Everybody wanted Robert, girls especially. Many got him, boys especially, once he finally declared. Back then, in ballrooms lit by mirrormosaic spheres that were half joke, but mostly magic—it was Robert Robert Robert. A common name, but one he made glamorous and, even odder, fully only his.

Now, face up, eyes closed, doing what some witty visitor had recently called “Robert’s exceptional Pharaoh imitation,” our friend managed one final feat—superhuman.

The closed right eye trembled in sneezy little spasms all its own. Then both his eyes tore open with such sound, twin zippering rips, no louder than a mouse’s scream, and exactly that terrifying.

We, lolling on windowsills, slumped in tacky plastic orange chairs, rushed to Robert’s bed as if summoned by a thunderclap and forty French horns.

Radical as only being alive can make a guy, Robert strained upward to answer. I bent my head against his mouth. (We would press a compact mirror here in just four days.) Now, gusts of hard-earned air bore sound waves as Robert managed: “Kee po. Dee do. Gee ou. Fo com.”

I had learned the language of his language ending. Not unproud of how my skill had evolved to coil inside the nautilus spiral of Robert’s own exquisite devolving, I translated for marveling friends.

“Says, ‘Kiddie porn. Dildoes. Get out, before The Folks come.’”

We watched him nod, our pal, Robert, the composer (already diatonic when only joyless twelve-tone cacophony still counted; already wooed and won by our best judge of male beauty and symphonic talent, Mr. Copland). Hearing his own last words replayed aloud, Robert nodded so.

“Don’t tire yourself, Babes.” Somebody touched his spindle shoulder. And one gigantic grateful tear—the size of something sold in your better gift shoppes—slid from the outer corner of a glazed crystal blue eye. It was one of two baby-blues that’d made Robert briefly yet intensely popular at steam baths and in the backs of parked trucks along West Street, where forthright boys passed fluids to and fro, passed jets of spit and spunk, a secret virus riding all that liquid living pleasure. Tax. Everything good is taxed so. On a 30 percent pleasure, a 1001 percent tax. Is that fair?

“Robert? Okay now, Robert ours.” I drew closer. “I know you’re listening and, buddy, look … no, here. —I’m guessing as how the kiddie porn is stuffed into that steamer trunk beside your bed, okay? ’kay … good. But where’d you tend to stash the majority of your dildoes, honey?—Robbie?”

There came the deepening dent between eyes. There came a setting of shoulders: A launchpad is readied for eventual rocket. You saw how much energy his speaking up from such a cave-in void would cost him. And, vertical achievement, here it came: “Boo ca.”