Maybe the Moon

was clearly the older man.
    Ned was no fading twinkie, though, when I knew him; he wore his age with an easy, shambling grace that was completely out of sync with the desperate pretenses of most people in this town. He and Jeff never lived together—Ned had a tiny cubbyhole nextto his nursery in Los Feliz—but they borrowed each other’s lives with the offhanded efficiency of brothers who could wear the same clothes.
    Maybe there’s a pattern here, after all, some unwritten law of gay genealogy that compelled Jeff to pass the torch to a younger man, just as his lover had done, and his lover’s lover before that. Whatever the reason, I’m glad he finally got laid. Jeff suffered for a long time after Ned died and deserves to be happy again. I’m not at all sure this is true love, but it’s a start, at least. I was beginning to think it wasn’t possible, that Jeff would bury himself so completely in the navel-gazing of his writing that he’d lose the knack for intimacy with another person.

    After lunch. The guys have come and gone again. They invited me to join them on a drive, but I decided to stay here with my journal, basking in my solitude and the delicious oddness of this place. Just before they took off, Callum realized he’d left his sunglasses by the pool and raced down to retrieve them, giving me and Jeff the moment I’d been waiting for.
    “I’m so fucking proud of myself,” I said.
    “Yeah…well…” He gave me an embarrassed smirk.
    “You look good together. I knew you would.”
    He stood at the mirror and ran a comb through his remaining strands of hair. There was something so tentative and teenagery about this gesture that I couldn’t help but be moved.
    “So what’s the deal?” I asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “With Callum. He knows I know, doesn’t he?”
    “Know what?”
    “That he’s a homo, Jeff.”
    He looked vaguely annoyed. “Of course.”
    “He doesn’t act like it.”
    “Well…”
    “He knows I’m cool, doesn’t he?”
    “Sure.”
    “Well, tell him to lighten up. Tell him I’m the biggest fag hag this side of Susan Sarandon.”
    “Tell him yourself.”
    “Well, I would, but…he seems like he’d take that as an invasion or something.”
    “You think so?”
    “Yeah. I do.”
    “I hadn’t really noticed it.”
    “You hadn’t?”
    “He’s just young,” he said, laying down the comb.
    If I’m not mistaken, it was I who first suggested this to Jeff, and not that long ago, either. That he’d loosened his moral requirements for a bed partner so drastically in such a short time could only mean one thing: Jeff’s poor little overworked politics had been no match at all for a great piece of ass. I gave him a long, hard look with a Mona Lisa smile.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “I just figured something out.”
    “What?”
    “Why you weren’t wearing your nipple ring at the pool.”
    “What?” He frowned and looked away, picking up the comb again.
    “He asked you to take it off, didn’t he? It was too gay for him.”
    “Oh, yeah, right.”
    “This is getting serious.”
    “Cadence…”
    “Is this a permanent arrangement, or did you put it back on?”
    “In the first place, nipple rings aren’t just a gay thing anymore.”
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “Yeah. Axl Rose has one, and he’s a homophobic pig.”
    “Oh, well, in that case…”
    “In the second place…”
    He didn’t get to finish the thought, because Callum came bursting through the door, looking sleek and cryptic behind hisshades. Seeing Jeff turn scarlet on the spot, I showed mercy and shooed them both out the door without further ado. I knew too much about what was driving Jeff to rag him any further.
    Like I’ve always said, love wouldn’t be blind if the braille weren’t so damned much fun.

11
    I HAVEN’T WRITTEN FOR WEEKS . I’ VE BEEN STRICKEN WITH WHAT Mom used to call “the mauves”—something vaguer than the blues but just as debilitating. If I knew what the problem was, I could fix it, or at least bitch about it, but I can’t nail down my emotions long enough to give them names. I feel empty and adrift, I guess, devoid of purpose. The simplest rituals of existence, like shaving my legs or replacing the trash can liner, leave me racked with the futility of it all. I long for serendipity, but there is simply none to be had. And that hateful, familiar voice in the back of my head reminds me that I’ve probably already done all I was meant to do—and ten years