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But Karl didn’t care what they thought. He truly believed this state of holy fury was the true nature of every white man—his true nature. What he wanted to be. Could be, with just a little more . . .

. . . application.

Go out into the woods, find your bear, kill it and wear its skin—into battle. And then—

“Battle?”

“Find a fight, get in it; shit, baby, what’d you think I meant?”

(I mean, this ain’t rocket science, here.)

“Okay: Skin, battle. Because . . . ?” I prompted.

“’Cause that’s how you change.” A pause, while I took this in. Adding: “Won’t work if it’s not your bear, though.”

“And you know this—how?” I asked. He just shrugged. And replied, simply—

“’Cause it hasn’t worked yet.”

( . . . yet.)

* * *

Skirting the lake, Karl

’s key already pulse-warm beneath my shirt; haven’t driven this route for two presidencies, but it’s not like I have to check the map. So I here I sit, letting the engine’s drone pull me past an endless panorama of long-forgotten sense-memory material: Grey walls of rocks, green-brown blur of trees—reflected light lapping back and forth, setting sun gone liquid all along the shore. Berkana in water, my tattooed rune’s next logical reading made flesh. Synchronic or coincidental, sports fans?

(You decide.)

The books agree, mainly: A time for self-assessment, for inward thinking. A time to relax, and count your blessings.

And: Ten years, I think, as I take the next hill. Three with Karl, seven without.

Ten . . . whole . . . years.

(Christ.)

Because sure, I know you must all be saying to yourselves, right about now: The sex sounds good, but there has to have been something else to keep Lee with this nutcase after the lovin’ was done, smart guy that he obviously are. Right? I mean, let’s not fool ourselves—freak sex, good or not, is kind of like pure Scotch: You can only drink it every day for just so long, before your insides spring a leak.

So what was I doing, exactly, while those initial years flew by—besides letting Karl have his wicked way with me anytime he wanted, that is? Well—

—not . . . a lot.

But lest you think I just lay there and took it the whole damn time, I might as well mention the other primary component of the whole Lee/Karl melange—the not-so-hidden character flaw Karl sniffed out in me that very first night, and lovingly nurtured every subsequent second we shared: My aforementioned temper, which tends to range—on a daily basis—from simple finger-snap snarkiness to outright barfight-picking piss-artistry. I’ve struggled with it all my life, and turning out gay has neither helped nor hindered, especially since the men I sleep with usually seem just as uncomfortable with my sudden flare-ups as those few women I forced myself to get jiggy with ever were. More so, in fact—because most guys don’t really know how to deal with rage, except by producing some of their own.

Not Karl, though. He didn’t want to be placated, or reassured, or soothed. Culturally, conflict was his medium; he expected it, required it.

Hell, he reveled in it.

“’Anger management problems,’” he repeated, after I—reluctantly—let slip the reason I still saw a psychiatrist twice each week. “You.”

I felt heat boil across my face, jaw- to hairline. “Yeah, me. So?”

“Like when you get riled you go all psycho, that it?” I stayed silent, as he continued, teasingly: “C’mon, seriously—like you can’t think? And you see red? And when some guy keeps comin’ after you, you start wantin’ to rip his guts out with your bare hands?”

Teeth gritted: “Something like that, yes.”

He chuckled, deep in his throat—came in close, doing that looming thing again. But this time, my blood was up. I showed him my teeth, all white and sharp . . . and he just laughed again, even harder, at the sight of them.