sex yet at all and so
it
is the unknown, and everybody seems to be telling you that it's the only thing that matters, nothing else counts; and if you don't have sex all the time, you're either impotent or frigid and you'll probably get cancer within the year, too.

    So I began thinking, what am I doing. I mean, I see this