At night, when we got back to the bungalow where we were staying, we went straight to bed. People sometimes claim that drug epiphanies don’t last longer than the drug, but I haven’t forgotten him naked on his knees in front of me and me sort of crouching below, my face at his thigh, struck with the certainty that I would not regret putting my mouth and hands on him and having him inside me because being naked with him was a blessing. I understood then that my enjoyment of his body was sacred and not meaningless, nor reliant on his deserving it or earning it in some way. They were gifts to me, the love and the attraction I felt, and his presence.

But these later fights were serious clashes, conflicts that would keep me, if not both of us, up all night, and the sourness of unresolved disagreement lingered for weeks, months. The issue no longer seemed to be correctable misalignment and new-to-each-other ignorance but betrayal, selfishness, ill intent. I’m sleeping somewhere else tonight fights. It shouldn’t be this hard fights. To him, I was insufficiently committed to riding out our ups and downs, while I believed he wasn’t trying hard enough to keep us out of the downs altogether. We were both probably right. He valued constancy and I valued intensity, and neither of us were receiving as much as we needed.