What would a man like to do?

What happened to all the time? Married for forty years with eighteen or twenty of them mostly happy. Divorced twice and a third likely. Uprooted enough times to appreciate stability when it came but not be too attached to it. Moderately successful in life, but still too poor to really retire.

time to make a bucket list.

After all, you couldn't count on time being on your side anymore. Time was the enemy. That body you drag around with you keeps getting older while the person you are in your head stays forever young. If he was a hundred when he died, he'd still die in his twenties. So it was time. Time to make that list and make sure he scratched every item off it before the inevitable claimed him. What would it be?

I want to visit Machu Picchu. I don't just want to "see the ruins." I want to explore every passage and listen to the whispered love stories of the Incas as they moved through the town five hundred years ago. I want to immerse myself in their memories and emerge with a new story that brings light and life to the mountaintop. I want my soul steeped in their glory and their pain and offer that beverage to the world.

Ah, places to see. I want to walk the perimeter of the hierothesion on Nemrut Dagi and dip my fingers in the tumulus. I want to walk the path from the summit to the spring in the north and explore the mountain's ice caves. I want to follow the signs on the lion horoscope, camp in the shelter of the cliffs, breathe the air, and stare out toward the Euphrates. And when I have seen, I want to take my lover back to our hotel in Andiyaman and celebrate our existence before traveling back to the luxury of the Seyhan Hotel in Adana where we bathe in mineral salts and drink Turkish Coffee with sweet sticky pastry.

I want to memorize a wonderful woman's orgasm. I want to be able to describe exactly what it looks like in words that would make the experience come back again. I want to memorize the feel of it—not only the slick plunging feel, but the tiny vibrations, the temperature of her skin, the dryness of her lips, and the rise of her nipples. I want to memorize the taste of it. I want my mouth to water every time I think about that flavor. And the smell. I want to find words that describe that smell so well that other women come when they read them. I want to score the vocals, write the syllables, even record the percussion of her orgasm. I am a firm believer in the principle of memorization through repetition.

I want to serve coffee each morning to a woman who considers the first cup foreplay. Sure, sometimes that's all we want in the morning and it stimulates us to move forward through the day, but sometimes it is an invitation to something delightful, intimate, and immediate. The first cup of coffee in the morning can be a wake-up call, or a summons back to bed.

I want to see every extant copy of the Gutenberg Bible and hold one in my hands and weep for the beauty of the printed word that has been lost to us.

I want to press my lover against the glass of our balcony door as I enter her from behind and we look up at the Acropolis and the lit Parthenon. I want to revel in 3000 years of Greek passion for life and love, recite lines from classic Greek plays, and discover the depth of love in history and literature. Then I want to continue north to the Meteora and walk between the spires of rock and drink from a well of sorrow in the village. Further north, I'll spend time meditating on the walls of a monastery at Mt. Athos, knowing that a life of denial and restraint can be put behind me when I leave its solitude. I want to drink coffee with my lover as we look over the rooftops of Mykonos to the blue waters of the Aegean and picture with Keats the battle of Zeus and the Titans.

I want to make love on the deck of a ship under the stars of the Mediterranean as we silently sail around the cradle of civilization to Egypt. I want to feel the pressure of the pyramids of Giza reminding me how small I am and how great the world is. I want to find release in the Temple of Ramses where millions of scrolls once resided, then marvel at the new Library of Alexandria and the treasures it houses. When I leave Egypt, I want to feel I have been born again from the desert sands into a new and vital life.

I want to learn a whole new vocabulary for love and sex. We've heard that Eskimos have 109 words for snow—aput for "snow on the ground," and qana for "falling snow"—or the 139 Hawaiian words for rain—pakaku for "rain falling in large drops," or nahua for "fine rain that accompanies the north-east trade winds along the northern part of Maui." What is the word for "first time sex in the back seat of a car?" Or the word for "change in scent of a woman as she reaches orgasm?" There would be variances of the same experience whether masculine or feminine. "The glans of my cock held just inside the entrance of her vagina," vs. "My vagina with just the glans of his cock held inside." Different words would describe a woman's vocalese as she climaxes as "high-pitched whine as she sucks in her breath" or "shrieking at the peak of her orgasm." There needs to be a hundred words for "slipping" and "sliding," depending on what part of the body is in action against what part of the partner. And let us not forget that there would be a difference between "my female lover's tongue, tickling my clit from under its hood," and "my male lover's tongue, tickling my clit from under its hood." Just in the interest of building my vocabulary, I want to study this new language from its source and experience each of its nuances for myself.

I want to drive from Juneau Alaska to the Straits of Magellan along the west coast of the Americas, then return along the east coast from Argentina to Nova Scotia. While at the pace of just 200 miles per day this could be done in less than three months, I'd like to spend a year or two along the journey, including a stay in Rio de Janiero for the 2016 Olympics. Of course, my preference would be to share this leisurely drive with a woman equally committed to making love in each of the thirty-five countries of the Americas (many times). Of course, we might have to park the camper at Key West and spend a few months making love on each of the 13 island countries of the Caribbean. This trip would be the precursor, or first phase of our quest to make love on each of the seven continents and each of the seven subcontinents of the world, soon to be followed by making love on each of the seven seas.