Did I want to be like him? Did I want to be him? Or did I just want tohave him? Or are “being” and “having” thoroughly inaccurate verbs in thetwisted skein of desire, where having someone’s body to touch and beingthat someone we’re longing to touch are one and the same, just oppositebanks on a river that passes from us to them, back to us and over to themagain in this perpetual circuit where the chambers of the heart, like thetrapdoors of desire, and the wormholes of time, and the false-bottomeddrawer we call identity share a beguiling logic according to which theshortest distance between real life and the life unlived, between who we areand what we want, is a twisted staircase designed with the impish cruelty ofM. C. Escher. When had they separated us, you and me, Oliver?

There is a law somewhere that says that when one person is thoroughlysmitten with the other, the other must unavoidably be smitten as well. Amorch’a null’amato amar perdona.

I always tried to keep him within my field of vision. I never let him driftaway from me except when he wasn’t with me. And when he wasn’t withme, I didn’t much care what he did so long as he remained the exact sameperson with others as he was with me. Don’t let him be someone else whenhe’s away. Don’t let him be someone I’ve never seen before. Don’t let himhave a life other than the life I know he has with us, with me