I've always drawn on bits and pieces of my own life.

My youth would be like that, the slow decay of cherished myths – about politics and race, about love itself – until nothing was left but compost from which something authentic could finally begin to grow.

Over the next eight years, almost without noticing, I arrived at a quiet revelation. You could make a home by yourself. You could fill that home with friends and friendly strangers without someone sleeping next to you. You could tend your garden and cook your meals and find predictable pleasure in your own autonomy.

You cannot be loved by someone who doesn’t want to know you.

Like I’ve always said, love wouldn’t be blind if the braille weren’t so damned much fun.

The bay was bright blue today, the hard fierce blue of a gas flame. If there was fog rolling in – and there must be, given the insistence of those horns – she couldn’t see it from here.

I want to deceive him just long enough to make him want me...

But it’s amazing how many people think that gay men should slink off into the shadows when it comes to having friendships with children.

Nobody’s happy. What’s happy? Happiness is over when the lights come on.

Needing and loving are two different things.