Train Tracks by Michael Savage

her
too much to proceed, but in reality I couldn’t get excited in the right part of
my body.
    My heart would pound, my thoughts would swirl, my
weight-lifted arms would nearly crush her breathless, but the right thing was
not being transmitted below my waist.
    Years later, I would learn this bout of “impotence”
was directly related to the ham sandwiches I was filching from the first-class
lounge! Not as a result of guilt for my transgressions, but due to the sodium
nitrates and nitrites the ham was laced with. While these preservatives killed
off would-be bacterial colonizers, they also killed a man’s ability where desire
was not lacking.
    In sufficient amounts, the nitrates are used to
quiet libido. It is rumored that in the military they gave this stuff, in the
potassium form, to the boys—called it “saltpeter.”
    Now, who would have guessed that a good old ham
sandwich, or other preserved meats—bologna, sausage, hot dogs—will ruin whatever
good fortune may bring your way during your travels. But should you be eating
some of these preserved meats three times a day, while also lacking
phospholipids necessary for sperm production, a simple dietary adjustment could
render years of psychoanalysis into the redundant torture that it is. *
    You’ve got to be careful when traveling. To know
what to eat and what to avoid must not become a full-time obsession, but you
don’t want to end up in a garret with the bells of Notre Dame cathedral tolling,
white high heels askew on the floor next to a hastily opened lady’s suitcase,
lying there in a sweat trying to explain away your failure.
    Karen was understanding. And she did come all the way from London to be with me, after
all. But not knowing about the nitrate family and their vicious habits once
inside the human, we began to blame ourselves for
this unignitable passion.
    As the days went by and my diet of good French food
drove away the German ham and white bread, I returned to that state of vigor
common to twenty-year-olds. The romance, once inflamed, burned on for a week or
two in a magical Paris I’ve never, ever since known.
    Then, the long-legged pale beauty went north, I
went south, not to meet again except by chance in the mouth of a London
Underground tube years later.
    About to descend the steps with my wife of two
weeks, Karen was ascending, arguing with a decadent-looking longhair. Our faces
met. We were startled to bump into each other so unexpectedly. I looked
healthier than I had during those days in Paris, fuller of myself, stronger in
my step, while she was emaciated, almost pimply.
    We said a few words, quickly parted, and never saw
each other again.
    But on that first “big trip to Europe,” I did get
to Donny’s fabled Majorca.
    The food was so unlike New York, the land and the
people somehow so much more alive, that I stayed on, missing the next semester
to sample all that the poets had promised.
    Palma, 1966
    Christmas Day in Shatzy’s bar. I’d been
there since the summer. I was a regular among the expatriates, mainly English
retirees living on pensions, playing at art.
    The eggy taste of Advocaat , a creamy yellow alcoholic slammer, was fashionable in the
Mediterranean port bar. One thing I liked about those English writers, they just
drank, without a wink, devoid of “cute” American names for their addiction.
    (In Alabama, I once learned the craziest name for a
drink: “Slow Screw Against the Wall”—vodka and 7Up. These were glowingly taught
to me by a group of very sweet Alabamian college girls, welcoming me to the
Huntsville airport for a lecture I was giving the next day.)
    So, again, another season of too much alcohol (and
of the wrong kind), and tasty but suicidal food. Years would pass before I
learned that diet was somehow related to my mood and performance, and which to
prescribe and proscribe for myself and others.
    Shatzy, wiry and friendly, took a