Tonight before venturing out I wait till magic time is over, until the failing light drains away the colors from the city, colors I know are there but cannot see. Then I enter the nightscape.
This evening Polk Street is the same yet different, crawling with cops, patrol cars parked on every block. No dealers are out, few street people. The human flotsam has retreated to the alleys of the Tenderloin. With the law so visible the habitués deem the Gulch unsafe.
At the corner of Polk and Bush, I pause to examine a poster stapled to a power pole. It's my portrait of Tim, beautiful and bare-chested, the city gleaming behind. The image is mine, but the light values are not—the contrast has been pushed. Tim's skin has gone swarthy, making him appear a sunburnt soldier rather than an androgynous ephebe.
The caption below is straightforward enough:
TIMOTHY LOVESY (A.K.A. "RAIN") ') WAS FOUND MURDERED THURSDAY NIGHT, HIS BODY LEFT IN A DUMPSTER ON WILLOW ALLEY. TIMOTHY FREQUENTED THE POLK GULCH AREA. ANYONE WITH INFORMATION REGARDING THIS VICTIM'S DEATH AND/OR RECENT CONTACTS IS ASKED TO NOTIFY DETECTIVES SHANLEY AND/OR LENTZ, 270-7111. ANONYMITY GUARANTEED.
I stand back, take a shot of the poster. Suddenly I feel a presence behind.
"Not bad, huh?"
I turn. It's Hilly, wearing dark slacks and a black leather blouson jacket much like mine.
"Sorry, forgot to give you photo credit," she says.
I smile, ask if she and Shanley have gotten any calls.
She shakes her head. "We've only had these up since five. Took all afternoon to get them made." She grins. "The mills of the gods grind slowly at S.F.P.D."
"You haven't found the rest of him?"
Again she shakes her head. "I promised I'd call when we do. I meant it."
I turn from her, peer south down Polk. Something in her gaze upsets me. Also, I don't want her to see my eyes.
"Shanley told me Tim's studio was messed."
"Yeah, like the shit hit the fan."
"Tim was neat. He didn't have much stuff."
"Whatever he had was tossed. Futon and bedroll slit, goose down churning in the air."
"Money?"
"If there was, it's long gone now."
I turn back to her. "What do you think about the mutilation?"
Her eyes are steady on mine. "It's s a goddamn shame."
"Ever seen anything like it?"
"No, but Shanley has. I've only been in Homicide since January. Before that worked sex crimes seven years."
"Isn't this a sex crime, Hilly?"
"Don't know that yet."
I understand what she's saying, that without Tim's torso they can't be sure.
"We're having a little problem," she says. "We need information, that's why we put up posters. But soon as we put them up people rip them down. Doesn't help the cause."
I'm not surprised. Posters are bad for business. Life goes on; there're livings to be made.
"Is that why so many cops are around?"
"They're more like, you know, a presence."
"Here today, gone tomorrow?"
She shrugs. "There's a great big city to patrol."
"And who cares about a murdered hustler, right?"
She stares at me, offended. "You don't think we care?"
"I'm keeping an open mind."
"Got any suggestions?"
"Me?"
"Sure, why not?"
Our eyes meet. Is she coming on to me? I check her ring finger for a wedding band. "Here's s one suggestion—get the uniforms off the street. You want to cover the Gulch, do it in plainclothes, otherwise none of the hustlers'll work and none of the johns'll come around."
"Good idea. Thanks." She looks at me. "Do you live with someone . . . have a boyfriend?"
"Not at the moment, no. "
We walk a block in silence. There's traffic but not the cruising kind. I tell her a little about my project. I don't mention the hundreds of shots I've taken of johns.
"I care about people," she says. I wait for the other shoe to drop. "I didn't know this kid, so I can't care about him as much as you. But I do care, I want you to know that." She stops, peers into my eyes, shows me her sincerity. "Shanley and me—we've got a heavy caseload, but I'm not letting this one go. We won't solve it picking up fibers and prints. The only way's with faces, descriptions we can tie to names. We need informants with good information. Otherwise. . ." She shrugs.
"I understand."
She smiles slightly. "I'm a lesbian. Better you hear it from me than hear it around."
"That's fine."
"Anonymous consensual sex doesn't bother me. As for sex for money—seems like a reasonable exchange. But hurting and killing because it gets somebody off—no, Kay, this dyke won't stand for that." She relaxes. "I saw your book last year, liked it, even stopped by the gallery to see the originals. Beaten-up women—in Sex Crimes they were my stock-in-trade. Took Polaroids of them all the time. Not like your stuff. In mine they looked"—she shakes her head—"kinda wretched. The way they looked in yours even with the bruises and black eyes, I don't know—they seemed like movie stars almost. Which got me thinking." She smiles broadly. "Enough flattery for tonight?"
"Actually," I tell her, "I can never get enough."
She laughs. "Don't know what your angle is on this hustling scene, but you've got contacts here." I nod. "Maybe you'll pick something up."
"I don't know," I tell her. "I'll check around."
She squeezes my hand. "Thanks !" She turns, strides off.
I wander down to O'Farrell, then over to Larkin. Some of the Gulch action has moved here. I see several female streetwalkers but no hustlers. I recognize Silky, a mid-thirties black woman with huge lips, cornrows and a swagger.
I approach. "Where're the guys?"
She gives a twirl with her thumb. "Freaked out tonight, child. Try Van Ness."
I take Myrtle Alley over to Van Ness, walking quickly, spooked by the lack of people lingering against the walls. Van Ness, an avenue with a center strip, doubles here as U.S. 101, a major route that cuts through the city.
At the corner I look both ways. Cars and trucks speed by, the sidewalks are deserted. I start toward Civic Center, then catch a glimpse of a familiar form turning into Olive. I pick up my pace, follow him into the alley.
"Knob!"
It's him, I'm sure, though he speeds up, keeps his head down and doesn't turn.
"It's me, Bug!" I yell after him, then start to run. He sidesteps into the portal of a garage. When I reach him, I'm out of breath.
"Fuck you want?" he demands. His expression is surly.
"Tim and me were tight. What d'you know?"
"Fuck ask me?"
"You know the Gulch, Knob. Cops think the killer's a john."
He sniffs, then makes a gesture as if to push me back.
He wants to intimidate me. I hold my ground. He's four inches taller and eighty pounds heavier; he could knock me over with a swat. In his eyes I see the calculation of a ferret.
"What's the problem?"' I ask.
"Don't like cops."
"I'm not a cop."
"So you say."
We glare at one another. "I'm a photographer, Knob. Ever seen me without a camera?"
"Taking pictures—that's what cops do."
"Why?"
"Catch people."
"What kind of people?"
"People with stuff to hide."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Married guys, like that. Who they are, where they live."
"Like Baldy from last night?"
"Who?"
I find his dumb act pathetic. "The bald guy in the Mercedes," I explain. "The one you were talking to, the one who wanted chicken and wouldn't close."
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"Guy flaunts a car like that, he's asking to be noticed. Not that difficult to check out a license plate."
Knob narrows his eyes. "Fuck you want?"
"I want to know who's violent, who could've done this to Tim. I'm not a cop, but I'm going to start working with them if his friends here don't cooperate."
"I don't know nothin'."
I soften my tone: "You liked him. I know you did."
I lie: "And he liked you."
Knob considers that. He's not big on human sentiment. I press him a little more.
"You're slinking around now because you're scared. And you're right. What they did to Tim, they could do to you, to anyone."
"Who says it's a 'they'?"
For the first time he surprises me. "Okay, suppose it's one guy—does that make any difference?"
"What do you mean?"
"Built-in risk, isn't it? Risk of the trade. Stop one there's always another, right?" I pause. "Or were you—" Suddenly I think I understand what's on his mind. "You're not planning on taking care of this yourself?"
He snorts, pushes me. This time I yield; the push is real, not a gesture as before.
"Tell me?" I plead as I stumble back.
"Outta my way," he says roughly. He shoves me again hard. I fall to the pavement. He walks away.
My knees are scraped. They smart as they rub against my jeans. If I hadn't needed to protect my camera I'd have used my hands to break the fall. My knees can take it; my Contax can't.
This is the first time I've been hit since coming to the Gulch. I'm more shocked than hurt. Now the security I've felt here gives way to apprehension. It's been my illusion, I realize, that this place has grace. Yes, I've witnessed moments of unexpected gentleness, but basically, I know, the Gulch is a jungle.
I pick myself up. Knob's gone. At least he didn't kick me, then stand around and gloat. I remember a book by a gonzo journalist who hung out with a motorcycle gang. He thought he'd become one of them. The day they turned on him and stomped him he learned he wasn't.
Suddenly I feel a need to take pictures. But what is there to shoot? I stride back to Polk, start blasting away at the cops. Then I stop. These shots won't get me anywhere. If Tim is to be the subject of Exposures, I should capture the grief of his friends.
I go into Walgreen's, purchase bandages and disinfectant, then limp my way over to the Hampshire Arms. The hotel, now seedy, has seen better days. Squares of the marble lobby floor are broken and the rough stucco walls are dark with soot. I approach the desk. A young man with bad skin is reading a comic book. He doesn't look up.
"Doreen in?"
He scratches a pimple. "Who?"
"Doreen. . . . of Alyson and Doreen."
"Room three-fourteen."
I find the house phone, call upstairs.
They're both in, too brokenhearted, Doreen tells me, to play the street.
"Can I come up?"
"Sure," she says, slurring her words. "Just give us a couple minutes to straighten the joint."
I dress my wounded knees in the lobby, then take the elevator to three. I think it's more like straighten themselves, since, when Doreen opens the door; I find the joint in its usual disarray. The gals are wearing unisex underwear, not the frilly kind I'd expect.
Doreen glances at me, then at herself in the mirror. She isn't wearing makeup and her wig's askew.
"Hell with it!" she says, pulling it off. Her head, I see, is shaved. Her hands shake as she flings the wig across the room. Alyson immediately follows suit. Her head is shaved as well.
"Don't feel all that girlie tonight," Doreen explains, voice a half-octave lower. The floor is cluttered with high-heeled shoes and boots, the air pungent with stale cigarette smoke, cosmetics and gin.
"Night like this you just want to sit home and cry," Alyson says.
The two of them plop down together on the bed. I take a chair, perching atop a pile of wrinkled tutus and lingerie.
"I'm here to take your pictures," I announce.
At first they're against it, don't like the notion of being photographed unmasked. But it doesn't take long to convince them.
"When you show real feelings," I tell them, "dress-up doesn't matter."
For the first few shots they assume mock-feminine poses; then they give it up. As I shoot they continue to drink straight gin, no tonic or vermouth, gulping it down like stevedores. There comes a point when I stop viewing them as she-males and begin to see them as they are: a couple of slim young skinheads who happen to have boobs, getting plastered because a friend's been killed.
"Tell me about bad johns," I ask, framing Doreen against the mess in the closet.
"What'd you wanna know?" she asks.
"How bad does it get?"
Alyson lets out with a hoot. "Dearie, you got no idea!"
"They stink, some of them. You'd think they'd clean up for a date."
"They call you names—'bitch', 'slut,' like that."
"The c-word too. Not that we mind. It's a validation really."
"Then there're the sickies." They glance at one another, click glasses, toss back great gulps.
"Some like to beat up on you. Spanking's all right—but they gotta pay extra. A few'll get carried away. Couple times I've come home with black eyes."
"When that happens what do you do?" I'm shooting now from the floor, framing them against the stained and ragged wallpaper.
"You get out of there, honey. Fast as you can. A john out of control—that can lead to serious injury."
"I had one last spring." Alyson falls back on the bed. "Good-looking, middle-aged, computer-exec type. Married, lived down the peninsula somewhere. We had a few dates. He seemed nice enough. Brought me flowers, talked about earrings. Told me he liked male pussy, that was his kink."
Doreen hands Alyson a lit cigarette. Alyson props herself on an elbow, takes a long drag, then exhales in a stream.
"One night he gets loaded. We're in this motel room on Lombard. Suddenly he starts bashing me around. We're all—us, women!—we're all whores, he says. He hates us, all of us. I feel his rage. I'm scared. I know I gotta get out before he busts me up. I try to calm him. 'Hey, George, it's me, Alyson. I'm a guy, remember. All this is make-believe.' I'm taking a chance; these guys want to forget you're a boy. But I do it anyway, meantime wipe away my makeup and peel off my wig. So there we are, two guys commiserating over what sluts women are, how they ought to be, like—now he's getting really vicious—exterminated, eviscerated! Finally he gets up to take a piss. That's when I make my break. I shake all the way home in the cab. I never saw old Georgie again."
"Probably too scared to show his face," Doreen says. "Guy like that, we pass the word. No one else'll touch him."
"I figure he burned his bridges down in San Jose, that's why he started coming up here. Now he's probably playing in Santa Cruz. Sooner or later he'll break some girl's arm or kill her. Guys like that only get worse. We release something in them. After that . . . well, you know the saying: You can't squeeze the paste back into the tube."
By midnight Doreen and Alyson are dead drunk and I've shot out two thirty-six-frame rolls. I leave them snoring away head to toe on the bed.
On Polk the cops are gone. There's hardly a person on the street. My knees are fine now; bandaged I walk well.
I check the saloons. Most are empty. The Werewolf is closed and so is The Shillelagh.
It's strange to walk here with no one about. It's as if this place has died. Perhaps this will be Tim's memorial —a single night of silence on the Gulch.
I wander up to Jerry's All-Night Pizza, peer in through the window, notice a couple of regulars—Slick, an albino, and a kid named Remo who barely looks thirteen.
I enter, approach. "Seen Crawf?" I ask.
"Hear he left town," Slick says.
I sit. Silence. Have I interrupted a private colloquy? The harsh fluorescent lighting hurts my eyes.
I raise my camera. They tense, then relax as they remember who I am.
"Just a few shots," I promise. "I want to catch the gloom and doom."
Slick stares down at his coffee; Remo sticks out his tongue. Then, after goofing off, he offers me his profile.
"I'm collecting bad-john stories," I tell them, still shooting. "Got any good ones?" That gets them going.
The first tale is strange. Seems there's a doctor who likes to take kids to his office in Pacific Heights, where he subjects them to lengthy physical exams. As he does he whispers degrading things. "Bet a lot of cocks been down here," he says, peering into a boy's throat. "Now bend over and spread those cheeks." The culminating event is a prolonged inspection with a proctoscope.
"Physical part's not so bad," Slick says. "It's the fuckin' humiliation gets you down."
Slick's nineteen with white hair and stubble above his upper lip. He's scrawny, pale, his eyebrows and eyelashes so faint I can barely make them out. I can't read colors but Tim once told me Slick's irises are pink.
At one time or another he and most of his friends have been hired by the doctor, who, after a couple of exams, loses interest and asks for a steer to someone new. Slick affectionately chucks the point of Remo's chin. "Wouldn't send you to him, kid. Not even for a cut."
Remo's got his own story about a black van with blacked-out windows that took him, another young hustler and two teenage girls to a play party high in the hills of Marin. The van pulled straight into a garage, from which they were taken blindfolded to a basement and told to strip. They entertained a group all night, perhaps a half-dozen men and women. They were tickled with feathers, caressed and used, for which they were paid a collective fee of a thousand dollars and deposited terrified back on Fisherman's Wharf at dawn.
There's an exuberance in the boys as they recount these adventures that reminds me a little of Tim—the camaraderie of veterans exchanging war stories at a bar.
"That Marin group's sick, the doctor too, but what about the real bad guys?" I ask.
They're nonplussed. Then little Remo states the obvious: "Go with one of them you don't live to tell the tale."
Sitting on a high stool in my apartment living room peering through my telescope, I feel as though I'm in the crow's nest of a ship. The night is designed for surveillance: vistas long, horizons deep, lamps mere points of light. No blazing walls of sunlight to limit my vision. The night city lies naked to my eye.
I check the Judge's windows, find them dark. . . as are most other residence windows at this hour. I swing the telescope toward the cluster of high-rises downtown; lamps burn in offices for the night cleaning crews.
Swinging northeast, I catch the reflection of the moon on the Bay with the lights of El Cerrito flickering beyond. I observe a small but brilliant glow in the Berkeley Hills, perhaps a house on fire.
I leave my telescope, go into my office, peer out at the Golden Gate Bridge. They say that when people jump from it they nearly always face the city, perhaps because to face west, the Pacific, would be to renounce the worldly causes of their sorrows.
The eighteenth-century British chemist John Dalton was the first scientist to properly describe color blindness, namely his own. In truth he was a dichromatic protanope, meaning his deficiency was a not uncommon inability to distinguish red from green. Dalton's belief, that all color blindness was like his, has long been disproved. But convinced of his theory that the fluid in his eyes was tinted blue and thus absorbed red light, he willed one of his eyes to Cambridge University, directing that it be examined after his death.
It was, in 1844, by his friend and doctor, Joseph Ransome, who even peered through it, finding the liquid transparent and colorless. To this day the pickled eye remains at Cambridge; Dalton's DNA was extracted from it several years ago. But it's the intimacy of the act, Ransome actually using his close friend's eye as a lens, that comes back to me with poignant force as I pull out the nude photographs of Tim I took just three weeks ago.
Perhaps these pictures of his naked body will tell me something, help me solve the enigma of his death. That, at least, is my hope as I begin to study them, meditating over the vulnerability of his flesh.
I hadn't planned on shooting nudes, though in retrospect, it seems a natural outgrowth of our work. Our Angel Island session, for instance, when Tim took off his shirt to pose for the portrait now on the posters being ripped off lampposts on the Gulch. There's something about bare skin that lends intimacy to a photograph, which is probably why one famous photographer is alleged to be so adamant that her subjects strip. Nakedness, after all, is the ultimate physical secret. In our time is there a commodity more precious than celebrity skin?
I was, I confess, aroused on Angel Island, whether by Tim, his body, the sweetness of the air, the softness of the lambent light or, most likely, the whole gestalt. It was a balmy windless autumn day, the waters of the Bay were still, gulls circled and the shoreline grasses were lustrous as pewter.
I often become aroused when work goes well. I love photography, the sense of capture, the sureness that possesses me when I'm getting at something deep. But on that day the arousal was especially intense. I remember wanting to grasp hold of Tim, roll with him in the high grass just above the island shore. I remember feeling certain he noticed my excitement, his only comment on it being a smile. It was as if he acknowledged my condition but, being the object of desire, left it to me to make the initial move. . . which, on account of pride, I did not do.
A few days later, when I showed him the Angel Island proofs, he was thrilled.
"This is how I want to look!"
"The camera doesn't lie."
"I wish I could always be so beautiful, Kay."
"Perhaps you are," I said.
He softly shook his head. "Some days are better than others." He brightened. "Would you shoot me nude? I'd like to see myself naked through your eyes, beautiful lying eyes."
I took it that he was suggesting that if the camera doesn't lie, surely the photographer does. In the face of such a challenge how could I resist?
We executed the nudes on a Sunday in my living room, beginning midmorning, working till late that afternoon. I loaded a second camera with color film, a concession to his wish for color prints. Normally I refuse to shoot color. What's the point since I can't see the hues? But no request of Tim's could be denied. I would shoot with one camera for him, with the other for myself.
I was nervous about the session, looking forward to it too. Since I'd always felt that Tim was holding something back, a nude session could be a way to break through his reserve.
Starting back in art school, I've shot numerous nudes in my career. Always as a session begins I'm filled with a sense of moral responsibility. This results from my feeling that with my camera I'm all-powerful, while my subject, of whatever gender, is defenseless before my gaze.
I felt this way waiting for Tim, and when he arrived felt his anxiety as well. Yes, he had asked for this, but he couldn't help but feel nervous too.
I was dressed skimpily, in sleeveless jersey and nylon shorts. My feet were bare. I'd turned the living room into a studio, drawn the shades, set up lights, spread a thick black velour curtain down one wall and across the floor. By so doing I'd made a conscious decision to shoot Tim in limbo against deep black. I didn't want to produce Avedon-style pictures in which he'd appear pinned against stark white walls. Rather I was after pictures that would be both luminous and romantic, emphasizing his beauty, imbuing him with glamour.
I started to shoot even as he undressed, since his manner struck me as extremely sensual. When he was naked, I discovered no surprises. Everything was as I'd imagined.
For the first rolls I had him pose against the wall, then lie down while I climbed a ladder and shot him from above. As I focused in on him I became interested in details: the way his arms met his torso, the curve of his ass, his nipples, armpits, genitals, the fuzz of hair on his chest, the musculature of his back when he lay down and extended his arms above his head. He enjoyed posing, rolling around, stretching and twisting, creating abstract forms. He did things with his body that, as I examine the proofs, seem nearly impossible unless he'd been trained as a contortionist.
I'm looking at a shot in which he's standing on his hands. His body, in profile, fills the frame. His legs curl back over him so his feet extend further forward than his head. His face though concentrated is nearly expressionless, as if to show he feels no strain.
In another shot he's leaping, arms up like a volleyball player about to execute a smash. His entire musculature is exposed, his cock has flopped up, his hard abdomen is tautly etched. At the sight of such beauty ruined I start to sob.
As the session continued, I remember now, a glaze of perspiration rose to coat his skin. He began to gleam as if he were oiled, and a fragrance, musky and saline, rose from him, the sweet aroma of his sweat. It wafted to me as I moved about, filling my nostrils, snaking deep into my lungs.
Such intimacy!
It occurs to me now that in a very special way we were making love that day, he the model, I the photographer, synchronized, engaged in an elaborate courtship dance. We didn't speak, rather moved slowly in relation to one another, he posing, seeming to know what I wanted, I shooting, picking up on his signals. Yes! Kiss me here! Now over here! his body seemed to say, and the clicks of my shutter were like licks against his flesh.
By the end, I recall, I was sweating myself, my shirt glued to my nipples and back. I remember envying him the freedom of his nudity while wishing I could tear off my own scanty clothes. The truth, of course, is that I wished he would do the tearing.
There came a moment when I actually thought that could happen. We were both poised for it, I'm sure. But the spell was broken when a slight trembling shook the building. Then it was too late, the moment dissolved and the energy lost was not regained. That night on TV a reporter announced that a mild quake of Richter magnitude 3.2 had struck the city.
We were finished. Tim pulled on his jeans; then we lay together on the velour, exhausted from eight hours of work.
He asked how I thought the session had gone.
"I'll know when I see the proofs," I said.
"Your gut feeling?"
"Great!''
"Can we do it again?"
"Sure, but not for a while. Too soon and we'll repeat ourselves."
He nodded. There was at least half a minute of silence, then he told me he had a secret wish.
"I've always wanted to be photographed a certain way," he said, "holding a special pose."
I waited for him to explain. He was nervous, I could see, perhaps even ashamed.
"Tell me," I urged.
He stared at the ceiling. He didn't want me to see his eyes.
"Saint Sebastian," he murmured in a confessional whisper. "You know who I mean?"
"The saint tied to the tree with arrows in his chest."
"Stomach too."
"You want to pose like that?"
He nodded, then rolled onto his side.
I was familiar with the eroticization of the Saint Sebastian image in the work of the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima and the British filmmaker Derek Jarman. "Yes, we could set that up," I told him, "perhaps in a quiet corner of Golden Gate Park. Tie you to a tree beneath a shaft of sunlight, then glue the arrows on." I let my hand graze his bare stomach. "Do you identify with martyrdom, Tim?"
While he thought about that I stood and began to unload my cameras.
"Guess so," he said softly, "since it turns me on."
I glanced at him. "Then we'll do it," I promised, "and you'll find out if it's the image that excites you, or playing the part."
I took the rolls to my darkroom. When I returned he was fully dressed. He helped me dismantle my lights, roll up the velour, put my living room back in order; then I changed and we walked down to North Beach for pizza.
Looking at the nudes now, I see decent enough studies but nothing that strikes me as powerful. That's always the problem when you work a well-mined field, and God knows, the human nude, male and female, is well mined. Still, in these shots I see Tim's body whole, the body with which he made his living.
All those years when I was afraid of Polk Gulch, avoided it and, when obliged to cross it, strode through it as quickly as I could, it wasn't the atmosphere, buildings or even the people that frightened me, it was what they did.
What kind of people, I'd ask myself, rent out their bodies to strangers? And who are these strangers who feel they have the right to rent the body of a person they don't care about or even know? It was to answer these questions, give face to these people, that I started to explore with my camera.
When I started I had no idea how I'd feel toward them, whether I'd like them or despise them. All I knew was that I wanted to expand something within myself, overcome my fear, enlarge my sympathy for those who are reviled.
Tim more than anyone showed me the way. Through him I learned to see hustlers as fragile beings with the same yearnings as myself. I also came to understand that their bartering of their bodies was in principle not so different from the transactions between athletes and their fans. In the latter case the ticket holder has bought permission to gaze, in the former he has paid to touch.
I pick up a photograph in which Tim is facing away, posed like a Greek sculpture of a youth. With his head turned his body becomes idealized, a body beautiful—open, accessible, voluptuous. Again I feel desire for him, and as I do, am filled with regret. So many things held me back—fear of disease, ruining our friendship, being inept with such an experienced lover. Fear most of all of letting myself go.
These, of course, are selfish thoughts, considering the terrible wounds inflicted upon him. Perhaps if we had made it, everything would have been different. He would have given up his trade, he would have lived.