A woman goes about certain rituals of sex with her second husband, sharing the bed with the ghosts of her sexual past. A beautiful young art student embarks on an affair with a much older, married, famous artist. A middle-aged woman struggles with the decline of her mother, once glamorous and still commanding; their fraught relationship causes unexpected feelings, both shaming and brutal. A man finds that his father has died while in the midst of extra-marital sex and wonders what he should do with the body. And a boy sits in his Calculus class, fantasizing about a schoolmate's breasts and worrying about his father lying in hospital, as outside his classroom window the Twin Towers begin to fall.

In this stunning, taboo-breaking debut, Arlene Heyman, a practicing psychiatrist, gives us what really goes on in people's minds, relationships, and beds. Raw, tender, funny, truthful and often shocking, Scary Old Sex is a fierce exploration of the chaos and beauty of life.

Arlene Heyman is the recipient of Woodrow Wilson, Fulbright, Rockefeller, and Robert Wood Johnson fellowships. She published in the New American Review and other journals, won Epoch magazine's novella contest, and has been listed twice in the honor rolls of The Best American Short Stories. Heyman is a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst practicing in New York City, where she lives with her husband. She is currently at work on a novel.