Oliver Sacks Put Himself into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?

Summary

As Sacks aged, he felt as if he were gazing at people from the outside. But he also noticed a new kind of affection for humans—“homo sap.” “They’re quite complex (little) creatures (I say to myself),” he wrote in his journal. “They suffer, authentically, a good deal. Gifted, too. Brave, resourceful, challenging.”Perhaps because love no longer appeared to be a realistic risk—he had now entered a “geriatric situation”—Sacks could finally confess that he craved it. “I keep being stabbed by love,” he wrote in his journal. “A look. A glance. An expression. A posture.” He guessed that he had at least five, possibly ten, more years to live. “I want to, I want to ••• I dare not say. At least not in writing.”In 2008, Sacks had lunch with Bill Hayes, a forty-seven-year-old writer from San Francisco who was visiting New York. Hayes had never considered Sacks’s sexuality, but, as soon as they began talking, he thought, “Oh, my God, he’s gay,” he told me. They lingered at the table for much of the afternoon, connecting over their insomnia, among other subjects. After the meal, Sacks wrote Hayes a letter (which he never sent) explaining that relationships had been “a ‘forbidden’ area for me—although I am entirely sympathetic to (indeed wistful and perhaps envious about) other people’s relationships.”A year later, Hayes, whose partner of seventeen years had died of a heart attack, moved to New York. He and Sacks began spending time together. At Sacks’s recommendation, Hayes started keeping a journal, too. He often wrote down his exchanges with Sacks, some of which he later published in a memoir, “Insomniac City.”“It’s really a question of mutuality, isn’t it?” Sacks asked him, two weeks after they had declared their feelings for each other.“Love?” Hayes responded. “Are you talking about love?”“Yes,” Sacks replied.Sacks began taking Hayes to dinner parties, although he introduced him as “my friend Billy.” He did not allow physical affection in public. “Sometimes this issue of not b...