James, age 42, thinks roller skating is better than sex, and considers his skates his wife and girlfriend.

I've been skating since I was 5. I had the steel clampers, first. Then I got my next pair, which was store-bought, cheap roller derby skates. Then my sister bought me a present: my first, professional, precision skates. I was deliriously happy! I couldn't wait to go skating in them! And I didn't have to: I skated in the house! But my mother didn't care. She was a skater, too. My father would skate, all my sisters went skating, and half their boyfriends, when they were teenagers, worked at the skating rink.

We skated at the skating rink, and sometimes, on the way home, to have fun, my sister and I would skate home, in the street, with our indoor skates on. We would skate up Bedford Avenue, all the way home.

I learned some skating tricks in the club I used to be in. They were called the Blue Gorillas. Believe me, it was nothing like the title. We were a bunch of the nicest young men and young ladies you ever wanted to meet. We were teenagers, but we didn't do anything wrong; all we did was basically go from city, to state, to county, to go skating.

Skating is better than sex! The exhaustion, when you finish, once you really get into skating, it's like when you... well, if you can skate to that point where you find the only thing you can do is flop on the bed, and get a deep, comfortable sleep, you'll understand what it is.

And it's also the glide. The roll. You can push just one time, and just roll. Come on! You walk, you got to keep steppin', but you push with skates on... you stand still and roll.

My girlfriend, she's also a skater. But she also knows that my skates are my wife and my girlfriend. But she's OK with that, 'cause she's got her own husband and boyfriend!