A deserted street, the streetlights casting angels and demons around us. He stopped abruptly and faced me, cupped his hands around my face, whispered a question into the night. The smile didn't quite reach my eyes, my thoughts on a different smile, different eyes, different teeth. I said yes, but my thoughts blared a warning, something is off.

I won't lie and say there aren't brilliant moments when the very fabric of us is threaded around the world we create, are creating. Moments when your eyes laugh and you find life interesting again. Moments when you forget yourself and become the little kid hidden deep inside you somewhere. Moments when you catch me off guard in a moment of vulnerable openness and respond in such an instinctive, natural way that it's hard to think anything is really wrong with us.

I must publish a book, a novel and I must become an acclaimed author. Just so that a book about me can later be published (once I'm dead, of course), explaining this part of my life. How would it be described and would any of it be of any real importance when faced with the entire landscape of my life. Maybe this guy I'm dating would be just another dude I dated in the story of my life. Just another dude. And that makes me smile and take things with a certain grain of levity and rapid assurance. It somehow makes me feel better about everything. Every story has a beginning and an ending and that is assuring.