I have a very nice boy friend. He is sweet and silly and self-described as effeminate at times. He tickles and kisses me and we shower together, where we spray each other with water and laugh and kiss and wash each other solemnly. He is smart, and a fantastic writer, his emails and papers are trenchant and funny and almost insolent. His state of rest, his baseline, is sorrow, just like me. We spend a lot of time looking at each other and poking at the things that hurt us, and talking about the things that we read to try to understand (I am prone to desperation, he is more resigned, Christ-like). He understands the way that I am. I speak and he not only listens but understands. I take care of him well. We cook and sleep together. He is mean to me sometimes, blunt in a way that makes me blink, or so I think, until I realize that we can talk to each other in an unmasked way. I am mean, too, sometimes. He might be the only person that knows that. He might be the only person that knows much of anything about me. He has been waiting for me. I know that. I know I’ll probably spend the rest of my life loving him. That I understand.