This is about the hungry wives and starving husbands. About Stu Kahn, architect in New York—but architect didn't define his special stuff, and how long would he have it, that special stuff? Here he was at 40—ten years and he'd be drowning in the soup of aching back, slack belly. Time now to break out of his 12-year marriage. Time to be his own person.

As for his wife, Cynthia, she was equally fed up—believe it—with an architect who took to wearing designer jeans to show off his buns, and when he pulled off those jeans at night, where were his underpants? No underpants, and on hot days he loped through the house bare-butted, bear haunched. Who the hell is this naked prancer telling me he wants to recover his natural animal innocence?

"Naked is a kind of costume too," she told him.