“I met him on a gay beach on a summer Sunday. I was wading back in and he was swimming out and we both turned to look at each other, and I swam back out. It was like a moment from a gay porn movie. I was a much stronger swimmer than he was. We were both with friends, but neither of us had a lover. We messed around in the water, and then he wanted me to come and meet his friends but I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t want to introduce him to my friends, so we met that evening in a bar in the Castro. I had only ever done casual stuff before. I had never washed and shaved and dressed up so carefully before meeting anyone before. He looked even better with clothes on. He was half-Mexican. And that was how it started, it was that night. He did real estate and he made a lot of money. I looked at him and I trusted him and liked him.” He paused. “Do you want me to talk about him?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s very hard to talk about him. I keep feeling that I’m going to cry. He took everything easy. He could work on a few hours’ sleep. I think we planned to stay together forever. I moved in with him, and it was he who organized my papers and my passport. Eventually, I went to work for him. He was great at it. He loved to make a deal. If he showed you around an apartment, you would look at him rather than the apartment, and believe everything he said and end up buying it. Everybody loved him, people always wanted him to come to dinner, to come away for the weekend. But most of the time in the middle of the week we would go straight home after work and see no one except each other. It’s a strange thing, but a lot of men were like him just then, a lot of gay men, they worked hard, they had a lot of money, they enjoyed life, they had a lover and good friends. And then it all changed, it all changed.”

As he spoke I could hear the tears in his voice. I held him close to me as he began to cry.