The Financial Times

On U Street, at a bar, Inauguration Day 2005. We’d both been at a Michael Franti concert at the 9:30 Club and ducked out of the crowd that had taken over afterwards, pushing the traffic out of the street. Maybe it seemed like the corridor was about to burn because I was lugging around that effigy I’d built from six months' worth of the FT. Or maybe it really was going to burn. Again.

The bar was packed, Facundo ranting from his corner booth, little Mike was collecting signatures and everyone was talking about boycotting something. The city was in a fury, and to keep my asthma at bay I was getting blackout drunk, turning down the sound. The effigy was a part of my disguise, beneath which I had nearly disappeared.

All the shouting and nonsense, and you were sitting on the corner reading and sipping moonshine.

I asked you for a lighter, and you said something about exile, and that ex-pat meant exiled patriot. I don’t know what we talked about, though I know we talked about it at length and ended with an agreement to disappear, either to India or Thailand, whichever seemed more appropriate in the morning.

Sex, and how my shoulders stung under the hot shower after, my blood worming down the drain. The effigy lying unburned against the curb outside the bar. Waking up beside your sunlight hair splayed out over white sheets, your skin neverending, wrapped to hide so sweetly all your muscle and blood. I was surprised that white skin could still seem lovely. I whispered over your shoulders, down your arms while you slept, an easy breeze on the coast of an undiscovered country.

I wanted to live only with passion. So much of my life, bars and work and then even my books, were scentless, muted, tasted of watered down beer and car exhaust. Then you spoke, and the walls began to smolder. You invited me home and the pavement burned beneath your feet, and I followed, and I never stopped following.