a revealing passage in Across My Big Brass Bed, mid-novel....

I could simply have learned how to play “Lay Lady Lay” and left it at that.  But no:  I was lofty aloof weird weird weird.  A snob who thought motorcycle racing and classical music demonstrated some astonishing cultural reach that only a superior, yes, that was the word, a superior person could apprehend.  Orpheus.  Marlon Brando.  Christ.  Me:  I could not believe I even glimpsed these delusions, much less embraced them.  And yet….  And yet I was a sexual prodigy!  There was probably no woman I could not seduce!  A daredevil who played the flute!  A Christian ascetic and a reckless playboy!  I could do it.  I could in fact pull it off.  If anyone one were truly capable of such a show, it were me.  Lightning strokes of transformation:  I felt it in my bones, my loins, my pounding heart.  But to parade it?  To confess it, so early on?  Nightmare would surely ensue. My soul would be burned at the stake.