FSE

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You've noticed how I break up my story. Birth, adoption, emancipation. That's how my life feels to me, broken up into couplets, chapters, movements. For each I have a favorite version, at least among the versions of which I've become aware.

I didn't choose to start in a castle randomly. That's my favorite version of my birth. It's the least... vile. The least ignoble. In that version at least I am in a fine keep instead of a crack house or a mud hut, and in that version at least I have reason to believe my mother tried to protect me.

It also led to my favorite childhood, the one in Carrick. Okay, so, sure, people lived in fear of the Bleeding Plague and idiotically some school children briefly shunned me when they were old enough to understand what plague was but too stupid to realize that if I had it I'd be dead.

My favorite version of meeting John is in 2006. A guy falling for a guy isn't as big a deal in this one. There are fewer distractions, it's, I don't know... purer.

“Something on your mind, kittycat?" He's standing across from me and people pass us on either side. Cars roll by, quietly, their noise dampened by the weird midday hush on a hot Florida summer.

I swear to you, I swear to all that's holy, I really don't mean to come on to him. I'm not thinking! I just want to introduce myself, to find some way to ask him to grab a cup of coffee. None of the tricks of seduction that had been my livelyhood for the last two years are even remotely on my mind. I swear.

And yet, when I open my mouth and speak, he grins. He thinks it's a come-on, and he's feeling frisky, and as I said, I look rather good.

On that day in Florida in 2006 I'm wearing beltless jeans that fit me perfectly, as if they were painted on, and a white shirt cinched by two buttons, the sleeves rolled up loosely. On my paws are sandals, and next to them a brand new still-in-the-box iPod that slipped from my grasp and that I won't even think about until years later – or earlier, depending on your pserpective – in India.

So I speak, innocently, and I watch his grin become a smirk. He waggles his brow, those rakish tan spots over his eyes doing a little come-hither dance. He asks me if I live nearby, and I do, and ten minutes later I'm kissing him.

You want to know what I said to him, right? I'll tell you, but only if you promise, if you pinky swear that you'll believe me when I say I was just introducing myself. Do we have a deal?

I said:

“I'm Game."

•

It's night, and we're exhausted, and to our great astonishment we still have our clothes on. My apartment is a shambles; we made out so vigorously that finally, for the first time, I'm grateful all my tableware is plastic because all of it's on the floor.

It didn't even occur to me to go down on him or even to take his clothes off; I didn't want to let him go for an instant, to stop kissing him, until we tripped over a fallen salad bowl and I landed on top of him, panting.

He's laughing at my name and I nuzzle at his shirt, threatening to pierce his nipple with my fangs. “I thought you were coming on to me!"

I lay my chin on his chest, my tail whipping lazily behind me. “John..." I don't know what I can say that won't be a lie or sound like I'm a creepy stalker. I'm a smart kitten. I know I've never been in love before, but I'm all kinds of fucked up. Looking at John makes me realize that about myself. I'm a prostitute without fixed rates, is what I am.

He's a model of a well-adjusted young man. I read him, of course, like I read the men and women I seduce. There's a deep scent of wood shavings in his clothes, but he's not a carpenter and certainly not a lumberjack. Now I can study him I see his eyes linger on what few ornaments are on my humble shelves, and I know, I just know that he's an artist, maybe a sculptor.

Art seems so cool to me right now.

So what's a guy to do? Tell him I love him, that my heart belongs only to him, that I'll give up my life of sin if he'll just please, please be mine? I could sidestep the conversation entirely by nosing my way down to his zipper and showing him what I can do with my muzzle, but somehow that just feels cheap.

“I'm hungry," I say and I'm so proud of myself. It's the perfect middle ground. “You wanna stay for dinner? I'd love the company." Okay, maybe I would have been better off saying 'like', but this'll do in a pinch.

He looks a little confused – remember, he came up here thinking he'd get some exciting off-the-street stranger sex, and I worry that even this modest and civil invitation might weird him out. “Sounds great. You got a phone? My battery's dead and I gotta let Kevin know where I am."

I smile and mask my surge of hatred for Kevin, whoever he is. Inside my head I'm screaming and howling as I take the cordless phone from its cradle and hand it to John. Kevin's John. As I pick the plastic plates and bowls up off the floor of the corner that passes for my kitchen I imagine clubbing Kevin to death with them – and they're feather-light, so it takes a long while to crack his hideously deformed, disease-ridden face.

On the plus side, knowing that John's taken cools my nerves somewhat. I can focus on cutting the vegetables and asking about his education and revealing nothing at all about myself. I don't make any more stupid mistakes, I don't accidentally gush about how he's just the awesomest guy I've ever met and how I want to spend my life making love with him. My heart's broken but the pieces stay in place well enough that we can just have a nice dinner.

•

“We should do this again sometime," the dog says as he leaves. I'm honestly not paying enough attention by that point to sense whether he means it. I'm moving like a clockwork imbecile through a treacly haze of complete bullshit.

I can't remember if he says it while looking me in the eye or over his shoulder while trotting down the stairs. Whether he marches off, disappointed that I hadn't pulled his dick out, or rushes out relieved to finally get away from that freak with the bizarre name.

I close the door and fall against it, quiet and cold. I wish I knew how to cry, I wish I could get this tangled knot of misery out of my body, through my eyes, through my nose, whatever it takes, just get it out of me.

The deaths of Mitchell and Doreen hadn't affected me like this, despite how I cherished them. I'd only met John this afternoon, made out with him and had dinner, a pleasant dinner, and now he's gone I feel like all the color drained from my world.

I look at my little apartment. Bought with blood money from my parents' death, furnished with trinkets from the men and women I whored myself out to. My breath catches in my throat as I look and look and can't see a single thing that doesn't utterly disgust me.

The plastic plates don't even have the dignity to shatter when I hurl them at the wall. Acts of vandalism don't satisfy me, anyhow. I can't stay here. I can't, I can't bear it.

I don't bother locking my apartment behind me, I don't bother bringing my keys or my wallet. I'm thinking of how repulsive my life is, how small I've made myself, how worthless.

I know, now, that I think this only so I don't have to imagine John coming home to Kevin's embrace, either making up some lie for how he spent his afternoon or, if they have a very modern relationship, maybe he'll tell Kevin everything about meeting me.

I'm thinking about all the men I've heard grunting into my ear, all the women moaning under me, all the hours I spent on my knees feeling so cunning for getting what I wanted without working for it. Well, not work you pay tax over.

I don't want to live like this! Not in that place with those things. How could I let this happen? Do I matter so little?

Oh, how I relished those dark and morbid thoughts, how I delighted in wallowing like a swine.

You know what that's like, right? When you feel so bad, with such an empty ache in your chest that all you can fill it with is sorrow and regret and the sorrow becomes so precious to you that you find yourself defending and protecting it.

Just like revenge.

Even when the voice of reason tries to convince you that you're being an idiot, that it's not so serious, you spit in its face and cling to your depressing delusions. Because it feels like they're all you have, and if you acknowledge that they're meaninless, then your pain is meaningless. And nothing meaningless could ever feel so awful.

It's purely by coincidence that I cross paths with the plumber dude, the bull, coming out of an all-night grocery store. He cracks a smile, thinking himself quite the charmer, shifting the brown paper bag of vegetables under one beefy arm. He's actually one of the nicer ones, by all rational measures, but that glint in his eyes still brings the taste of bile to my throat.

He's hoping to get lucky. I've always had an easy smile for him, always up for a good time... at least, on the two occasions I gave him the time of day. I made a point to dodge all requests for a phone number since I knew I'd only need him to fix my leaky pipes. In fairness, of course, I took care of his leaky pipe too.

And I'm so not in the mood for that right now. He starts with some pointless pleasantry – to his credit he keeps an honestly civil tongue, rather than launching immediately into sexual innuendo, so when I shoulder my way wordlessly past him you could say I'm being rather rude.

He certainly thinks so. “Hey, what the fuck? You got a problem with me?"

His truck's parked by the sidewalk and he dumps the groceries in the back, marching after me. He's head and shoulders taller than me, not counting his neatly dulled horns, so his stride is longer and he has no trouble keeping up with me. I wish I'd brought my hoodie so I'd have pockets to stuff my paws into. Isn't that a weird thought?

The bull easily keeps pace. “Hey, I'm talking to you. What's the deal?"

He taps me on the shoulder and I whirl on my sandals, swiping my arm to knock his away. “Don't you fucking touch me!" Quite the drama queen, me. I leave him stunned and run down the empty street, turning into the nearest alleyway. I stop and lean against a dumpster and the rusty metal feels so nice and cool against my burning fur.

I hear my own blood racing through my body and it sounds like the ocean crashing against a rocky scrag. I don't hear the boots, I don't hear the plumber bull at all until he's behind me. “Kid, what the fuck's your problem?"

I want him not to be here. I don't know what I want. No, I know exactly what I want. I want John and, like a child, I don't know what to do with myself now I can't have him. The bull gets his answer: I snarl and punch him in the chest, and again, and again because the fucker's stacked like a brick shithouse and he simply will not topple like I want him to.

“Now just a goddamn minute!" He's angry, and can you blame him? Here's a changeable little cocksucker freaking out at him for no good reason, and being none too gentle about it. He grabs my arms and I scream, he shoves me back against the dumpster and if I had my wits about me I'd recognize he's holding back. He just wants to calm me down, the big softy.

But I'm in a witless mood. I yowl like a kitten and kick at his legs, writhing in his grip till I get one arm free. I take a swing and oh, let me tell you, as bad as I feel about socking this guy in the jaw when he really hasn't done anything wrong, I throw a beauty of a lefty.

Only the bull's no wallflower and as soon as his head snaps back he lands a punch of his own in my stomach. I slam back against the dumpster, and the next hits me right in the cheek. “Who the fuck do you think you are?!"

That's the thing with heartache and depression, isn't it? It completely numbs you to any emotions but your own. Clearly I'm not the only one with pent-up feelings, and in lashing out I broke the dam that held back the plumber's flood.

I try to give as good as I get, but I'm built for grace, not strength and after another good knock against my temple I'm too dazed to land a good swipe with my claws.

There's a moment when I've just dodged a punch, his fist pummels the rusty dumpster, and he wheels back to take another crushing swing, when my predator instincts reveal a golden opportunity. He's off balance and fully exposed, and I'm perfectly poised to strike. My paw slices through the air with a speed only a feline can muster, going right for his jewels, and I end the fight right then and there.

I'm as surprised as he is when my paw lands firmly but gently on the bulge in his jeans. I meant to bust his piñata, I really did, but instead I'm kneading a sizeable erection. I look up at him, confused, and he meets my gaze and snorts.

I haven't sucked a dick so desperately in years. He's staggered back from the force of my furious hunger, clutching at the metalwork of a broken fire escpae behind him as he endures my onslaught. I gag myself on him, and I'm not even imagining doing it for John. I need this so badly, but it isn't scratching my itch.

I pull off with a growl and I see the horror in his eyes for the instant where he thinks it was all a trick and he'll soon feel the sting of fangs or claws on his preciousest of preciouses. Instead he finds me on my feet, unbuttoning my jeans and shoving them down to expose my perfectly formed backside, leading him by the dick to the least grimy bit of wall I can find.

Maybe there's people living in the ratty apartments above, maybe there's people walking by the street who can see us rutting down the alley; neither of us care. Whatever it was that came loose in him – unfaithfulness, homophobic closetedness or maybe he's just desperately lonely – he takes it out on my ass, and it's just what I need.

He talks to me, saying just the things I need to hear. He tells me to take it, he tells me I feel good, that he's almost there...

When he finishes inside me it's nothing short of cathartic. I feel my emotions draining away and reality returns to me. I'm in an alley, lit by the moon and the filtered light of the street lanterns, the cobbles cool under my bare paws...

No, wait. Not cobbles, concrete. Wet concrete. And there's sodium lights and moonless clouds overhead. Why was I thinking about cobbles and lanterns?

He's sheepish when he pulls out, but my smile reassures him, and just to show there's no hard fealings I kneel on the concrete and spend a minute or two gently cleaning him up before I tuck away his prize and carefully zip up his jeans.

We're walking back to his truck. “I'm sorry, kid." It's mighty gentlemanly of him to say, though we both know it was hardly his fault. “You're clearly going through some shit and I shoulda held back. I'm the bigger guy, after all."

“You're telling me," I say with a waggle of my eyebrows and feign a bow-legged walk, earning a chuckle and a dump on the shoulder.

“You need some place to spend the night, kid? A couch, I mean, no strings. Hell, I couldn't get it up if I tried. You know how to drain a fella."

“I thought you were married?"

“She filed for divorce last month, took the kids," he says quietly and the fact that he doesn't look me in the eye tells me that I'm at least part of the reason his marriage collapsed. Yeah, you can imagine I feel super awesome about that.

“I'll be fine. I'll be fine. Really." Neither of us believe the words I'm saying, but we're both feeling tireder with every step and he's less and less in the mood for adding my troubles to his own, so while he does the courteous thing and asks if I'm sure, if I'm really sure? He's glad when I reassure him, and drives off to his empty, loveless home.

And I slouch back to mine.

•

That's the longest I've ever felt sorry for myself, folks. All of forty-five minutes, followed by a fight and a fuck in an alley. I don't get any sleep but by the time dawn breaks I've got a plan ready to go.

I can legally sub-let my apartment for eighteen months at a stretch. I buy a Gazette from the newsstand around the corner as soon as it opens and call the number to place an ad. I take a streetcar at random, get off on a whim, then take another until I don't recognize where I am and wander the unfamiliar streets. I let fate make my decisions for me.

By the time I get home I've got three phone numbers for apartments I could rent. I've gone into four shops with some variation of a “We're hiring!" sign. Two outright rejections (all I've got is a high school diploma and no work experience), one on-the-spot interview with a polite handshake and a we'll-let-you-know, and an appointment for an interview two days from now.

A week later I've met five potential tennants and picked one, I've boxed up all the shit in my apartment and dumped everything I dind't need with Goodwill.

I'm gainfully employed stacking shelves in a small art supply store, on a fast track to cash register duty. My new apartment's actually bigger than the old one: less money buys you more space as you get farther away from the center of the city, it seems.

Another week later and I've bought new tableware and cutlery, and I feel a strange sense of pride when I drop the last of my plastic, ill-gotten bullshit into the trash. The only thing left is a box that I never even opened in my old place and which has a place of dubious honor in the storage closet of my new one. I'm not sentimental enough to open it and root through what little I brought with me to remember my parents by, but just knowing I still have those photos and mementos close by is comfort enough.

I'd love to tell you that throughout all this I didn't think about John, but you'd know I was lying. Maybe it's handling brushes and chisels and paints all day long, reminding me of the sawdust in his clothes. It doesn't hurt any less either, thinking about him, but I can feel myself getting tougher.

It's the longest I've gone without sex, but I don't feel that I need it. I didn't bother getting my number transferred to my new digs; I'm sure the new tennants got a few strangely silent calls from some of my old regulars who, hearing a strange voice, most likely immediately hung up and never ever called again.

I make friends, too. Casual ones. A coworker at the art store, a vixen with big loop earrings and a tongue-stud convinces me to help her and her friends out on a quiz night when they're a man short, and I gotta say, I have a great time.

I feel proud of myself. I feel like a man. Not the illusion of manhood that I crafted for myself when I had husbands and wives wrapped around my sexy little finger, I recognize that for the shallow waste of time it was.

It's fantastic, really. To look in my cutlery drawer and to know that I earned those knives and forks and spoons and chopsticks, that I spent an afternoon picking them out, weighing their pros and cons against my budget. To call up Simone, the vixen, or one of her friends, now quickly becoming my friends too, to see if they're up for dinner or a drink if I feel like company.

I'm still hurting, but like a wound I can feel it scabbing over. Not healing perfectly, but closing, at least, and bothering me less with its ache.

Until I hear someone biting into an apple, and my head whips around and my heart breaks again when I see it isn't John.

And in quiet, guilty moments, the pride of looking in my cutlery drawer or calling a friend for some company just isn't fucking enough.

•

And all the while, not too far away, the world is starting to come apart, and I'm none the wiser. Almost, that is. Clues are seeping into my life that I can't yet see, and when at night I dream of John that memory is so powerful that I forget all the other things I dreamed that night. All the things that could have warned me.

•

I come home and open my mail box. Flyers, bills, the usual, but one envelope sticks out. A big one, my address hand-written, and once inside I drop my groceries on the counter and tear open the envelope. There's something so exciting about unexpected mail, isn't there?

In it there's another envelope from TelFlorida and the mystery is solved before I even read the note that goes along with it.

“Not to be a dick or nothing, but I'm guessing this bill is from when you still lived here. Cool? Michelle and Steve

I remember my new tennant asking whether I'd have a problem with her boyfriend moving in before rambling on about how unsure she was about such a commitment. Nice to see she bit the bullet and asked him. I hope it works out for them.

And of course, it's cool. I should have thought that my last phone bill would be coming in at my old address and should have told them to just forward it to me.

I open the TelFlorida envelope, scan the summary page – fifty bucks, not too bad – and, I guess out of nostalgia, I sit down with a cup of chai to check out the call history.

These are the things a working man on a budget fills his evenings with: challenging himself to see how many phone numbers from his old life he can recognize from memory.

There's the wife of the city councilman, on whom I'd just started putting some moves at an upscale tea-house, remarking so casually on the beauty of her necklace, and was that Lacroix? Loneliness radiated off her and my opportunistic nose could sniff it out as soon as I walked into that place. I hadn't screwed her yet, but two days before I quit that life she'd invite me to tea at her house a week later.

I feel a pang of guilt. I really should call her with some bullshit story to at least make her feel like she wasn't outright rejected. As hungry as she is for companionship she'll buy anything; I don't even have to try so hard.

Maybe, we'll see. I'm done with that life, as you know, even though I don't stop inspectnig the numbers.

There's the construction foreman. That was always an exciting adventure; I'd call him on his work mobile and we'd converse covertly, speaking in code, and then I'd meet him at whatever site he was working during the crew break. I knew the combination to his trailer and I'd be waiting for him, naked, and he loved that. He was a savage in the sack, let me tell you.

There's the manager of that bowling alley. Four times that number appears in the list, but I happen to know, and I'm sure you'll think I'm bragging, that at least one of those calls was to his wife. I thought I was so clever, seeing how long I could juggle those two affairs, and wondered on occasion whether one infidelity cancels out another, and what might happen if they found out about each other. That would be an interesting session, wouldn't it?

My tea drops to the floor. My breath catches in my throat, I feel dizzy and the world swims before my eyes. When I blink I'm holding the phone to my ear, I hear the tones and I realize that I've just dialed the number without thinking.

It rings twice, and now that I've got my senses back my thumb moves to the Cancel Call button, but I miss my mark and hit 4 instead and then I hear a click.

“Kevin speaking, what's up?"

“Hi Kevin, this is Game." Yeah, I know. Real smooth. Classic. Totally in control of the sitatuion.

“Holy shit! The Game?"

“I... I guess." Look at me go! I'm a man with a plan, an unstoppable force of charismatic genius. “Is... is John...?"

Kevin isn't listening. “John! Get your ass in here, you'll never believe who I've got on the line!" With a laugh, he turns his attention back to me. “Don't you dare hang up on me, dude. I got Caller ID. John ain't stopped talking about you for a goddamn month and I can't take another second of it!"

•

You probably already guessed it, but Kevin's just John's roommate. I know, I know, I know, don't say it.

Don't.

While John and I awkwardly fail to converse on the phone Kevin grabs the handset and asks me to come over for lunch on Saturday, and when neither I nor John manage to respond sensibly, he calls it a done deal and hangs up.

Come Saturday it takes me two hours to pick out the perfect ensemble for my weekend lunch date, which is ridiculous because I own exactly three pairs of jeans, two button-ups and four t-shirts. I do look sensational by the end of it, admittedly.

I stop at a florist's to buy some roses, then feel like a total dipshit two blocks down and drop them in a trash can. Ten minutes later I'm jogging back to fish them out.

By the time I reach John's apartment I've oscillated through my indecisions and just snapped off one of the roses and stuck it in my breast pocket's buttonhoke, which actually looks kind of nice.

“Very slick, Casanova," Kevin says when he opens the door. He's a weasel, but firmly built and almost feline in his body language. “Come on in. John was jittery as a june bug so I bullied him into getting some fresh bagels for lunch, he'll be back soon. You're a tea guy, right? Sure you are! Take a seat."

I can't believe I spent the last month revisiting the fantasy of bashing his skull in with a plastic bowl. I like this guy.

He's charming in the way that I can be charming when I'm putting my moves on someone, but for him it's a little more... natural isn't the word. More like it's worn in with practice, you know? For both of us, that easy conversation is really a mask, but his mask is stapled on a little tighter than mine. His face has absorbed its contours, so to speak.

“You know he went to your house? Two weeks ago," Kevin says, pouring tea for us both. Rooibos, with floating cubes of dried apple. “He got quite a shock when strangers opened the door. Said it was fate, that was that, and he'd put you out of his mind." The weasel grins at me. “He didn't. Now, pardon me if I sound like a big brother here, but... I sure the hell hope you're worth it, you hear?"

I'm not flustered in the slightest; bullies have never had a hold on me, even when it was as well-meaning as this. I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd had a friend who cared about me the way Kevin cares about John. If I had, I'd never have left Carrick.

Carrick?

The thought slips from my mind as the door opens and I smell him before I see him. I'm drunk with the scent, canine and masculine, with a hint of the oil paint that clings to one's claws even after thorough scrubbing, just as I smelled when I first saw him in the library.

He cuts a splendid figure and we laugh as we each note that our attire unintentionally matches, both of us dressed in a style that's two years out of fashion. His jacket and waistcoat are burgundy while mine are navy, but both sport the same cut, the same fleur-de-lis and the same shock of gaudy lace jutting from the sleeves.

“Gentlemen," says Cavendish, rising with the eel-like ease that stems from a weasel's supple spine, “if you'll pardon me I'm expected at the club. I'm late as it is and I fear my bridge partner will fall to ruin if I don't make haste to rescue his fortune. Mister Kenna, it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Left alone, we stand in silence a while. Neither of us knows quite what to say, but neither are we uncomfortable. Merely seeing one another again is a balm to the ache we've both felt these long months.

“Summer seems not to have fled the country in quite the rush we thought," John says, the tan spots above his eyes dancing with a little playful mirth. “I thought we might take our tea in the garden. Would you join me?"

“With pleasure," I say, my tail flicking behind me. “Though if this plan of yours is some strategy to distract me from your art, you'll find yourself disappointed. My interest is not so easily swayed and I'll insist on a tour of your gallery before the sun sets."

“Then I have a few hours to invent a new deception," he says with a laugh, opening the door for me. I've no need to pass quite as close to him as I do, nor to linger before stepping through the door, but I'm weak, and my desire for John is a difficult thing to resist. I hear the little intake of breath as he sniffs at me, and my ears burn at the soft whisper that follows. “I know places far more private than my gallery."

John's family estate is modest by the standards of most aristocrats, but while I wanted for nothing as a ward of the Kennas I still feel dreadfully out of place among such splendor.

“My great grandfather was a sailor when he was my age, did you know that?" says John, as he guides me through the garden, bereft of flowers but no less lovely in the light of the setting sun. I glance at him to catch his smile, that irresistible smile, and my heart swells with the understanding that he's sensed my discomfort, striving to build a bridge between us. When has ever a man been endowed with such tender insight? “He saved the life of his Captain twice over and earned a field commission to officer. My family has reaped the rewards of naval service since then, as you can see."

“With all the recent scandals of corruption in Parliament, it's quite a comfort to know that some traditions still recognize meritorious service, and issue appropriate reward."

“You're an example of that yourself, my dear Game, if I'm to believe the gossip," John says, though I almost don't hear his words when we pass through an ivy arch and nature's beauty stills my heart.

A lake, the sun just easing past the tops of the trees that flank it, painting the water's still surface with golden glimmers. “Indeed," I say as I catch my breath. “Though my modest contribution to Sir Anthony's repuation hardly matches your great-grandfather's heroism. Is that a boat-house?" I ask, eagerly guiding our wandering boots down a gravel path in its direction.

“If memory serves, Sir Anthony was stripped of title and destined for the strop before you came to his defense. I'd say you were quite my forebear's equal. And it is indeed, though I've never ventured there," John says, with the faintest, faintest whisper of wistfulness in his voice. “I thought it wise to leave the seafaring to my brothers and heed, instead, the siren song of my muse."

“My father taught me to fish on a boat not unlike those. Would you let me be your Charon?" I sound so eager, so artless in my pleading, but I don't care. John makes me feel as though I can do no wrong. “If you're lacking two coins, I'm sure there's other prizes I might value just as much."

•

As we walk back under the cloak of darkness, shoulders bumping, I'm telling him about my youth, warts and all. Actually, it's pretty much nothing but warts, but when I discover I can set John to giggling by sharing some sophomoric prank I pulled in gloriously theatrical detail, I'm unstoppable. His laughter is music to my ears and by the time we get back to his apartment he's begging me to stop.

“I can't take any more, oh god, my sides..."

I lean against the wall as he sorts through his keys and jiggers the lock. “If you want me to stop, it'll cost ya."

“Anything! I'm at your mercy. Name your price."

Again, I have no reason to push quite so close to him when he holds the door open for me, nor to let my fingers brush against his beltline. “I want to see your gallery."

“My what?"

“Your paintings."

He laughs a little uncertainly, batting at my tail as he follows me up the stairs to his apartment. “I'm a sculptor, Game. I did a few paintings in art school, but those are back in Montana."

“I... I know. I meant your sculptures. Did I really say paintings?"

“Maybe I should pour us some wine, so the next time we get confused we have something to blame it on," he says as he lets me into his apartment and closes the door behind us.

My paws are on his shoulders and he freezes. It's the first time I've touched him, properly I mean, since I saw him. I peel his jacket off him, feeling the heat of the effortless muscles under his shirt. “The atelier's closed now, but we can go there tomorrow," he whispers, pressing back against me when I drop his jacket and step forward, wrapping my arms around him.

“I'm an artist too, you know," I whisper to him, licking at his neck, feeling him shiver aginst me. I reach past him and turn the latch on the door, without considering even for a second that Kevin is still out. My hands slide down his lean stomach, my claws coming out just enough to rake through the coarse fur before I tug the hem of his shirt and snake my fingers down the front of his jeans.

“Let me show you."

•

I'm no stranger to sex. I've been screwed, mounted and ridden, I've fucked, porked and plowed and there isn't a part of an adult body I haven't licked, sucked, or nibbled. But I've never made love, and I know how sappy that sounds, I know it, but this shit is something else.

Sex has always been a sport for me. Tab A goes into Slot B, click, aaaand release. Reading my partner's body and responding to them, giving them a chellenge, or yielding, or taking charge to the limit of what they like. And of course enjoying the hell out of it while I'm at it, high on the ego trip.

With John, I'm not playing to his needs as I perceive them. I am him. He's every bit as much a part of my body as my nose, and it's electric. His touch is electric. There's no other word for it.

His every touch is ecstasy. The taste of his lips, of his bare flesh, is cool water for endless thirst. Our bodies grind together, hard and strong and we're young and tireless and nothing slakes our desire. Not exhaustion, not climax, not a careless and painful tumble onto the floor in a tanle of arms and legs and lust.

I lose myself. Have you felt that? Do you understand what I mean? There are two kinds of things in the universe right now: everything, and him.

I see stars. No, not stars, I see sparks. We have only dim, cloud-shaded moonlight to see by, but where it gleams off his rough pelt, or the sheets, or the chandelier, or the bedposts or the furs on which we roll, I see sparkling trails of light.

Blue at first and then, inexplicably and wonderfully, red and yellow. Moonlight becomes torchlight and candle-light and magical tungsten; it becomes a lava lamp and a menorah and the glow of embers in the kiln. The floor is earth, then stone, then marble and wood and the bed is moss and silk and feather-down and nylon.

And for a sickening instant, John is alone. I see without eyes and the room is no longer a temple of chaos, no longer strewn with the evidence of our lovemaking. It's ordinary, and John is in bed, and asleep, and alone. I worry more for his solitude than my absence, but the worry is short-lived.

I'm back, and I'm on top of him and inside him, clutching at him in the exuberance of carnal knowledge, and he's on my back, thrusting into me with such force and hunger, and I'm between his strong legs, gorging myself on him, bringing him to his peak, and we're asleep, locked in embrace, chastely and peacefully and yearning fruitlessly for one another.

•

I have no way of knowing when we fall asleep. I know only that I awake in his arms, and as romantic as that sounds, if you've ever woken up on the floor in someone's arms you know there's all sorts of logistical issues with such an embrace. The arm I'm leaning on is so asleep it might be dead and the arm draped over my beloved John is cold and sore.

When his eyes flutter open, those handsome gold jewels, I see the wince before I hear it.

“Ow."

Cannons fire in the apartment, or maybe it's just the hearty knocking on the door that's amplified by my hazy brain. “I'll get it," I mutter without really thinking it through, too focused on my parchment-dry tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth and the vicious protests my joints issue when I roll onto my knees and stagger upright.

“Figured," says Kevin when I unlatch the door and open it for him, and he shoulders his way past me. “Christ, it smells like a whore-house in here – John, put some goddamn pants on. So did you just not hear me beating the door down last night or is this payback for something?"

“Dude, I'm sorry, I guess I didn't hear..."

“I had to call Jessica just to get a place to sleep. Fucking Jessica! You know how long it took to convince that crazy bitch I was through with her? I snuck outta her place before she woke up but she already left me three goddamn voicemails!"

I have enough of my wits about me not to get too close to this conversation, but I have to say, John looks super cute standing there so sheepishly, holding a cushion over his privates to protect his modesty.

Kevin's not giving an inch. He doesn't even take his shoes or jacket off, he just storms into his room and slams the door, yelling a final “Not cool!" before he turns his stereo to eleven and blasts out some Savatage.

I go to John to apologize, but he looks so suddenly defeated that I lose the words. I cup his cheek instead, canting my head in concern. “He gets like this when the cards don't go his way. He usually hides it better, though," John says, his voice weary and thin, but he makes the effort to kiss my hand and squeeze my hip, pressing nice and close to me on his way to the coffee machine.

“Poker?" I ask, finding my boxer shorts draped over the toaster for some reason, I pull them on, but when I notice John's sidelong glance, I make sure to do it nice and slowly. It's never a bad moment to put on a show for your... I want to say boyfriend. Wow.

John changes the filter, pours in some new grounds, half-fills the water reservoir and sighs. “Rent's gonna be tight this month," he says, looking at the wall separating us from Kevin, and which muffles, somewhat, the forceful overture of Gutter Ballet.

“It's Sunday, isn't it?" I ask, buttoning up my waistcoat. John yawns and nods, gesturing for the maid to pour us both a cup of tea, and suddenly his eyes go wide as saucers. I immediately and horribly deduce the source of his panic: “We're late for mass! We must hurry!"

“Mass? I didn't know you were religious," says John, holding a steaming cup of coffee out to me. I'm wearing a t-shirt and I don't understand why I'm trying to pluck non-existing lace from my non-existing sleeve. “It's cool, though. I grew up in Evangelical country, though obviously my Sunday school lessons didn't stick."

It smells like coffee and then tastes like tea and the surprise is so nauseating I have to set the cup down. “John, something's wrong," I say weakly, and it's quite an understatement. Everything's wrong, you see.

I feel faint and the world spins before my eyes and when I open them again I'm on the chaise longue, with John holding my hand and Cavendish pacing the floor while the family physician examines me.

No, goddammit, I'm on an unpartitioned bed in a noisy outer-city ER. John holds my hand and Kevin paces the floor while a first-year med student repeats everything he sees on the monitors.

This is the version I want. This is the version where I'm given the medicine that keeps me with John.

I'm not lying when I tell the nurse about my pain. It's in my head, but it's not like a headache. It's not like there's a part of my body that hurts. It's like there's pain, concentrated in one point of the universe, the one part where my eyes can't see.

I do lie to him when I say my confusion is over. I lie, not for my sake, but for John's. He looks so worried, and remember, we've only known each other for a very short period. Two days, spaced months apart. No, not months. Weeks. Remember, remember, remember.

I don't want him to think I'm crazy. I'm so selfish, scared, stupid. All the best personality traits start with S, don't they? Think about it.

When the physician approaches with a stethoscope and a small gleaming hammer I bite my lip and wait a moment, until the wave passes and the doctor is back in his white coat, with the PA system calling some garbled nonsense. He's still got his stethoscope, he still touches my temples and asks me to open my muzzle, all the while informing the med student what he's doing and why despite the student's bored, rolling eyes.

The doctor gives me a prescription for some pills. John drives me home, asks if I'm really okay, and says he'll drop by on Tuesday to check up on him but to call him if I need help. Kevin honks the horn outside, but we don't stop kissing in the doorway until I hear Mrs. MacInerny from 5B ambling up the stairs, the sourpuss. I go to the window to watch John get into the car, smiling up at me.

I take one pill with a glass of water, and in the hour that follows the waves retreat and I am more firmly grounded than I've ever felt.

•

There's a thing about dreams that you only recognize long after the fact, if you can hang on to the memory of them. In dreams you see people and visit places and experience events, but when you really think about it, you have no memories of those people actually physically being in your dream, or what those places look like, or how exactly those events occurred.

The brain is a wondrous thing, of course. It takes a crazy amount of sensory input, filters it for patterns, matches those with memories and then feeds it to your consciousness, like a servant delivering a transcribed letter, to let you do with it as you wish. But when you dream, it's as if all that gets skipped. The conclusions just pop into your mind without any data to draw them from.

Sometimes it's just a matter of mixing and matching in a bizarre way. You'll remember a face from your dream, a famous movie actress, but in your dream she's your mom. I don't mean that you're a movie actress's son, but that your mother, in that dream, looks like that. Even though you know, even then, that she actually looks different.

In a dream, those contradictions are permitted. Just as you can walk out of a door in one room and into a room in a completely different building, and back, and it's perfectly normal. Or maybe frightening, but then only because you're already scared, not because you have an existential epiphany.

Which, in a small way, is what I'm having right now. In my apartment, in 2006, holding the bottle of pills. An opiate of some sort, to treat acute migraine. I only have eight of them, less the one I just took; enough to last me until my scheduled check-up. Risk of addiction and abuse, and all that.

I spend an hour walking around my apartment. Picking things up, sniffing at them, licking them. I spent ten minutes on the floor, pressing my cheek against the linoleum.

I've taken drugs before. I was in high school, I was adventurous. Some pot at a party, and one time a tab of acid that I really didn't enjoy. I therefore have a rudimentary understanding of altered states of awareness, and the vague, shallow revelation that the world you inhabit is unreal. That it's not as solid and simple as you thought, that it has far-out properties you didn't understand before and that there's other stuff that's more important.

This wasn't like that at all. It was the exact opposite. It was a confrontation with solidity, with certainty. The things in my house, the clothes on my body, they were real in a way they'd never been before. Definite. Definitive.

I'm sure you've noticed it, if you'll pardon me stepping out of the moment just a bit. I don't mean the shift from Carrick to 2006 or to John's family estates in England, that's something else entirely and I'll deal with that in due time.

What I mean is this: which city am I living in right now? What season is it? How big is my apartment? What kind of furnishings do I have, do I own a television?

You've noticed how poorly I describe things around me. I just tell them to you, pre-processed. This happened there and it caused that and I give you none of the substance.

In the hours after taking that medicine, this is one of the things I reflect on. All my life I've accepted uncertainty as if it were normal and now I see that the world I live in is real, the memories of my entire life horrify me.

I don't know what my parents looked like, not really. I only know the impression of them. I root through my drawers until I remember I have that one unopened box in my storage closet, and rush to fetch it, and put it on my table.

My table is made of wood. It's painted black. It has six legs, two of which are collapsed unless I slide out the second tabletop to extend the table when I have friends over for dinner. I bought it when I made friends via the vixen at the art store. It cost $75 and I like it a lot.

The box has been on the table for five minutes while my fingers run over the black-lacquered wood, feeling it, knowing it, sensing all the details that never existed before. It didn't have a color before, it didn't have a texture. It was only the idea of a table.

I extend the claw on my forefinger – I'm a jaguar, did I mention that? – and slice through the tape that sealed the box. My only keepsakes from where I was raised, and by whom. And suddenly a terrible fear overcomes me, and I stop.

What if the box is empty? Or if the photos in it are blank? All I have of my parents, the Kennas who raised me to be a rambunctious terror, and a whore, and now at last a man, all I have of them is in here. What if there's nothing?

I push the box away. No, this isn't something I can deal with, I can't risk it. And they're dead, after all, that I'm pretty certain about. If all I have is the vague idea of them, then that's enough for me. I'd rather have that than risk knowing they were nothing.

The box goes back to the storage closet, and I go outside.

It's fall. The leaves are turning brown on the trees that line the sidewalk. It's just a little too cold to go out jacket-less, but I'm strong and fit and my body can heat itself. My shirt is light green and its sleeves end above my biceps; my jeans are beltless and show off my nice firm buns and a fair hint of my basket. I'm wearing sandals, which I usually only do when I wear my linen pants.

The people in this city are mostly herbivores, like most East Coast cities. I try not to be too obvious as I look at their faces, clothes and body language, marveling at just how real they are.

A brown colt with a white blaze on his forehead and a big-name rapper's gang brand on his bare chest argues with his mother on a cheap-ass cell-phone in Spanish, and tries not to cry. Two teenaged wolf girls in skinny jeans and loose blouses eye me up and clutch at each other in a fit of giggles when I pass, laughing at my sandals and whispering how 'metro' I look.

A parked car, a Toyota, bears a 'born again' fish sticker next to its numberplate. The Javanese-Surinaman Toko has a special offer on fried noodles; the sign is scrawled in pretty script on a black chalkboard in magenta chalk. There are two airplanes crossing the sky, their paths diverging. The traffic light turns green.

A labrador pup in a green skirt and a red jacket holds her handsome father's hand and impresses him by counting how many blue cars there are. He says he'll take her to get some ice cream if she can count all the red ones too. There's a nick in one of her ears and for some reason I suspect he once hit her and has lived in regret for years since.

The street becomes just a street. There are cars, and they're just cars. The people around me become people again, and I know they must wear clothes, and that clothes must have a color, but that's not what I see any more. The understanding comes in little gusts, when something passes from my view and I remember seeing it and I feel, flettingly, that I should remember more about it.

It hurts, but only a little. I lived my life like this for a long time, and while a few hours' respite under an opiate have opened my eyes to my condition, I don't feel it like a crushing weight. My shoulders have borne this life for many years, and they are strong.

I hold the bottle of pills and think of taking another. The doctor said something about opiates and their effects, but that was in the Haze. Maybe I should take one and call him so I can be sure I'll remember it right.

I imagine what it would be like to feel like I just did all the time, how wonderful it must be to be certain of everything, and for a moment I see myself in a tattered Navy uniform, lying on a silk-upholstered sofa in a dark, smoky room, sucking on a flexible tube with a pipe that feeds me fragrant smoke. I lie on that sofa forever and I'm certain of everything.

The vision becomes, I don't know, bigger somehow, like it's pushing my apartment away, like it's wrapping itself around me. When Kevin became Cavendish it was the same, but it was stealthier because it happened when I turned my head. Now it feels like a giant squid is wrapping its tentacles around me, and I'm scared of it.

The thoughts of Carrick or John's family estate, or even the ziggurat where I danced naked with paint in my fur – none of these frightened me. Even the vision of John alone in his bed only made me sad. But now, these snaking tendrils fill me with dread.

The opium den shoves aside my beloved black table, the smoke pours into my apartment, stinging my eyes. The sunlight dims outside the windows, which turn milky like cateracts and then hard like wood, dark, varnished, smoked wood.

I snatch the bottle of pills off my kitchen counter before it becomes a fireplace, and fall to the ground, being dragged feet-first toward the sofa where I lie in my tattered uniform and unseeing eyes. My claws scratch deep furrows in the floorboards, and I snarl and claw and pull but I'm dragged back toward the sofa all the same.

This place is a trap. That's why I'm scared of it. It's like a tunnel that's so narrow you can only crawl through it, and too narrow for you to turn.

I look into the unseeing eyes of my Navy self, and he looks so... small, to me. He can't go anywhere. He's chosen to cut himself off from the rest of me, from the other stories, by dosing himself day and night with that smoke.

I can't blame him. It's not as if I enjoy the world shifting around me – at least, now that I have the slightest inklink that it's actually happening, and that it's been happening all my life. I can understand the impulse to build walls around yourself, to keep you grounded, and his smoke does that for him.

But there are cracks in the wall. He can't get out, but I can still get in. Maybe he's doing it. Maybe he's so hollow inside, so desperate not to be a part of this convoluted story that he doesn't want to exist at all and pulls me into his world to take his place in the opium den.

I snatched the pills, believing that I could ground myself in my apartment and sever the den's hold on me, but now I understand my Navy counterpart, that plan is no option. I'll just wind up like him, a medicated zombie.

The shift is sudden and nauseating. I's as if gravity has reversed, as if I'm on a see-saw that just tipped precipitously backward. I slide away from the sofa bed, and the smell of smoke gives way to linoleum and antiseptics. Dark wood and firelight become cool, green-white walls in thick, high-gloss paint, color-coded stripes on the walls, orderlies with keys and radios and Taser batons and I'm sliding across the floor, still feet-first, toward a room where I'm convulsing on a bed.

Two men in white shirts and pants hold my arms down, a nurse jabs her pen between my frothing jaws to stop me from biting off my tongue while another nurse draws a syringe from a vial of syrupy ochre fluid. I thrash on the bed and fall to the floor, knocking the orderlies against the walls, causing one nurse to jab the other in the neck with the syringe, and I see myself.

I see myself being dragged across the floor by unseen forces, in anatomically flattering jeans and unseasonal sandals and a light green shirt with a bottle of pills in my paw. I see myself being pulled into a medicated trap more horrible than the opium den.

As I slide toward the open door I see myself looking back at me, shivering and trembling, naked and so, so skinny, with angry orderlies rushing down to grab me.

I see my weak, fragile self muster all my strength to punch an orderly in the nuts and tear his baton out of its holster.

I roll onto my back and open my mouth wide. I push the button and stab the taser deep inside, through my soft palate, and fry my brain.

I'm on the floor of my apartment, curled up in a ball, and I wish, as hard as I can ever remember, that I could cry.