For me a current lover has always been like whatever current book I'm writing - an obsessive project orienting all my thoughts. - Edmund White

He’d had a few sordid gay experiences. He’d wrestled with an obese neighbour boy in Clermont-Ferrand when he was fourteen and last year had been approached in the Clermont-Ferrand train station loo by an obscene old man who’d removed his dentures, wagged his tongue, and pointed to his open, pulsing mouth.

A middle-aged man who’s probably down to jerking off every other day. A weary man of forty who’s already seen everything come around twice, who let me fuck him that once in a hole where whole armies of men have doubtless passed.

Everything I touched or did spoke to me of sadness. Each article of clothing — shirt, tie, jacket — felt cut out of different bolts of sadness, each a peculiar weave and shape and hang of sadness, as though sadness came in lots of styles.