Road 2 Elsewhere, Excerpt #43: “I indulge myself a little more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age to do it"

How the legendary diarist Samuel Pepys invented hands-free masturbation, and I avoided getting crushed between protesters and cops on the Rue du Four in Paris.

ON THE LAST DAY OF SEPTEMBER,1978, on my calendar, I wrote out a snippet from William Wordsworth: “Five years have passed….” 

I had been recording notes of my days for sixty calendar pages at that point, with no hint of stopping. And my journal was just about to begin. October 12th bears these notic…