DURING THE 1970s and ’80s I taught meditation in a dozen or so countries throughout East Asia and the Pacific on behalf of my guru. Although dressed in plain clothes, in most respects I lived and worked as a latter-day monk. After a three-year relationship with a brilliant young woman had failed to resolve my attraction to men, the option of celibacy required for this service was a welcome alternative; I was happy to lob sexuality into the too-hard basket.

With that issue on hiatus, I settled down to concentrate on something else; just as, in a scientific experiment, you attempt to eliminate as many variables as possible in order to focus on the element or process that you want to examine. Who or what is a ‘homosexual’ when he is not having sex? Is sexuality a sufficient basis on which to build an identity?