I can neither attain nor decipher the women in the trees…

“Eliza, my frozen nymph!”

No wonder Sophie ridicules me.

An elm across the avenue intertwines his thighs, plants his roots in solid support of his body with its lewd orifices. His nipples, his tormented face—he makes me ashamed of myself for he draws on my cock and hardens it on this cold morning before I’ve found a cup of tea.

Women trapped in the western trees have arched away, leaning toward their mother, the mountain. And the cars! Police vehicles flash lights red and blue; buses, and endless New World engines with their monotonous drone and their violent purr of rubber wheels, drive on a thin biscuit of pavement under which the trees’ roots gyrate. I sympathize with bicycles gliding toward me then gliding away—they alone proceed quietly, peaceful as gulls riding a thermal.

Elms low on the avenue swerve ribbed and hairy: undulating, tormented beings, sexual, entrapped. A wailing woman hangs bound around a trunk in supplication and anguish, flailing to break free, her wail apparently inaudible to everyone but myself.

My day begins.

7 Gay Village

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5.

MORNING.

Chinatown. Montreal, Quebec

IT’S BEEN A YEAR SINCE my last visit to the hot tub at the Chinatown Y, and I forget what time it opens. There’s nothing worse than having to hang around an institution’s locked doors. Sophie, of course, insists the Y is not in Chinatown but in the Gay Village. But the village is a bit farther east. She accuses me of visiting it regularly. She spent our entire first autumn together on a line of investigation into what she called my repressed gayness.

I tried back then to brush her off. “You’re like the Inquisition.”

“You talk a lot about bodies of young male soldiers, whether they were well-made or not.”

“It is something a general is bound to notice.”

“You go on about someone named Elwyn in particular.”

“Who?”

“Elwyn. You moan in your sleep about Elwyn and how beautifully he was made, as if he were a purse, or a saddle or a hat from Henri Henri….”

“You must mean George. George Warde is the beloved friend of mine who was more well-made than any soldier in Culloden or Quebec….”

“No.”

“Yes. George Warde, my boyhood friend in Westerham.”

“Okay—you loved George Warde?”

“I did.”

“You were physical with him.”

“We were very close.”

“I mean were you intimate?”

“We were as intimate as any two people can be. But I think you mean a different thing than I mean when you say intimate.”

“Why are you talking like an idiot? I’m asking what kind of love you have for men like George Warde.”

My body language betrayed me. There was no refuge from her questions. Even in silence I let things be known. I said only, “Anything I admit to you about George would fall short of what we had.”