My parents always entertained on weekends in the fifties and sixties, inviting one or two couples at a time to our storybook coastal cottage in Annapolis for gin rummy and drinks. Appearances were everything. The women rolled, then teased their hair into sweeping, complex volumes that were sprayed stickily rigid. The men slapped a scoop of greasy pomade through their pompadours and called it a look. Every guy had to be a clever bartender, be known for a delicately balanced bloody mary, or perhaps a perfectly shaken martini. And in turn, each fellow sipped a signature drink he hoped indicated his impeccable taste. A magical commingling occurred between women's natural skin scent and their perfume. That was feminine optimism via Madison Avenue at work. Everyone, of course, filled the place with cigarette smoke. Which brought on the ugly battlefield of ashtrays, overstuffed with snuffed out filter tips - tiny, spent armor shells.

It was incredibly phony, if that isn't obvious enough. But they never saw it that way. They were a generation brought up on movie stars; every man wanted to be the invariably tuxedoed, boozy baritone Dean Martin; or maybe Marlon Brando, oozing sexuality. Every woman desired to be like Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, or some other cast-off of Frank Sinatra's. It was important to get the lighting just right at these parties. Ever so slightly dim, enough to mask male stubble, allow face powder to work its mineralized magic, and not call too much attention to the grand effort.

The stereophonic entertainment console, which doubled as a liquor cabinet, engulfed a sizable chunk of the living room. From its nubbly speaker covering with decorative treble clefs and quarter notes came Brazilian bossa nova music - intoxicating rhythms that established a direct link with the revelers' hips. Those smooshed, satisfied grins on their faces, you would think they would want to sway all night. Yet there was never an actual dancing session. It was only a slinky dip here and a seductive swivel there, then it was back to totaling gin rummy figures and re-freshing drinks with ice. Ice, ice, everywhere - clinking, cracking, plopping noisily into glasses. We, the two children, were allowed to greet everyone, recite a poem by Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost, smother a few potato chips with sour cream dip, then say good night to the still sober guests. It was wretched that my sister and I were forced to bed at 9:00, but there were adults who were itching to be adults. We could still hear what went on.

"Listen to Mr. Lawrence,” said my sister. “What a shameless flirt.”

"Yeah, and that makes Dad get real quiet."

"Well, she's a pretty woman, Burt, men are going to be like that."

"Is she pretty, Kat? I can't tell. I know whether a girl in seventh grade is pretty. Or a star on TV. But Mom - it's hard for me to think of her that way."

"She better be. Because I intend to be pretty. Even if I have to get a bunch of plastic surgery."

"Well, you better get a bunch of money, because plastic surgery isn't cheap."

"Dad will pay for it. I don't intend to be some dog going stag everywhere. I want to meet a guy and fall in love."

"You'll be okay. You won't be class queen or anything, but you'll get dates."

"How do you know?"

"Genes. You got your mother's genes. If she's pretty like you insist."

"Jeans? Mom never wears jeans."

"No, genes. Didn't they teach you about genes yet? Children look like their parents because they pass on their genes."

"Well, that's good, because there's no doubt in my mind that Mom's a pretty woman."

By the time I entered high school, our parents' parties no longer held any intrigue for us. We slept soundly through the clonking of ice and the hubbub of apologies from spills, the raised volume of friendly disagreements and the front door finally closing for the evening whose silence brought the heating registers strangely to audible life.

Dad was a lawyer for shopping centers. I liked the idea of following in his footsteps. My college grades weren't great but my LSAT score was excellent. So I went to Baltimore Law School. It wasn't fair, but my sister, when she graduated high school, went to a cosmetology academy. She wanted to go. I felt like she was every bit as smart as me - she deserved better. But Mom had no degree, so I guess she was just following in her shoes.

As soon as we were both out of the house, our parents split. Mom had been taking tango lessons and something started up between her and the instructor. Dad was lost, at first, but he met a redhead in his mixed doubles tenpin league who brought him back to life. It was all relatively painless. For them. Me, I had some problems with it. I was messed up for a while. But then, I realized, why should my family be immune? Divorce was an epidemic. My folks caught it, like so many others did. It was stewing dormantly at all those home parties, waiting to break out some day. We could hear it in our bunk beds, just bubbling through the hallway, it had all been so exciting to our young, unknowing ears.

I didn't make the best grades, but I passed the Maryland bar on the first try with no sweat. I had a girlfriend who was having trouble getting through nursing school. She had a hell of a time finding a pulse, especially with women. I wasn't sure about her. Would we end up apart after say, twenty years of raising kids and having parties? Were my parents miserable through their time together? Dad denied it, but if I pressed him, he'd end up saying that they were too busy living up to a standard to worry about whether they were happy or not. It sounded horrible to me - the late sixties had made personal happiness paramount. That new notion was supposed to be liberating, but it brought its own kind of pressure. It was just another standard, albeit quite different from the fifties one. I started thinking love was a silly concept. At some point, some generation was going to expose it for the pretender it was. It might not happen in my lifetime, but it was bound to happen. That's how I saw things. My sister thought I was out of my mind.

Kat, however, was in love with love. She hadn't found an accomplice yet, but she was looking. In the beauty parlor she worked at, she was around nothing but women all day. Too much estrogen, as I saw it. She went to a lot of parties and smoked a lot of pot. I never took to the stuff, I tried it once and it made me paranoid. That kind of thing defines a life, parcels out your friends, makes decisions for you. With no pot smokers to pal around with, I became conservative. That turned out to be just fine when Reagan got elected. It became cool. I had lost my nursing student to the NOW crowd. My sister didn't like me becoming such a Tory. But I was working in Dad's office and things were just fine, as far as I was concerned.

It's not that I didn't go to parties. I sure as hell went to one party in particular. It was at a swanky rowhouse in Georgetown. My sister was there, I was keeping an eye on her. I watched her appear from a dark bathroom, collar a guy who had been walking by, and drag him in with her. After a while I could hear furtive gasps through the door. And then, a culminating, muffled male grunt. The door opened and she walked out like nothing had happened. I never got a look at the guy.

I wasn't one for casual or public sex, but I wondered if I were missing out on something. I decided to keep myself open to the possibility. I started dating another lawyer and we went out a lot. I told her I wanted to try it in a bathroom at a party. We did, and I liked it. It was fun. A little too fun. We started doing it a lot in public, and somehow, I got to the point where that was the only way I could perform. I ended up having to see a therapist about it. She wasn't much help: I lost the girl, started watching pornography, sat by my lonesome at strip clubs. Then I really got my fingernails dirty. I started driving to Philadelphia where a guy put on shows in his house. There was a girl there who had sex with a dog - it was not fake, the dog penetrated her. My eyeballs were scorched, but in some bizarre way, it kept the dopamine tap open and running.

I hated marijuana, but I gave coke a try and it was great. Pretty soon I was using it every day. I had a lot of fun for a few months, then it all came apart. I started losing weight, losing my temper. My life was suddenly going to shit - was it all because I thought love wasn't real? It was as good a diagnosis as any. My sister visited me in rehab. She told me she was getting married, could I get myself together in time for her wedding? I couldn't make any promises.

"I just want you to know that the guy I'm marrying is that guy from the bathroom. It was the most magical, romantic thing I've ever done in my life. We sealed our relationship that night. I know my love is real and that it's going to last, not like Mom and Dad's. You could have the same thing if you only believed in love." It was hard to keep from laughing, she was so earnest.

"Do you ever wonder about Mom and Dad, Kat? Like, when they realized they weren't in love anymore? I wonder all the time. How long does love last, really? Not very long, I think. All that primping and posing they did back in the fifties, they were trying so hard to keep it going. What a waste."

"A waste is what you are, Burt. You're never going to clean up your act until you start believing in love. You just have to."

I made it to her wedding and I tried pretty hard to take the gist of her words, ludicrously as they were couched, serious. I managed to clean up slowly. Work kept me afloat. I spent a lot of time thinking about my parents' relationship. Finally, there seemed little left to do except give in to their way of doing things, to the world they had presented to my sister and me. It didn't last them a lifetime, but it had worked for over twenty years - so, why not? I bought a Victorian brownstone in Bolton Hill and got a cherry of a stereo system with monstrously huge Klipschorn speakers. I play bossa nova on it - Milton Nascimento's "Travessia" is a favorite. After all these years, I finally got a signature drink - B&B on the rocks. No more coke. I got a girlfriend who's a pretty straight arrow, which helps keep me in line. We'll get married, have two children and hold bridge parties on the weekends. Following the path you've been shown is the only way to go. Anything else may lead to trouble. That's my prescription for living.