Last summer, after Wole died, Clyde paid for my ticket to visit him in Rome. He was renting a small apartment for two months to get away from their old house. You, sacrificing the ability to wear black for a month, offered to look after Beatrice. Clyde’s apartment was in Trastevere; it overlooked a bustling street of restaurants on one side and a small cobblestoned courtyard filled with mopeds on the other. There were eight apartments facing onto the courtyard that kept their shutters open throughout the day “and even into the night,” Clyde said, “when I swear to God literally everyone walks around naked.”

Over the years our relationship had grown into a profound if unlikely one; despite the thirty-five years between us, Clyde was, by then, my closest confidant. He said he was in Rome to learn Italian and have “a whore’s tour of the city.” He had long given up celibacy and had had an open relationship with Wole for their last decade or so together. And fucking was as good a balm for a grieving heart as any I could think of. He enjoyed showing me guys he was talking to on Scruff and Grindr, and I told him I suspected he got laid about five times as often as I did. The August nights were sweltering and we slept with the windows open, he in a little loft bed above the kitchenette and me on the couch. I drifted off to the sounds of revellers in the street and woke to the sounds of men erecting morning market stalls, shouting at one another and assembling mounds of fresh fruit, fish, bread, cheese, and candied nuts for display.

On my third night Clyde invited over an old friend of his, Giacomo. They were both members of the Toronto Contemporary Dance ensemble before moving to London together in the late eighties to dance with Michael Clark’s company. Giacomo had moved back to Italy in the mid-nineties and worked for various advertising agencies since. I helped Clyde cook a truffle pasta with mussels in the tiny kitchenette while blasting Bronski Beat and getting hammered on table wine before Giacomo had even arrived — which ended up being forty-five minutes later than expected, “punctual by Italian standards.” From the moment he walked in the door I barely stopped laughing, and by ten o’clock my abs were sore. Besides his wicked, dry wit, Giacomo was a true polymath and offered up facts as if refilling your glass.

Sometime around midnight the conversation turned to their days at Toronto Contemporary Dance. After a madcap back-and-forth about who was fucking who and a particularly juicy tale about Giacomo seducing the ever-implacable Doug, who was dating the prima ballerina of the National Ballet at the time, the two of them fell silent.

“We’re the only two left, you know,” Clyde said. “Can you believe that?”

Giacomo nodded and took a sip of wine. “Rene.”

“Doug. Tom.”

“Jack.”

“Jean-Paul.”

“Tom.”