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Chapters (27)
  1. Dedication
  2. Epigraphs
  3. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  4. Prologue
  5. PART ONE
  6. 1.
  7. 2.
  8. 3.
  9. 4.
  10. 5.
  11. 6.
  12. PART TWO
  13. 7.
  14. 8.
  15. 9.
  16. 10.
  17. 11.
  18. 12.
  19. PART THREE
  20. 13.
  21. 14.
  22. 15.
  23. 16.
  24. 17.
  25. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  26. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  27. What’s next onyour reading list?

I dialed the number Danny gave me once I got to the red phone booth that overlooked the river and watched pedestrians cross the Waterloo Bridge in the distance while I waited for someone to pick up. After several rings, a woman’s voice on an answering machine came on.

“This is London Travel. Please leave a message at the sound of the tone.”

I called the number again and got the same response. Then again. And again. It was starting to rain when I got out of the booth and walked back to the Tube.

Though I got other men to sleep with me over the next few weeks, I found myself dreaming of Danny as I lay on the top bunk of my hostel bed, the ceiling so close I could touch it, wishing that the white blankness was Danny’s body. Something about him being new to blokes resonated with me, and how he guided my body like he was used to being in charge in a way I wasn’t used to when I slept with other men, a way that I liked. I was convinced I wouldn’t find that again.

11.

I broke up with Thomas a week after I got back to the States. We saw a movie one night and I refused to give him my hand. He started crying on our walk back to the Kendall T station, through the tall concrete configuration of biotech buildings on the edge of MIT’s campus. He accused me of having changed, that it was more important for me to be cool than to have someone in my life who loved me. He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t tell him that, and said instead that I didn’t think we were right for each other.

A month later, after we’d stopped speaking, I got an envelope in the mail with a photocopy of the back of a postcard I’d sent him from London, the most saccharine one about how much I loved him and how I wished he was there with me, written at the height of my guilt about fucking other men. Thomas had underlined the purplest phrases and scrawled, “Is this what you mean by love???” at the bottom in a childish hand. I was tempted to call him and apologize but didn’t want to get caught up in the relationship again, so my newfound nonchalance took hold as I sighed in exasperation at lunch with friends over how childish this display of emotion was.