I dug out the powder blue cashmere cardigan my mother Lisa gave me the Christmas before last, pulled on my oldest, softest Levi’s. Comfort clothes; the next best thing to a hug from a warm, living body. Lately there had been a shortage of hugs in my life. Lately there had been a shortage of warm, living bodies.
Hearts got broken every day. Nobody died from that. But it did kind of fade the sunlight and drain the color from the days.
Everything a gay man does makes a political statement. Everything matters: where you bank, where you shop, where you eat. When you hold your lover’s hand in public
She shrugged another plump shoulder. “I never listened to Porter when he got going.” Ah. At last. The secret to a successful marriage.
Sable hair bisected his pecs and arrowed down to the straight and unequivocal statement of his returned interest. Forcing my gaze to his face, I said, "I really don't think we have time for that." "You know that, and I know that, but HE doesn't believe it." "Believe it," I told HIM. J.X.'s mouth tugged into one of those heart-stopping smiles. "Maybe you should whisper in his ear.
I'm not insane. This is very simple, very straightforward. Provided he doesn't kill me, its foolproof.
He scooped up Victoria practically before she hit the ground, well within the five-second rule. If she'd been a potato chip, he could have still eaten her. Not something I particularly wanted to contemplate.
Rick said, "Is there some place we can go and talk?" "You want to talk?," Keir raised an eyebrow. "I never thought I'd see the day." "Nah, I want to tell you this joke I heard." Keir nodded, patient. "Shoot." "Two Irish cops walk into a bar. The first cop says..." Rick's voice dropped. He said gruffly, "I love you. Come home." Keir managed to keep his voice steady. "What's the other cop say?" The sweetness of Rick's smile was like a kick in his chest. "That's what I'm here to find out, boyo.
I thought again how odd it was to be on formal terms with someone you had once permitted to lick your ears.
I never meant to get involved with you, Adrien. Rest easy; you're not.
...Jake, a homosexual cop buried so deep in the closet he didn't know where to look for himself.
Shrugging out of the damaged shirt, Jake said roughly, “I still dream about you.” “I have nightmares about you.” I dragged my T-shirt over my head, threw it aside.
Like true philosophers I've come to believe that religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown after proper education.
I love you," Jake whispered. "Are you strong enough for this?" I made myself comfortable. Said over my shoulder, "Sure." "Would you tell me if you weren't?" I grinned. "Maybe. I can't think of a nicer way to commit suicide." "That's good. I can't think of a more pleasant way to commit murder.
Anyone who wasn't half-stoned on pain meds would have instantly realized what a really bad idea this plan was, but since that didn't include me, I didn't worry about it.
Peter is ... adjusting. He's back in school, and he's doing quite well. I wish you could find it in your heart to forgive him." "I've got this funny resentful streak about people who try to kill me.
This is how God made me. You are how God made you. All God's chillun are made how God made 'em. You think God made a mistake, take it up with Him.
I know that asshole you were with in college --” “Can we leave that asshole out of it?” Please, gentlemen, one asshole at a time.
And yet there was something about his strength, his arrogance, his sheer size that got under my skin. He probably couldn't even spell vanilla. He was probably selfish in the sack. Probably selfish and greedy and...unsophisticated. And hung like a horse.
He went through the cupboards, found the olive oil, and started upstairs again. He glanced down at the green and gold label and had to bite back a laugh at the words Extra Virgin. That about summed it up.
I noticed you right away." She gave me an approving look. "I like quiet, polite men. And men who wear Hugo Boss. I was hoping you weren't gay. Or that you were only half-gay. Like Paul." "Uh...sorry," I said. "It's pretty much full-time now. The pay's not great, but the perks...
People loved you in the way they knew how - and often it was not the way you knew. Or needed.
Kit, you're forty. You look thirty. You act...well, never mind. You're carrying on like you think you're seventy
Tiffs among the faggots were apparently the stuff of quiet merriment.
I want people to react to my work, to think, to question, to challenge, to cry and laugh and feel.
You know that thing about Death Be Not Proud? Well, Fear Be Not Proud either. And Fear Be Not Elegant. What Fear be is stumbling, bumbling flight, crashing through brush, slip-sliding on pine needles, sloshing through puddles that are always deeper than you expect.
I gave a helpless laugh. “Damned if I know. I think…we seem to have reached impasse. I feel betrayed by your friendship with Verlane. I realize that’s not logical. I realize that if I’d made the mistakes Verlane has made, I’d want my friends to stand by me, hope that someone would help me when the time came. I just…” “What?” I met his eyes. “I just need to come first for someone, Guy.
He was probably selfish in the sack. Probably selfish and greedy and...unsophisticated. And hung like a horse.
You're kind of a smart ass when you're not flat on your face.
I thought I recognized you." Really? He remembered me looking like Swamp Thing? How flattering.
You couldn't hurt a fly." Actually I was pretty good at pinging flies right out of the air, but I tried to look appropriately harmless.
One thing I’ve noticed about getting older, it takes twice as much work to get half the results one formerly achieved by falling out of bed.
I’m not going to let go of you. I’m going to hold you all night. So go ahead and feel whatever you feel. If you’re still craving cocaine, go ahead. You’re safe. You can crave it all you want, but I won’t let go, and if you still feel like you can’t trust yourself in the morning, and it’s what you want, I’ll drive you to rehab myself. Okay?" ~ Max
Kevin refilled my plastic cup with more box wine. I smiled thanks. Kevin smiled welcome. Jake kicked my ankle.
And I thought maybe I didn't need to worry about my heart anymore because it had stopped beating a couple of seconds earlier, and I was still sitting there living and breathing-though admittedly I wasn't feeling much of anything.
Have I ever told you, you look like Monty Clift? he inquired in a deep, seductive voice. Before or after the accident?
He needed fresh air and sunshine. A walk in the woods and afterward a good book to read by the fire. Yeah, that was the life.
Drink your coffee -- people in Africa are sleeping.
He never lied to me. I just didn't ask the questions I didn't want to know the answers to.
Then, like a born and bred asshole, he added to the sheriff, "He writes murder mysteries.
He was breathing, which is always a good sign. As gently as I could I picked him up, placed him on the towel, wrapped it around him, and put him in my car. I drove to the emergency clinic, the cat purring on the seat beside me. “What’s his name?” the young man at the front desk asked as my towel and cat were whisked to a back room. “Uh…John Tomkins,” I said. “That’s different,” the receptionist said, writing it down. “He was a pirate,” I said. “I mean Tomkins. I don’t know about the cat. (...)
All cynics are disappointed idealists. The more stars in the eyes, the harder the fall.
Jake's mouth found mine, his lips molding hot and soft to my own. His tongue tentatively tested the seal of my lips; I parted them and he pushed inside. It was startlingly sweet and achingly familiar, like finding harbor.
I don't know if real courage lies in storming barricades or simply not denying the truth.
You don't look so hot, Adrien." "Yeah, well I'm having a bad heart day." His upper lip curled in a semblance of a smile. "Tell me about it.
To find them all in one package...well, perhaps better not to dwell on his package in my fragile state.
Focus on someone else’s problems for a change, I instructed myself. You need the practice. From now on you’ll have to live in a world you didn’t make up. Horrible thought.
I liked you the first time I saw you. You were sitting on the floor surrounded by books, and you looked up when I opened the door and smiled right at me. It felt like you had been waiting for me, like you were welcoming me home.
I know you've all heard the advice, "Show, don't tell." The best writers don't tell you, and quite frankly they don't just show you -- they make you feel it, live it, taste it, touch it. Storytelling is about being in the moment with the characters.
He shifted over without comment, lifting the blankets, and I scrambled into the warm sheets beside him. He smelled like soap and sleep and bare skin. He smelled familiar. Not the deja vu familiar of Guy or Mel. Familiar like...the ache in your chest of homesickness, of longing for harbor after weeks of rough seas or craving a fire's warmth after snow--or wanting back something you should never have given away.
The only thing worse than opera is someone who hums along with opera.
When you live with a potentially life-threatening condition you get used to the thought of dying. You accept it, you push on. The thing that scared me was the picture of dying slowly and painfully, the loss of independence and identity to illness.
I think it was Mark Twain who said, “Get your facts straight, and then you can distort them as much as you like.
I didn't approve of murder on general principles. Not even of people who seemed to go around begging for it.
The battle rages eternal, though the race, religion, gender or sexual orientation of those discriminated against changes regularly. Maybe man’s need for a scapegoat is genetically programmed into him.
How did people get over this? They obviously did. Every day someone fell in love with the wrong person and had to pack up all their fragile, misguided hopes and unwanted affection, and move on to the next picnic table.
Adrien, people get killed all the time. Since when is it your job to find out what happened to them?" "I'm not usually suspected of murdering them." "You have been as long as I've known you.
I thought of the words of the Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne. "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
I'm a thirty-something gay man with a dodgy heart. I sell books for a living. Who wants to read about that?
He looked okay. No, to be honest. He looked a lot better than okay. He looked...fine. Fine, as in get the Chiffons over here to sing a chorus.
Knowing and believing are two different things.
You got a little bit of an attitude, Mr. English, if you don't mind my saying so. I don't mind.
Rachel delivered it like an official pronouncement. Like she was one of the fairies gifting Sleeping Beauty's christening: Beauty. Intelligence. Heterosexual.
If there was one life skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity
The phone rang, picked up, and the same male voice announced, “Chris Powers." "Hey there, Chris. Are you aware it's a felony to make threats over the phone?" To give Powers his fair due, he got over his shock within a split second. “Try it, asshole. I dare you. My lawyers will have you for lunch.” He clicked off again. I did what any red-blooded American male would do. I called my big, ex-cop ex-boyfriend.
The problem with a life spent reading is you know too much.
'What about stress? Are you using your stress-management techniques when things seem to be getting on top of you?' 'Nothing is getting on top of me.' As I said it, a totally inappropriate picture popped into my mind. 'What are you feeling?' Jake's breath warm against my face, my bruised lips tingling from his kisses. 'Tell me what it feels like with me inside you.'
I hadn't liked him at first. He did sort of grow on you after a while. Like the cosmopolitans. Or maybe because of the cosmopolitans.
Do you still do the clubs?” Jake shakes his head. “You do the clubs because you can’t find what you need at home. I’ve got everything I need. I’ve got the answer to needs I didn’t even know I had.
And why is it the best looking ones are always straight?
A pause followed my greeting. Then “We’re watching you ” whispered the voice on the other end. “Yeah? Did you see what I did with my keys? ” Silence. Then dial tone. These younger demons. So easily discouraged.
I’m never wrong? Who besides Republican presidents and evil masterminds can say that with a straight face?
We were locked onto each other as though we had just discovered this incredible thing you could do with two mouths pressing close and moist against each other. And the taste of him... Horrifyingly, unbearably sweet -- sweet in the way crack must feel hitting the bloodstream of an addict after years of staying clean.
Cops before breakfast.Before coffee even. As if Mondays weren't bad enough.
Love... doesn't happen every day. It doesn't happen at all for some people
Vintage books, old china, antiques; maybe I love old things so much because I feel impermanent myself.
He said you were on the scene when that Laurel Canyon homicide went down.” “I’m lucky that way,” I said. “So are you two square again?” I halted, mid-ripping open the cookies, and stared at him. “Well, he’s pretty square,” I said. “I’m just a rectangular guy.” With latent triangular tendencies.
You were the first in every way that counted.
What I like about cooking is that, so long as you follow the recipe exactly, everything always turns out perfect. It’s too bad there’s no recipe for happiness. Happiness is more like pastry—which is to say that you can take pains to keep cool and not overwork the dough, but if you don’t have that certain light touch, your best efforts still fall flat. The work-around is to buy what you need. I’m talking about pastry, not happiness, although money does make things easier all around.
Not as intolerable as being dead, in my opinion, but I'm very fond of me. I would miss me a lot.
Hey, its not much of a closet is it?" "No. Its not. I don't like closets. Life's to short to spend hiding in the dark.
