Dan, are you alive? Might you really read this? If so, please, please drop me a line care of the publisher. I’m older. I’ve learned what to do—for pleasure, after pain. I’ve got questions. About that kid, the cop’s yellow-haired son, how good did he look? How much did he do to draw you those few urinals closer (into camera range)? I think I know a lot about you. But it’s just based on those first nine years, when you honked at me. And paid attention. And sent bills on strings up my tree. Did you suspect I was one, too? Did you know that you were? Was I funny then, or somewhat sweet? Or even pretty, in my longing looks both up and down? Listen to me, this old, still fishing for compliments! Jailbait. I just want to check in.

You didn’t seem to mind a fellow’s drawing close against you, even as you bled. His little mitt nested on worn pants just above your crank. Your grin was relaxed, secure, if fairly tired. (Did you already guess what it would cost us?) Still Ideal Captain of My Fellow Ship, my first “rainbow,” “big one,” at times I feel so sound and lucky. I myself never got caught, never did get sick. My very occupation is to tell the truth—as much as will still sell.

I feel I owe you everything, Dan. Times, it seems they did my damage all to You.

I bet you’re still in the world. Your youngest kid finished college—what?—twenty years ago. You are barely seventy. That, increasingly, is not so old. I’m forty-eight already. The hair on your arms must be mostly silver now, not unattractive. I sense you ended up in Arizona, maybe Colorado, somewhere dry out there.

Are you still her husband? Or by now splitting house payments with another guy? But, no, I picture you as living alone. I picture a blue car, your climbing into it, driving to some modest restaurant, heading home, stretching, putting hands on hips, going back inside.

Despite my therapy and the wish to think well of myself, I am still a subdivision of desire. And here I choose to end it.

I am the horny guilty husband, noticing one sullen blond boy slouched at the urinal three down; I move his way, beckoned by his head wave, the one slow wink, and something that he shows me.

I am the blond boy, aware of my poisonous beauty, ready for Dad to pop out of that green stall with a black camera in lieu of his pink face. For now, I’m mostly a youngster enjoying the weight of my blood-stocked dick. I am feeling the full power of being male, which means, in an odd way, being fatal for others.