Alec

by William di Canzio

“Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Nothing else but just ‘my friend,’ he trying to help you and you, him. A friend,” he repeated, sentimental suddenly. “Someone to last your whole life and you, his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.”

He knew that the Church and the law were wrong and that his own desires were right because they had led him to Maurice. Their night of happiness had vindicated him, redeemed the loneliness and confusion, proven the truth, the goodness, of his desires.

It’s a risk, so’s everything else, and we’ll only live once.”

“But love, I soon learned, and as you know well, takes far more effort than sex. We’ve so few models, men like us, for intimacy, for devotion that endures. By no fault of our own. How many of our stories have been expunged—from history, from memory? With no stories, we’re made to feel alone, unnatural, ashamed.