And after that I thought: what if it isn't really about sex? Would I have been less squeamish if my father had said, 'No, son, it isn't physical at all, it's just that I've fallen in love.' The question I'd asked, and which seemed hard enough at the time, was actually the easier one. Why make the assumption that the heart shuts down alongside the genitals? Because we want - need - to see old age as a time of serenity? I now think this is one of the great conspiracies of youth. Not just of youth, but of middle age too, of every single year until that moment when we admit to being old ourselves.