In case they ever find me murdered, let me set a few things straight.  I never loved anyone, I don't think.  I've said that I loved, proclaimed it like a drunk on the roof at dawn, but who can say for sure?  I've tried to love—Lord, I've tried—but I think I have always failed.  And I'm pretty sure I never hated anyone.  There's a purgatory between the two and I have a real cozy little domicile set up there, like a homeless home under a bridge. 

I never worked hard at anything.  I think I did by accident once or twice, and it was an amazing experience, kinda like finding yourself skiing on a black diamond trail when you really didn't mean to go there.  It's one of those trails so steep you can reach out and touch it on one side, while on the other side it drops down and out of sight, the next visible thing the ski lodge 1200 feet below.  And you actually make it down, breathless but OK, having cut-off death at each curve, and sliced at the very edge of calamity.  I could never imagine a whole life lived like that.  Too much, too much. 

It's not that too much is a bad thing; most times too much is not enough.  The reason I have lived a life blasé is not because the intensity would overwhelm, but simply because my imagination failed. 

And intimacy for me has always been a glance away.  I mean that both ways; intimacy was always as close as a glance, but always as impossible to hold as a steady gaze.  Intimacy for me and you never went beyond the meeting, really; our intimacy was the moment when your eyes caught mine, and I, as always, glanced away. 

If someone breaks down my door and shoots me through the heart, I want you to know that 'the cab driver' does not drive a cab, he hasn't for years.  It's just a nickname for Bobby, the blonde who fucks me.  It's always been an unconventional passion; spatters of boiling water, and a mortal risk twice a week.  And when it's over, it seems easy as pie.  It's like I went to another planet, and lived an entire life, then came back again five minutes later.  Lately, I don't let him in.  Huh...  That's rare, me turning it down.  I don't think I've ever turned it down before. 

No, wait, I do remember.  I did turn it down before, once. 

His name was also Bobby.  He had the virus before I did, and I knew it.  But his cock was legendary, and I had to have that, too.  Bobby the waiter.  French Bobby.  And, since 1998, dead Bobby.  He said he got arrested with David Brudnoy in Florida once—at least twenty years ago, now.  It was a traffic stop, some drugs were found.  The way Bobby told it, as soon as he saw that they were going to be arrested he ran.  David got cuffed, and apparently never ratted.  Of course, it's possible that he didn't know Bobby's name, only the size of his cock.  But we will afford nobility to the dead, and always the benefit of a doubt.  David Brudnoy probably knew both. 

As I was saying, I did turn it down once before.  Me and Bobby had been dating, kinda, for a couple weeks, or a couple months.  It was timeless, but it wasn't long.  On one of the mornings we woke together, he had wanted to pound me hard before I was ready; and I needed it slow for a bit.  It was a 'dis-synchrony' of needs, and I had him stop.  That event has always symbolized for me our eventual separation, though it had nothing to do with it, really.  I just wasn't committed enough to make it work.  If then, in the early 90's, I could see us from where I am now, I'd have done whatever it took to keep him.  We would have worked out the needs, trivialities really.  I would have stayed with him, maybe I would have 'married' him before it was legal; after all, I was 'illegitimately' loving him already.  I might have held him when he died several years later.  Maybe I could have been a friend to his mother, and she, a mother-in-love to me.  Who knows, I could have been the one for him.  I dread to think that maybe I was the one, and failed. 

What I turned down was not just a hard fuck by a giant cock; I turned down love.  Gay men in America have an illusion of size, but it is not inconsistent with the truth; what you give me is not always a massive cock, but it is always overwhelmingly enormous.  It's just that we pretend only the hard flesh is real, and none of the rest. 

There's yet a third Bobby, who the cops, in their finesse-less way, will probably suspect of my homicide, if it ever happens.  But I want you to know that he didn't do it.  He's the original Bobby, the one who never drove a cab, never waited tables.  They'll suspect him because he's been violent in the past.  They hate him.  But he loves me.  It hangs them up to see someone like him; free, unbowed, a man for all seasons.  Is that a blessing?  That there is one person in this life in whom I have absolute faith?  I suppose it is. 

I loved Bobby first, before he discovered who I was.  I have a trolling heart like that, it searches for another worthy of the pain my heart is capable of feeling.  And I have to say, in choosing him, my heart hit the nail on the head.  I don't think Bobby loved me then, when I met him, and paid him; when he first moved in with me, and I didn't pay him; when he fucked his girlfriend in the livingroom while I was supposedly not listening in the next room; when we fought, and I tried to break down the bathroom door where he fled to escape me; when he joined me in that same bathroom, unexpectedly in the middle of a shower.  I don't think he loved me at first.  But I loved him from the very first second, the boy with the mannish bravado and the tentative need, who offered a preciously guarded tenderness that he has let few touch.  I have been one. 

That's big.  Bigger even than his also-legendary cock, which, by the way, I haven't seen in over a decade.  Keeping that thing hidden, and still keeping a lock-tight grip on my heart...  well, for me that's just huge.  Fucking gigantic. 

Don't mourn my end, no matter how it happens; there's been no tragedies here.  My last word will be, 'Oh,' a single syllable of assent to the inevitable, of regret and bittersweet sorrow, and an anticipatory exclamation—a statement of awe.  Everything is perfect.  If you cry, think then of all the tragedies we chose to ignore, for my spirit will not accept your displaced mourning.  Put it where it belongs.  Weep for the crimes humanity taught us to tolerate, weep for the sins of this world, things which you know in your soul are sins, despite what you are told.  Weep for yourself, despite the cost. 

Afterward, seek pain.  We may feel alive when we feel joy, but we can only be certain that we are alive when we feel pain.  Pain has nothing to recommend it; pain is the one thing we seek always to avoid; and we pretend that the absence of pain is a better place to be.  But pain is the pavement, and we can only be sure of our progress when we touch it.  You don't need to slam yourself against it—that's all-or-nothing thinking.  Touching lightly is OK.  If you are really moving, really making progress, really screaming along, then just the lightest touch may cost you a whole finger—or more.  Do not lament this, it is good news.  Way better than if you touched pain and it didn't cost you anything, and you discovered that you are going nowhere, not moving at all.