This was quintessentially sophomoric thinking, but nowadays most educated people hold quintessentially sophomoric opinions well into their thirties and so this stuck with me for a long time. My wife Virginia probably had some equally self-serving rationalization for her own sexual needs—of which I was not to become aware for many years. So it’s no surprise that our premarital sex life was mediocre. Neither one of us admitted it was mediocre, of course. If I had admitted it, I would have had to admit that it was mediocre because Virginia didn’t like to wear stockings, and at the time I was too concerned with being a Sensitive New Age Guy to admit such heresy, I loved Virginia for her mind. How could I be so shallow, so insensitive, so perverse as to spurn her because she didn’t like to pull filmy tubes of nylon over her legs? As a pudgy nerd, I was lucky to have her.