With him for a sire and her for a dam. What should I be but just what I am?   Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1920 Blame it on heredity, or man’s instinctive nature as a hunter.  Blame it on financial reversals, or the wife’s comparative success.  Blame it on the corrosive effects of modern professional/marital life, or the departure of the fledgling from the nest.  Blame it on the inevitable erosion of conjugal gusto, or a mounting fear of decrepitude and mortality.  Blame it on a chance convergence of the needs of youth and age in the halls of the university, or lax evidentiary procedures in the Faculty Ethics Committee.  Blame it on “the ecstasy of catastrophe.” Musing over implausible and self-serving scenarios for days on end, I gradually settled on the least improbable.  Though I was still not satisfied with the form that my confession would take, I…