It was always “I can’t work! I can’t think!” That was the holy invocation between us, the litany, the chant, the ceremonial admission that eroticized and restored. Either he would rage, “I can’t work!” or I would, and that phrase punctured the compression chamber into which we had sealed ourselves. The inability to work was the only unembarrassed, unafraid admission we could make to one another. In the act of announcing this frailty we reminded ourselves of the superior nature of our common sensitivity and felt safe from the judgment we each feared in the other. To be wretched in the name of
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