The best sex I ever had? We’ve had so much good sex. I guess we’ve been lucky that way. Can’t I name a favorite book, instead? Or a piece of music? I always like to think the best sex is yet to come. I like to look ahead. But I like to remember, too.

We were staying at a little cabin on a lake in Michigan. Lake Jeptha. Our daughter Annie was about four or five, and Laura’s parents were along. They frequently accompanied us on summer vacations in those days. The start was somewhat inauspicious—when we arrived, a dark snake was sunning on the cabin’s porch, right in front of the door. Laura’s mom was not pleased. I was more concerned that one of the screens didn’t fit right, and mosquitoes could stream in at will.

It was probably not a good time for Laura’s mom—she was upset about her husband’s drinking. He’d promised to stop, but she was sure he had several bottles stashed in his tackle boxes.

I’m not much of a fisherman, but I enjoyed being in the boat. Laura’s dad took me out one afternoon. So peaceful! The boat drifting through the soft shadows. Dragonflies shimmering in the sun. Birds twittering in the cool green forests.

Laura’s dad caught several fat fish. He put them in a wire basket which trailed alongside the boat. My job was to watch this fish cage. I’m not sure what I was supposed to look for, but whatever it was, I didn’t see it. When we got back to our little pier, the basket had opened up somehow, and all the fine fish were gone.

“I was going to let them go anyhow,” Laura’s dad said, “But I wanted to show them to Wiggle.”

He called Annie Wiggle, which was short for Wiggle-Pants, a name he had invented. We called her BooBoo by that time, earlier nicknames such as Ooh-Ums and Prairie Puff having faded away. When Richard was born, Laura’s dad named him Jiggle-Pants. “Wiggle and Jiggle,” he liked to say. He was a nice man. He’s been dead a number of years now—too much smoking.

As you might expect, with her parents in the little cabin, Laura wasn’t too eager for lovemaking. We did go out on a number of long walks around the lake, stopping frequently for kisses and such, and we often strolled with our hands in each others’ pockets. The strain of ever-increasing desire was kind of sweet. I think Laura got as hot as I did, but we didn’t actually find a good place for fucking.

One time I thought we might do it. While jogging earlier that day, I’d spotted a secluded spot out past an apple orchard, at least a mile from anywhere. “There’s somewhere I want to show you,” I told Laura, and we went walking.

About halfway there a huge storm came up. It sounded like whispering or whimpering at first—we didn’t know what it was. And then we could hear the trees rattling and the temperature dropped ten, twenty degrees just like that. The sound got louder all the time. Then we could see the leaves fifty yards down the path being pelted by the rain, and we turned around.

“Better go back,” we decided. About that same instant the first raindrops hit us. For a second we thought, “This isn’t so bad,” and then Whoosh! an avalanche of sharp wild water. We ran. The rain was almost icy, and it soaked us in no time. We stopped running—just strolled down the road—way beyond wet.

Sometimes lightning cracked, and we shivered, and we tried a few kisses that way. We were still ten minutes from the cabin when an old man from a house down the road pulled up next to us in his blue Mercedes. He opened his window a tiny crack.

“Do you kids need a ride?” he yelled.

It was raining so hard we couldn’t hear him at first. We stepped nearer, and he rolled his window down a little more, and I’m sure got soaked for his kindness.

“A ride!” he said, “Come on, get in.”

“Oh no,” we answered, “We’d just get your car all wet.”

The wind was howling and we must have looked miserable. He insisted, and we felt, I think, that it would be rude to turn him down. So we got in. Almost immediately the windows were all steamed up. I don’t think the man could see anything; I figured he’d drive us into the lake. But he must have known that road pretty good—he got us home in moments. It was fun toweling each other off inside the cabin, but in a way I regret that the man in the Mercedes had come along.