Last year, during the Summer Olympics, I sat with Brett on his couch, watching the opening procession. And I told him I was restless and pining; I told him about Gregory from Canada, who, once, wrote me a postcard and sent me a package. In the package: “The Backroads of California,” a large, vintage roadtripping book of maps. “I hope these roads still exist,” he said. Brett told me to reach out to him, and I did. But Gregory is in Canada, and I am not. We never made it through the opening ceremony.
    And we made it to the bedroom. Brett put the opening ceremony on his bedroom TV. And he started to drift off to sleep, turning the TV off. And I laid there completely awake while Brett chatted less and less, and I said, “I think I need to go.”
    “What’s wrong?” Brett asked, and I said, “nothing is wrong. I just have this feeling like life is slipping out of my hands. I need to go do something real, like look at the stars. I need to go for a long drive to the mountains.”
    “Are you safe?” Brett asked, while pulling me closer, bearing his arms around my chest. “Yeah, I’m not suicidal. I’m not even sad. I just get this itch as if I need to be living a larger life.” Crudely, I guess it’s a form of suicide for some people. But Brett spent the time asking more, and I wondered if he had ever felt that way, and we fell asleep with the sounds of sirens and traffic forming an urban white noise backdrop.
    The next morning Brett woke up. And I woke up. “You opened up a lot last night,” Brett told me. “Yeah, maybe,” I said. And I went on with the day, driving to West Hollywood for a queer shoot, as if I were living the queer life well. But the feeling has never really left.