Authors: Daniel Bergner

The Other Side of Desire (23 page)

BOOK: The Other Side of Desire

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In reply, Ron described the relief of a friend when Elizabeth, who never wore prosthetics, had been replaced in his life by Laura. And Laura talked about the different reactions she encountered during her day, depending on whether she had put on her artificial legs. Her words made me think of something else she’d once told me, that she was proud of her life and in love with Ron, but that the truth was she felt plagued by wondering if she could win a normal man. She knew that such thinking was perverse. She knew that it spoke of self-loathing, that normal was a worthless notion, that it held only the power she allowed it. She knew better, knew she should purge her longing, but couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t get rid of this desire.

Yet I had heard her laughter float across the hall from a master bedroom with leopard-print pillowcases and a leopard-print comforter, laughter that was light and warm, the laughter of being beloved. And then she had emerged, resplendent, wearing a man’s white dress shirt, to make breakfast with her fiancé.

After we ate, they led me out from the kitchen into the garage. They showed me a contraption: two bicycles connected side by side. She didn’t have the balance to ride on her own, and a typical tandem, one rider behind the other, wouldn’t offer enough stability, either. He’d come across the side-by-side design in an old disability magazine, ordered the connector, and gone to a local bike shop for help in attaching it. But the device wouldn’t fit with any of the shop’s bicycles. Ron was about to give up when he wondered if using old-fashioned bikes might be a solution. He found a pair on eBay, and returned to the shop, where the mechanic, sympathetic to the project because his mother was blind, set to work again. And this time, all went smoothly. The contraption was perfect.

Suddenly Ron and Laura were peddling and coasting beside each other, flying through their own breeze, bound together, free.

There was only one problem. Soon he was gasping for breath. He wasn’t as strong, wasn’t in her kind of shape. He needed to stop, to turn around, when she wasn’t at all ready, when she was barely breathing hard, when she was exhilarated. She wanted to go on and on.

Acknowledgments

This is a book of trust. To all the people who taught me with the stories of their lives—the people who fill these pages and the many more who fill my thinking—thank you for your trust and your teaching. And thank you to the scientists and therapists who gave their time so generously to educate me.

Among my sources of learning is the photography of Ron Parisi, whose story I tell in “The Devotee.” His work can be found at www.ronparisi.com.

This is also a book that required a great deal of faith. For that and for all her guidance, I have long been very lucky to have Suzanne Gluck as my agent—and I am lucky to have William Morris’s Sarah Ceglarski, Raffaella De Angelis, Tracy Fisher, Erin Malone, and Cathryn Summerhayes on my side.

Then there is Lee Boudreaux. When we first met, I thought, I want her for my editor. My instincts were only half right, in that I guessed only half of what a wonderful editor she would be. And Dan Halpern, along with Rachel Bressler, Alison Former, Abby Holstein, Van Luu, Michael McKenzie, Greg Mortimer, Allison Saltzman, and the sales team (whose readings, starting with Jeanette Zwart’s, were so thoughtful) have made Ecco a perfect home.

Ilena Silverman, my editor at the
New York Times Magazine
, gave this book its beginning and offered crucial friendship throughout its writing.

For friendship, faith, guidance, my endless gratitude to Samantha Gillison, John Gulla, William Hogeland, Roland Kelts, George Packer, Ayesha Pande, and Elissa Wald.

And then:

KSF, you are in every word.

Nancy, without you, there would be no words.

And Natalie and Miles, who changed my life, without you there wouldn’t be much of anything at all.

About the Author

DANIEL BERGNER
is a staff writer for the
New York Times Magazine
and the author of two books of nonfiction—
In the Land of Magic Soldiers
, a
Los Angeles Times
Best Book of the Year and winner of an Overseas Press Club Award and a Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage; and
God of the Rodeo
, a
New York Times
Notable Book of the Year. Bergner’s writing has also appeared in
Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, Talk,
the
New York Times Book Review
, and on the op-ed page of the
New York Times
.

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ALSO BY DANIEL BERGNER

FICTION

Moments of Favor

NONFICTION

God of the Rodeo:

The Quest for Redemption in

Louisiana’s Angola Prison

In the Land of Magic Soldiers:

A Story of White and Black in

West Africa

Credits

Jacket design by Allison Saltzman

Jacket photograph by Rosemary Porter

Copyright

THE OTHER SIDE OF DESIRE
. Copyright © 2009 by Daniel Bergner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Mobipocket Reader December 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-175985-7

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