EXCERPT FROM "Last Night on Smithfield Street"

“You fell for me first,” I said to Key. “Everything about you was glazed with fluffy emotions like those horrible Lifetime movies.”

We circled each other in our bedroom like Walt Disney birds, preparing for brunch with the Queens of Willow Street, Vince and Kyle, our Sunday morning dates for the last gazillion years. Our preparation dance was a queer musical of sorts with a lot of primping, hair gel, hair removal, tucking, flattening, and poking. The only thing it was missing was a song out of Hairspray, I believed.

“Was Lifetime even around then, Robby?” Key asked at my right side. Both of us stood in front of the mirror in our Architectural Digest-styled bedroom. We were in nothing more than our boxer-briefs, aging together in a simple life: the real estate agent and the writer. He was still thin at forty-seven, but he didn’t really look like a young Nicholas Cage anymore. I had gained a few pounds and was starting to look like my mother -- God forbid! Key could eat the Bakery on Potomac and not gain a pound. I used Weight Watchers and gained twenty pounds. He still sported those sultry green eyes that had melted me twenty years before. I surmised often that they were magical: pools of intimacy, unrelenting dreams of spending his life with me, and tender. He still worked out. I liked to shop on-line. He remodeled the kitchen. I wrote another book: Skin Diver.

“Yes, Lifetime was around then. But Bravo wasn’t ... nor was the Internet.”

“They didn’t have sexting or iPads or Tom Toms.”

“Or the term green.”

“Lady Gaga was a baby and Bill Clinton was President.”

“You mean Hillary. She ran the government back then. Balls to the wall, baby. Every queer wanted her to be the President.”

“And then came Monica Lewinski ... literally.”

“I loved her. She knew how to treat a man.”

“You know how to treat a man.”

“You’re just trying to get in my pants again.”

“You know all my little, dirty secrets.” He turned and faced me, wrapped his arms around my waist, drew our bare chests together, and kissed my neck.

I knew he wanted sex; he loved sex in the mornings. “Although your invitation to seduce me is flattering, we can’t make love because we’ll be late for brunch.”

Key pulled his lips away from my neck, breathed in my skin, and said, “The Queens of Willow Street will understand.”

I shook my head. “The Queens of Willow Street will be pissed off. You never want to ruffle their feathers.”

He left out a sigh of disappointment and pulled away from me. “In 1994, you would have jumped all over my invitation to boff me.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s when I had a drinking problem.”

“And cocaine.”

“Yes, that too.”

“You stayed at my side ... even when I was being stupid.”

“Stupid was sometimes sexy on you.”

“You were my rock.”

“I am still your rock.”

His green eyes sparkled again; magic swirled in their coal-black pupils. “A quickie is in motion, Key.”

“I love quickies,” he admitted, went for my belt buckle, and fell to his knees, devouring my skin again.