And on that evening when we grow older still we'll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.

If I could have him like this in my dreams every night of my life, I'd stake my entire life on dreams and be done with the rest.

Whoever said the soul and the body met in the pineal gland was a fool. It's the asshole, stupid.

Besides the fear of ending up with the totally wrong person, the first time between two persons is underscored by two things: desire and awkwardness. The awkwardness of the first time when two individuals touch each other is never lost on the young...or the old.

I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.

All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.

At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end?

There is always going to be a risk in a new love, a difficulty to be overcome, and more so considering all the challenges facing gay love, particularly in an adolescent. The desired other person could turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, could hurt us, could even ruin us. But the risk has to be taken.

As we walked, I began to wonder what the opposite of molting was and why, unlike the body, which sheds everything, the soul cannot let go but compiles and accumulates, growing annual rings around the things it wants and dreams and remembers

No one starts as a self-hater. But rack up all of your mistakes and take a large enough number of wrong turns in life and soon you stop trying to forgive yourself. Everywhere you look you find shame or failure staring back.

Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.