Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

me down. So for a week, I didn’t pursue it. Which I thought was appropriate, in a way: You can’t get much more testosterone-deprived than having your wife forbid you from taking testosterone supplements.

But in the end, I defied my wife, just to see what a higher testosterone level can do. I start popping 50 mg of the chalky-white pill every day.

The blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote a story in The New York Times Magazine several years ago about his experience of injecting synthetic testosterone to counteract the effects of HIV. For him, it was like a magic potion that transformed him into a Nietzschean Übermensch. His energy, confidence, and libido exploded.

My transformation is more subtle. If Sullivan’s testosterone shots were a double espresso, my pills were a mild chamomile tea. Since I began taking them two weeks ago, I do feel slightly more energetic. My three miles on the treadmill at the gym seem easier. I don’t get the postlunch hunger for a nap.

And yes, my libido is higher. The sexual thoughts bubble up even more relentlessly than usual. I try to read Esquire, since it’s my job and all, and I get sidetracked by a photo of a Barcelonan model named Claudia Bassols. She seems interesting. She was in a film with Jean-Claude Van Damme and has been a judge on Iron Chef. I should probably check out her website, as an Esquire employee. Thus commences ten minutes of clicking through her photos.

I’m not allowed to give details of Julie’s and my sex life, but I’ll say this: We are definitely ahead of the Japanese average.

Am I more aggressive? Well, the other day, I’m on line at the subway station to buy a Metrocard. There are three Metrocard machines, but a single line that feeds into all three. Everyone’s taking their turn. It’s civilized.

Then this guy in a charcoal suit walks right up to the machine on the left, cutting all eleven of us on line.

“Excuse me,” I say. “There’s a line here.”

“The line’s only for those two machines,” he says, pointing to the other two.

“Really?” I say. “You’re really going to cut all these people?”

He pecks away at the keypad. I’m not just annoyed, I’m furious. What a selfish liar.

“I can’t believe what an asshole you are. I mean, I hear about people like you, but I rarely see it in person.”

I’m not the confrontational type, so my words are startling even to me. The other people on the line look at me with what seems like a mix of gratitude, embarrassment, and nervousness.

The line-cutter makes some response, but I can’t hear it, perhaps because the blood is pumping in my ears. Plus my hands are shaking. That can’t be good for me.

I’m guessing the T had something to do with my uncharacteristic rage. There’s clear scientific data that links testosterone and aggressive behavior. But, of course, I never underestimate the placebo effect. Especially when it comes to my slightly higher energy and confidence. It turns out the evidence linking those to testosterone is flimsier.

A few weeks later, I take another testosterone test. When the e-mail with the results pops up in my in-box, I don’t want to click it. What if I’m lower? But I man up and open the document. Yes! Four hundred and sixty-five. I’m higher, and in the normal range. I am officially masculine. After two months of pill-popping, my testosterone rose to 650, which, I told Julie, is somewhere between lumberjacks and Italian prime ministers.

But it occurs to me, maybe this is the worst time in history to be upping my testosterone. As Hanna Rosin points out in The Atlantic, perhaps modern society is better suited to women. “For the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce tipped toward women, who now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs . . . The attributes that are most valuable today—social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus—are, at a minimum, not predominantly male. In fact, the opposite may be true.”

So maybe I should be taking estrogen supplements instead. In fact, I recently read a study that women’s language skills are at a peak when they are ovulating and the estrogen levels are highest. So maybe estrogen injections would make me a better writer.

For now, I’m going to get off the Clomid. In part, because I’m sick of checking my temples to see if I’m getting balder.

Checkup: Month 21

My grandfather’s back in the hospital, this time because he’s having trouble breathing. I take a cab up to visit him.

“Oh, the hospital,” says the driver, when I told him the address. “Hey, what’s the difference between a doctor and God?”

“I dunno.”

“God doesn’t pretend he’s a doctor.”

What is it with taxi drivers and doctor jokes? I smile politely. I’m not the best audience for Borscht Belt comedy right now.

I board the elevators filled with low-talking visitors and get out on the ninth floor. I make a right at the flower display, and a left at the end of the hall, and end up in room 134.

There’s my grandfather. He’s lying on his right side, propped up by three pillows. He’s got a white-and-blue hospital gown, an oxygen tube under his nose, and eyebrows as bushy as ever.

His mouth is open in an oval shape and his lips seem to have all but disappeared.

“Look who’s here!” says his daughter Jane. She’s slept here the night before in her blue tracksuit. “All these visitors are better for you than antibiotics!”

“Hi, grumpy Grampa,” I say. He breathes heavily and shallowly and looks at me through half-lidded eyes. He lifts his hand about half an inch off the bed—it seems so small and limp now, almost ladylike—and I take it in mine. He squeezes my fingers. Or maybe that was my imagination. I can’t tell.

Jane is holding a stick with a moist cubic green sponge on the end, and is dabbing it around his mouth to keep him moist. She leans over and kisses