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just started doing it. I suddenly started jerking around, spasmodically twisting my body until I fell onto the asphalt, writhing in what I didn’t even know, just writhing, like what I imagine someone having a fit would do, a physical seizure, and I could tell the man was dumbfounded. I was shaking my head, letting the spittle spill from my mouth, and I could hear him tell me I’d better not be faking it. He said he was going to take me to some jail and I’d be butt-fucked by certain inmates at this particular jail. So I kept writhing.
    Alex, at this point, kneeled over me, and I wanted to signal to him that I was fine, but because the trooper was watching I had to keep writhing, surreptitiously winking at Alex, who kept asking me if I was all right. I tried to let him know that I was, but I didn’t stop writhing.
    Until the trooper pulled from his car a first-aid kit. He took out some smelling salts and he cracked open two candy-sized cartridges and jammed them up my nostrils. Smelling salts are supposed to be wafted near the nose, but he stuck them into my nose. And so, as my writhing subsided, I lay there, breathing through my clenched mouth. I could hear Alex somewhere over my head admonishing me to “keep breathing, keep breathing,” and what a stupid thing to say, I thought. Of course I’m breathing. How can I not keep breathing? But in thinking what a stupid thing it was, I momentarily took my mind off the trooper. Momentarily my anger ran out of fuel. And at that point I could have added some fuel, could have fanned the flames of the struggle I was having, and the thing that changed was the realization of what I was struggling for.
    I started thinking about Anne.
    I sat up and looked at the patrolman. He was just a person, no worse than anybody else. He had the rounded shoulders of a man past his physical prime, and I could see how he might’ve felt threatened, somewhat, by my aggressive gesture. I offered a conciliatory remark, like “I’m sorry if I freaked you out” or “I got a little excited,” and we started talking. He took the broken pellets out of my nose. Still cuffed, I told him about Anne, and about why I was seeming so desperate, and he must have had a sympathetic streak. He indicated his understanding of my predicament by tying it into the passion he had for fly fishing. I could see he was attempting a rapprochement, and as we talked, the anger, which had seemed so liberating a moment ago, now seemed, in light of my desire to be with Anne, not very helpful. So I held it in. For Anne’s sake. I listened to his fly-fishing monologue, nodding at appropriate times, and in this way I created—or we created—a sense of fellow feeling. We were getting along, finding our commonality, and after about a half hour of this relational negotiation he unlocked the handcuffs, gave me a warning, and then he let us drive away.

5.
    Your arms. They’re my favorite parts of your body, from the wrist bone up through the fine hairs of your forearm, the loose skin inside your elbow, to the taut flexors and extensors of your upper arm, turning gently into shoulder and collarbone and neck. There are certain sleeveless shirts you wear, and when you do I feel like taking those arms, like autonomous entities, holding them above your head, and running my nose down their entire velvet length. I would melt into those arms if I could, but instead I do the closest thing, kissing the delicate skin of your biceps, taking into my mouth the whole fibrous mass of muscle under your skin. Because you’re strong, and because you see yourself as strong, you like to do things. You like rock climbing. We both do. We aren’t experts, but I remember one night, riding on our bikes in the wind to a health club in midtown with a faux rock wall where people practice their ascents. You’re wearing a tank top and bicycle shorts and we rent the special shoes and helmets and