Succession

No religious season passes without it being insulted by the kind of person who lives in fear that somewhere some believer is not having his faith offended by someone to whom faith itself is offensive. This Eastertide was no exception. On Good Friday, which coincided with the first night of Passover, the New York Times printed an essay by a former yeshiva student proposing that in this year of violence and suffering it would be best to “pass over” God, adding, “Killing gods is an idea I can get behind.” This sort of village-atheist raspberry — which largely disappeared during the twentieth century along with American villages themselves — has enjoyed something of a revival early in the twenty-first century with the appearance of the so-called New Atheists.

In 1974 I was living in San Francisco when I got a phone call from a man who said, “I’m having a few people over to have sex with my wife, would you care to join us?” Back in the 1970s, people like this were called swingers. I politely declined. To my amazement I was recently invited by a couple in their sixties to go to one of London’s secret swinging parties with them. This one, they assured me, was for the “older swinger.” (I didn’t think there were any still alive!) To swing or not to swing? That is the question I never thought I’d ever face again. It was a kind offer, but frankly I’m too old for those sorts of sexual shenanigans.