Butterflies and Boners

1.

I’m standing in the lobby of an NYU basement theater. A show’s just let out. Men and women are buzzing in small groups, comparing notes about what they’ve just seen, then dissipating upstairs toward the exit in singles and pairs. I’m alone for the moment. My other half has joined a long line for the powder room, leaving me leaning against a pillar to study the crowd.

I don’t have long to wait before I spy them. Twenty, twenty-five feet away, two men walking side by side as they leave the show. The younger one smiles into the eyes of his boyfriend, listening to something he’s got to say. Neither glances in my direction as they pass. Toward the stairs to the street they stride, perfectly in sync, right foot to right foot, left to left, as they softly converse.

I’m aware I’m staring. I can’t stop.

Just turn your head, I tell myself. Look anywhere else. Close your eyes.

Unable to heed my own advice, I stare without blinking as they climb to the first landing. The younger man still doesn’t look around—yet when he raises his hand and places it on his lover’s back, I feel as if he does so knowing I’m watching. Their display of intimacy has nothing to do with me. I know that. The deliberateness of younger man’s gesture, though, makes me react with a sharp intake of breath, as if I’ve been slapped.

Past my half-century mark, sometimes happiness seems rationed. The moments are doled out in microdoses, in the tickle of joy from music I love, in the glow of conversation with someone I admire, in the sharp anticipatory pang before a good meal. Even these pleasures seem well-trodden, though. Habitual. Familiar.

But oh, life manages to find endless fresh ways to make me hurt. It’s always discovering tender, unscarred flesh where its talons might dig. As I watch these two ascend the stairs, the younger man’s palm glued to the base of his boyfriend’s spine, how I ache—and how the unexpected agony rakes through every fiber in ways I’ve never before felt. Tears prickle behind my eyes. I feel flayed and raw from the pain.

Turn your head, I chide myself, as tenderly as possible. You don’t have to watch.

Again, my face lifeless and dead, I ignore my own good counsel.

Then, a voice. “Honey. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” A moment passes before I blink and register that someone’s speaking to me. It’s one of the several drag queens mingling with the exiting crowd—the one I’d spoken with earlier who thought I looked like Randy Travis. This queen towers over me by an entire head, and I’m six-three; even without her outlandish stilettos, she must clock in at a good six-seven or six-eight. She’s carrying a basket of little gift-bags of skin-care products wrapped in pink and blue cellophane. My attention flicks away from the couple on the stairs to her concerned gaze. “Are you okay . . . Randy?”

The fact that she remembers our previous conversation brings a little smile to my face, involuntary as it might be. “I’m okay,” I tell her. “Thanks.”

But my eyes can’t help wandering back to the two men, who now have reached their summit. The queen turns her coiffed head; together we watch the pair walk toward the June night outside. Soon they’ll disappear, feet by knees by thighs by hips, over the horizon created by the top step.

I’m not even aware that I’m sighing until it’s already happened.

The impossibly tall vision in the black sequined gown puts a hand on my shoulder. “Boy problems, huh?”

My mouth pulls into a wry expression. She nods in sympathy.


2.

Peter first hit me up on Manhunt five years ago. He was a high school senior a month shy of graduation, a kid in the peak throes of adolescent sexual discovery. He’d used the site a few times for unsatisfactory hookups with older men in the rear seats of their cars, or for fumbling blow jobs in the woods, but he needed more. Even if he couldn’t fully articulate his desires then, I knew from my own experiences what he wanted. He wanted to be used and loved and consumed and appreciated, all at once. He wanted someone with confidence enough to follow through, and experience enough to tailor an encounter into something special, instead of regrettable. Peter was a puppy, game for anything, eager to be taught. I was the old dog he fixed on as an ideal teacher.

I reciprocated his desire . . . and then some. It didn’t hurt that Peter was among the dreamiest young men I’d encountered online. When we first started chatting, his face was baby-smooth, his hair sandy and impossibly tousled. He sent me videos he’d made, just for me, of himself jerking off. My dick would strain and yearn as I stared at his fist clenching, vise-like, around his thick shaft. His flat stomach would ripple and heave as he beat. Then he’d shoot rope after thick rope that would land on the light fur sprinkled on his pale chest.

Much as I loved the videos, I looked forward even more to the selfies Peter would share. Peter had a pair of enormous, liquid basset-hound eyes that melted me every time I saw them. They seemed like kind eyes, the eyes of a thoughtful young man; I imagined I could look into those eyes and fathom exactly what he wanted. I wanted nothing more than to make Peter happy. To give him what he wanted, with a paternal affection that was, on my end, sincere. We chatted about seemingly everything, from school to family to video games to sex. I relished our wide-ranging conversations.

But I lived at one end of my little state, and Peter at the other; although I tried a couple of times over the months to arrange something before he left for college in the autumn, we couldn’t seem to make our schedules align.

Summer arrived. I sent Peter a text asking how he was enjoying his time off before university. I never received a reply.

These things happen, I told myself philosophically. If our connection had been meant to happen . . . it would have happened. I thought of Peter more than occasionally, wondering how it would have played out, had our paths crossed. Would he have been the next Scruffy in my life? The next Spencer? Both were young men who’d responded to the energy I’d brought to the bedroom. There was something about Peter, about the sweet way he communicated, about the way he seemed to hunger for me, that reminded me of them.

Maybe, though, I’m projecting. I don’t really know what Peter desired, back then. Perhaps I idealized him merely because I wanted to be hungered for by a beautiful boy. I needed someone covered in sweat and semen to look at me with dazed love in his eyes, the way Scruffy had. I longed for someone to take care of and protect, as I had with Spencer. It’s not beyond possibility that I’d taken all those abstract yearnings and imprinted them onto the first boy I encountered with a pair of soulful eyes.


3.

It was a year later before my path once more crossed with Peter’s. He texted me to say he was still in college; he’d joined an a cappella group. He had a thirty-six-year-old boyfriend. The most perfect relationship, he called it. Totally monogamous. Hearing the news caused a pang. It hurts, knowing someone you’ve wanted is off the market. In his next breath, though, Peter told me he still thought about me. Three messages later, he was sending me more movies in which he pleasured himself.

Once again, I was breathless at the sight and fantasy of the boy. During that year of his silence I’d convinced myself our relationship would remain unconsummated. Yet here he was, showing himself off to me, telling me how badly he wanted my cock in his throat. Despite the so-called perfect relationship, it seemed to be me that Peter really wanted. I was flattered.

Without much effort on his part, Peter had rekindled my desire for him. But a month later he was off again to study abroad.

I’d damped down those fires before. I could do it again. What choice did I have?

A year and a half of silence. Then, out of the blue one day, I received a message on BBRT. I didn’t recognize the profile name. The boy writing said that he’d been reading my blog, and decided to check me out on the site because he admired my writing so much. He wasn’t quite sure, and if he was wrong, he apologized, but was it possible that I might be the same handsome man he used to talk to when he was younger?

It was with a weightless feeling of suspense that I clicked on his profile. It was Peter again. Of course. Peter, admiring my photos on a bareback site. Peter, telling me that he hoped the famous sex blogger was the same as the man he’d always desired inside him. I told him that yes indeed, he was talking to the same man. Once again gave him my phone number.

Peter’s previous relationship had ended as disastrously as possible, he told me. Now he had another boyfriend—older— and they were exclusive. But, he told me, if it were ever to open up, he wanted to explore every inch of my body with his hands and mouth. He had fond memories of our chats, he said, and such lust for me. . . .

I must be a foolish man, I think, so easily to swallow the candied words a pretty boy feeds me. Yet over the next two weeks I fell back into the old pattern I'd always shared with Peter. I trod the same steps in which he’d led me before. I voiced my desire for him. I let him flatter me over the blog, and the way my words made him feel. I sighed with desire when he texted his latest videos and photos, and listened as he would speak glowingly about his latest perfect relationship with his new older boyfriend. Then, with his next breath, Peter would confide he wished he was curled up naked next to me, with no space at all between my groin and his ass.

Could we meet again for coffee or a meal? Perhaps reconnect and get to know each other again? When was I free? He would do anything to reestablish our relationship in a casual way—though it would be so hot to get sexual with me. On the turn of a dime, Peter would pivot from reminding me that he was exclusive with his boyfriend, to wishing I would just shove three fingers up his ass, then paint his guts with my monster dick. He wanted me fisting him. Fucking him. Breeding him. Every time my phone buzzed during those weeks and I’d see Peter’s name at the top of my screen, I’d end up with a wet spot in my trunks.

Then, without warning, he stopped answering my texts. Another year would pass before I heard from him.


4.

I’d fallen into a comfortable pattern with Peter over the years. He’d resurface, express his desire for me, entice me to open up both my heart and my zipper . . . and then vanish for months or years. I told myself I didn’t mind. I reckoned our union would take place when it was meant to take place. His reappearances made me happy during a few years when happiness was difficult to find. I didn’t try to coerce him into meeting, though I hoped it would happen. Forcing something fragile or elusive ruins its sweet simplicity. One doesn’t grab at a soap bubble to possess it, after all.

With each hiatus, I would be mildly disappointed—but not so devastated that I wanted to discontinue the friendship. I convinced myself life with a Peter in it, no matter how remote he may be, was better than a life without. When Peter would resurface, I’d relish our chatty text exchanges. I’d whimper helplessly at the new photos he’d send. For weeks at a time he’d be the rudder to my libido, giving it direction, drive, force. Then when he’d disappear, I’d remind myself that we’d reconnect. Eventually. Sometime.

The last sometime was in winter of this year, after a year and a half of silence. Toward the end of a rare bachelor week for me, I was sitting for lunch in a pizza joint, waiting for my pie and browsing Instagram. I saw that Peter had sent me a message on the app. After I reminded him of my phone number for the—what? fourth? fifth?—time in as many years, we resumed texting. He was back in New York for graduate school, he told me. He was still in a relationship with the same older man he’d been seeing the last time we talked. But now their relationship wasn’t exclusive, and Peter was now on PrEP. More to the point, Peter was alone that afternoon until six. Wouldn’t I like to come down to the East Village and fuck him senseless? Please?

I considered bolting from my seat right then and there. The invitation wasn’t practical, though. Even if I were to inhale the lunch for which I was still waiting (a scenario not entirely implausible, as anyone would tell you who’s actually seen me attack a pizza) it would still have taken me a minimum of a half hour to get home and changed. A commute into the city and a subway jaunt down the Lexington Avenue line, followed by the briskest of walks to Peter’s address would have carved away a couple of hours more . . . leaving how much time for us to play? An hour? An hour wasn’t much time at all.

He understood. I told him the times of day I was likely to be available during the upcoming two weeks. He informed me that his current job was ending soon and that as of the Monday after next, he’d be one hundred percent available to accommodate me during the daytime.

I happened to have a meeting in the Village that very same Monday, so we made a date to meet.

Finally, after so many years, I had a solid, confirmed date with the boy I’d been chasing. The notion that after long waiting I’d be solidifying our long relationship sustained me during those two long weeks. In the interim, Peter and I kept in touch almost daily. I listened with pangs of actual jealousy as he outlined his sexual adventures under the new open relationship he was enjoying with his boyfriend. He was giddy with excitement as he told me about making out with his current (and soon-to-be ex-) boss. I heard all the gory details about a three-way which he’d planned. I held back my feelings of envy when he texted me about a sex party he was planning to attend with the boyfriend, and silenced my grim satisfaction when the boyfriend’s work schedule forced them to cancel. Any pangs I felt, though, were dulled by the prospect of my own gratification, come that Monday.

I didn’t hear anything from Peter the entire weekend before we were supposed to meet. Vaguely wary, and smelling that something was up, I texted him Sunday night to ask if we were getting together the next day.

I figured we were still on! I want you deep in me, I want your seed deep in me, I want to finally explore what we've been talking about for so long, he texted. But there was an issue he hadn’t addressed with me. Though he was free to take cock, his arrangement with his boyfriend specified that any sex he had with other men had to be with condoms only. He was willing to break that rule with me and not tell his boyfriend, but he was worried he’d feel guilty afterward.

I’m so protective of you that the prospect of doing anything that will make you feel badly, or affect you adversely...well, I’d rather sacrifice my own wishes to avoid that, I texted. If you’d still like to hang out tomorrow and cuddle and kiss and talk it out, I’d be fine with that.

He wrote, Come over. We could find a cafe around here, or you could come over and we could chat and cuddle and kiss. I'd like that a lot. Though I'm also sure my clothes won't last long on me if you do come over….

I knew they wouldn’t.

I was being a true gentleman. It’s the way I was raised. Just as I’d convinced myself that any amount of Peter in my life was better than no Peter, I figured cuddling with Peter would be better than my usual pre-meeting lonely ritual of aimless wandering and a solitary dinner. But after all of Peter’s sex parties and makeout sessions with his boss, I worried I was just a number in some sexual rampage brought about by his newfound open relationship. I decided to be blunt about how fragile my feelings were: The prospect of meeting you, even just to do PG-13 things, is very special for me. I’m not usually a blatant seeker of validation, but I just kind of hope the encounter might be special for you as well, at least a little bit. Fuck. I sound like an idiot.

My heart beat a little faster at his reply. I don't think I've waited so long to meet anyone, and you've always been careful and mentoring toward me. I appreciate you and the care you've shown. It will be a special moment, absolutely.

I went to bed that night a happy man.

The next morning Peter sent me a text. He was hoping I wouldn’t resent him for the news he was about to drop, but his boyfriend was taking a half-day off work. Peter couldn’t host me after all.

Naturally, I was crestfallen. I’d generated so much anticipation over the preceding two weeks; to have it all taken away a mere two hours before we were supposed to get together seemed cruel. I'm not in the least resentful, I told him. Disappointed, sure, but it's better to know now. My optimism is undimmed!

Us meeting is special. I've been looking forward to it, he wrote back. Even in the anxious and mixed signals moments, there were both butterflies and boners. And still are!

I smiled at Peter’s text. Butterflies and boners seemed to sum up my feelings, too. For our meeting I’d been planning to head into the city at lunchtime. With the change in schedule, I postponed my commute until mid-afternoon.

At midday he texted again. The boyfriend couldn’t get the afternoon off. The apartment was free. Peter would love to see me if I could make it!

Rapidly, I recalculated my plans. Sure, I told him. I could be there at two-thirty. The butterflies and boners reappeared. I hopped into the shower and made sure everything was extra-clean.

When I got out of the shower, I found another text waiting for me. While I'd bathed, Peter’s brother had magically appeared in town, he told me. He knew he was being a bad friend and a bad eventual lover . . . but he really should be prioritizing family. Would I be horribly upset if Peter spent the afternoon with the brother he hadn’t seen in months?

I didn’t even have to think twice. I considered Peter a friend. Real friends looked out for each other. Of course he should spend time with his brother, I told him. He shouldn’t even consider meeting me.
I accept responsibility if this damages anything between us, he replied.

Sure. I was disappointed. The last few hours had been nothing but ups and downs and reversals. But surely this was the last of the bumps in the road in our reunion, right? You gave me plenty of notice and you keep communication at the forefront, I reassured him. I absolve you of any guilt.

I went about my business that afternoon as usual. Ate my solitary dinner, went to my meeting, took the train home. I thought about texting you while I was in the city, I told Peter later that night. But I didn’t want you feeling badly.

You’re welcome to text me anytime, he said. Goodnight.

I went to bed at the end of that long day feeling nothing but fondness for the kid. I took him at his word and reached out the next day, to see how he was doing. No reply.

A few days later, I wished him a happy weekend. No reply.

Ten days dragged by. Nothing. Not a day passed that I wondered if this might be when Peter got back to me. He wasn’t working, after all. We’d been texting casually back and forth every day before that abortive Monday.

Every other time Peter had vanished from my life, this is how it had started. For the first time in five years with the kid, I felt as if I’d been made a fool.

Sending any more unreciprocated texts would at this point make me feel creepy, I finally wrote him. I hope you’re well and remain so. And I hope our paths will cross again sometime.

Nothing.

This silence was different from all the other hiatuses Peter had taken. This silence felt personal. Every day that I checked my phone to find no texts from him, every day I looked at Instagram to see if he’d posted another selfie with other friends—his real friends—I felt more and more slighted. The experience reminded me of the day in second grade that my teachers and parents decided that I’d been peering at the chalkboard in a funny way, and taken me to an optometrist. When the lenses came down in front of my eyes, my fuzzy view of the world swung into sharp relief. I could see edges and shadows I hadn’t before. For unfocused years I’d believed that a little Peter in my life was better than no Peter at all. Now I had to question that assumption. Seeing things more clearly caused me pain.

I told a friend about it. “It’s the boyfriend,” he said as surely as if he’d been a fly on the wall in their East Village apartment. “Fuck yeah, this whole thing’s about the boyfriend. He probably found out something and didn’t like it. The boyfriend’s got all the money, right? The kid lives with him? So if he does something wrong, where’s he end up? Back at mommy and daddy’s? On the street? He doesn’t want that. The kid’s got a good thing going. The boyfriend’s probably even paying his tuition. So he’s got to toe the line now. I bet you.”

There was logic in that remark. Logic couldn’t cut through the melancholy I felt, though. Life had found new ways to wound me, yet again.

I wasn’t depressed because I didn’t get to fuck a hot boy. I’m not that shallow. I wasn’t upset because some adolescent infatuation for Peter had been thwarted either by the boyfriend or by Peter’s own disinterest. I mourned because for years I’d blindly assumed that Peter and I had some kind of bond—affection or desire. Friendship at the very least. Every time I’d welcomed him back into my life, every piece of advice I’d given the kid, every time I sacrificed lust for him for the higher goal of keeping our relationship positive . . . what was the point, exactly, of being a good guy for five years when it was obvious Peter didn’t give a shit?

His ignoring me was a deliberate affront. Every day my resentment grew. When I’d check Peter’s Instagram for new posts (which I did more often than I care to admit), it felt like poking a particularly nasty bruise just to see if it still hurts. Of course it fucking hurts. It’s a bruise. Of course poking makes me grimace, even when I did it knowing the outcome.

I unfollowed him on Instagram, just to remove the temptation.

An entire month passed. Then one afternoon, he texted. Hi, he said. I’m home and looking through my phone, and I saw that I never responded to this. I am in a monogamous relationship now. Some things went down and we are taking time to reset/prioritize/figure things out.

It was indeed the boyfriend, I thought to myself. My friend had nailed it.

While part of me was glad to have my suspicions confirmed, I was still angry. Shit happens at home. Relationships can be rough. Trust me, I know. But when it does, it’s not that tough to tell someone, Hey, I’m sorry I might go silent for a while, but I need to focus on my partner right now, or something like I hope you won’t get upset if I’m quiet for a couple of weeks. You do it before a month goes by. On that back-and-forth Monday I’d told the boy how good he was at giving me notice and communicating . . . but honestly, he’d never been good at it. I’d overpraised him the one time he’d actually done it.

Peter’s pattern was to drift out of my life for years, then suddenly appear with fanfare. He’d announce he was unavailable, then immediately share just enough photos and erotic talk to keep me happily on his hook. Then he’d vanish again. Time after time I’d danced in his little pas de deux. I’d memorized my steps so well that all he’d have to do is start up that sweet siren music, and I’d take his hand and tiptoe happily into place. Was it worth it, that rush of sexual validation at my expense? Was I even the only man he’d treated this way?

I’d had enough.

It took a while to formulate a polite reply. I hope you guys work it out, Peter, I responded, truthfully. I’ve been having difficulty framing a response to your reappearance. Thank you, I guess, for eventually letting me know what’s going on. I didn’t at all feel slighted on the Monday you kept going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about meeting me. When you ghosted me for a month immediately after, though, I retroactively felt—and still feel—like I’d been jerked around. Nothing in my behavior merited that treatment.

I read it over several times. I tapped send.

And of course—nothing. No reply. No apology. Honestly, I didn’t at all expect anything.


5.

Ever since that Monday when we didn’t connect, I’ve had to tread carefully when I head into the city for my meetings. I stay off East 14th as much as I can when I need to be in Peter’s neighborhood. Automatically I’ll head down Broadway and take side streets to reconnect to my destination. The route might take me a few blocks out of my way, but I’d rather get the extra exercise than risk running into Peter as he made a Trader Joe’s or bank run. Since getting out my feelings in that last text, six weeks ago, I’ve not spent much time moping. Having my say seems to have to given me the closure I needed. I’m careful where I tread—but I think I’m over the kid.

So here it is, another Monday night, though in June. I’ve spent an day off in the city with my other half on a date of sorts—some shopping, a fun dinner, then this show in a rented NYU underground theater. We’ve a friend performing tonight, third-row seats, and I’ve got my camera ready to go.

The show’s a drag pageant. Along a banquet table are a row of cardboard boxes covered in construction paper, each affixed with an 8x10 glossy photo of a drag queen. They’ve all got outrageous names, naturally. A number of queens not participating in the pageant are roaming the lobby as we wait for the house doors to open; they’re selling arm’s-lengths of tickets for ten dollars, for use in the final voting. All the money’s going to charity.

I buy my tickets from an ebony-skinned queen who towers above me. She’s a magnificent sight, squeezed into her black sequined sheath and a pair of painful-looking stilettos. Her wingspan is as wide as she’s tall, so an arm’s-length of tickets from her is basically a good foot-and-a-half more than from anyone else. She’s tearing off the tickets when she settles on one hip and dabs a finger in my direction. “Do I know you?” she asks.

Oh god, I think. I’ve fucked this drag queen.

Ordinarily the conclusion to which I’d jumped would be highly probable, but I’m wrong. The queen puts a gloved finger to her lips. “Are you famous?”

Oh god, I think. She reads my blog.

I’m wrong again. “You look like someone famous. Travis? Someone named Travis? Randy Travis?”

“Randy Travis?” I ask, involuntarily pulling a face. “Seriously?”

“What, you don’t like Randy Travis?”

I’m laughing now, and pulling out my phone. “Randy Travis looks like. . . .” I stab out his name on the keyboard “Randy Travis looks like that.” We both stare at the singer’s photo I’ve brought up on Google, then meet each other's eyes. We break out into simultaneous laughter.

“You do not look like Randy Travis,” she finally agrees. “What’s your name, sugar?”

“Randy,” I retort. We laugh again, and she stalks away on her stilettos to sell more tickets.

I’ve still got a big grin on my face when I turn and see someone approaching.

It’s Peter. The air seems suddenly charged with electricity.

Uncertainty is written plain on his face. Even his step is tentative, as if he’s on a yoyo string and might find himself yanked backward at any moment. “Hi,” he says when he reaches me, along with my name.

“Peter,” I say. I’m still stunned. The worst has happened. Life has lured me into an orchard of fresh humiliations, where the lemons there hang heavy and low and ripe for the picking. Their citrus seems to burn into invisible wounds across my skin. Peter’s here. He’s real. He’s looking at me with those enormous dark eyes as if unsure of what to say or do.

So I open my arms and embrace him. It’s not the embrace of two souls united at last, or even the affirming hug of two friends seeing the other after a long time. It’s more the non-committal clutch of acquaintances, as it should be.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” he says.

“Peter.” I cut in before be can proceed. “This is my other half.” I make an introduction.

“Oh,” is his startled response. “My . . . my boyfriend is over there,” he says, gesturing across the lobby. I look, and recognize the face I’d seen before in Peter’s Instagram feed.

Though I’d been taken aback at his unexpected appearance, I’ve now recovered my composure. I ask Peter questions. Has he been to this event before? Did he know anyone performing? Did he have any favorites? I’m polite, but it’s a bare minimum of courtesy. I’m really asking questions in order not to have to say anything.

“Have a good time, Peter,” I say when I’m done. He looks at me again, not saying whatever it is that he really wants to say. Then he turns those big dark eyes away and stumbles back to his boyfriend.
Inside, I’m trembling when he leaves.

The next day I’m not surprised when Peter sends me the last text I’ve ever received from him. Would you like to try to re-establish contact?

I have to think long and hard of how to temper my response before I reply. I’ve wrestled with this question since you sent it, Peter. I once assumed we were friends, but you’ve not really treated me in a way that speaks of friendship. Perhaps the question is more one you should ask yourself.

I’ve not heard anything since.

As I expected.


6.

“Boy problems, huh?”

People are still streaming out of the theater, invigorated by two hours of high-energy performances. The statuesque black queen stands by my side, watching me stare after Peter and his boyfriend as they ascend the stairs and reach the top step. I nod, frozen to the spot.

“Which one?” she asks. “In the plaid?”

Peter is indeed wearing a white shirt with a light plaid. My nod must be barely visible; I can’t even feel my muscles working. Why am I so sad, I wonder? I haven’t lost anything that was ever really mine.

The boyfriend pauses to look at something in the pageant program. Peter leans over to point; the flat of his other hand rubs up and down the boyfriend’s spine. It strikes me as a possessive move. Ostentatious. As if he knows I’m watching, and wants me to see. Then they resume walking, and vanish over the horizon.

The lightest of touches on my arm brings me back to reality. “Randy. I don't know you.” The queen has cocked her head to look into my eyes. “But do you want to know what Oprah and Maya Angelou taught me?”

I have no idea Makeup? Pilates? Instead, I weakly shake my head and say nothing.

“When people show you who they are, believe them.”

I blink as once again my everything shifts into new clarity. The hiatuses. The yanks on my leash—my dismissals to my kennel. How like a pet I was to Peter—and how stupidly happy I was to chase after any ball he threw for me to fetch. For five years, Peter again and again had shown me who he was. This old dog was too stupid to recognize what was right before his nose all along.

I repeat the words slowly. “When people show you who they are. . . .”

“Believe them.” She shakes my wrist. “Now take a gift bag, child. No, take two. I gotta get rid of these things.”

She wafts away in a cloud of perfume and sequins, leaving me with clear vision for the road home.