“Sometimes I dream about the one who got away. I don’t remember his name and I wish I did because that’s important, but I remember his apartment and his art. He slept on a futon in the living room and had wrapped the small bedroom in plastic sheeting where he made large unstretched canvases into abstract Hustler centrefolds made of black and white exterior oil paint. We sat for days and nights together talking about art and writing and broken hearts and terrible, no-good, bad decisions we made and all I wanted to do was fuck him better but that seemed like an even worse decision, so I didn’t. He was beautiful and damaged and wanted to be loved more than anyone I’d ever met.
I wanted to kiss him on the mouth but I was afraid that I would never stop and I would never leave and I was afraid that his obsession with abstract soft-porn centrefolds could mean he harboured something dangerous or degrading that I couldn’t see or touch. He concealed a darkness I was afraid that I would fall into and never return from.”