The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side: Our Longreads Member Pick
Longreads Members not only support this service, but they receive exclusive ebooks from the best writers and publishers in the world. Our latest Member Pick, The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side, is a new story by Mark Oppenheimer and The Atlantic Books, about Eido Shimano, a Zen Buddhist monk accused of sexually exploiting students.
We’re excited to feature the first chapter, free for everyone. If you’re not a Longreads Member, join today to receive the full story and ebook, or you can also purchase the ebook at Amazon.
The Making of Gay Marriage’s Top Foe
How an unplanned pregnancy during college changed the life and worldview of Maggie Gallagher, now one of the leading voices against gay marriage:
“On a mild November day, Gallagher and I are upstairs at City Bakery, near Union Square in Manhattan, where after months of requests she has agreed to meet me. As Gallagher tells it, she and the baby’s father were close; they had been together ‘on the order of one year,’ she says, so he might have been expected to stand by her. ‘My son’s father was my boyfriend at Yale,’ is how she describes their relationship. But when she told him she was pregnant, right before spring break in 1982, he vanished on her. ‘I was in his room and he had to go do something, and I was going to fly out in a couple of hours, had to get to the airport. And the last thing he said to me was, “I’ll be back in 30 minutes.” And then he wasn’t.’
“He just left her sitting in his room. And that was the end of them. When summer came, Gallagher moved home to Oregon and took some classes to finish her degree. In the fall, she gave birth to a baby boy, Patrick.”
The Race That Is Not About Winning
I say “he” because my subject is the specific kind of boy who takes up running, and he is very different from the girl who is his counterpart. This boy, whom I know well, is just not good at any other sport. He may have tried baseball, but could not throw; he may have tried soccer, but could not kick. He is not coordinated or strong or big. So he runs. No American eight-year-old thinks it would be cool to be a distance runner someday. If he becomes one, it is not the realization of a dream, but the acceptance of reality.
