The consequences of fiction

I started writing short stories when I was twenty-six. At that stage in my life I had been married five years and I was falling in love with every beautiful woman I saw. It seemed to me that there were fabulous women everywhere: in the corridors at work, behind the paint display stands in hardware stores, in advertisements for women's underwear, in station wagons waiting at traffic lights. I fell in love with each of them, instantly. I went through them in my mind each night, remembering them, ranking them. Who was the best-looking woman I had seen that day? What would she be like? What would I do with her? I had a daughter, a demanding job teaching literature, a large mortgage. I relieved my claustrophobia with fantasies.