PROLOGUE
This is our secret history.

The furtive exchange of aliases under cover of icy Washington night, in a former life...Form superseding content superseding form...The structure of one final betrayal...

In my dreams, it is eight years ago, and you are still standing there at the side of the road on a cliff next to the ocean. Your hair caught in the wind. The cliffs behind you, below you.

Your heart even then already four thousand years away.

18/19 JANUARY
DISENGAGEDETACHDISEMBARK
Four a.m. in the Valley, already drunk, the sound of freeway in my ears, the ever-present ebb, and flow. Time's most perfect timing.

Today I will detach and float above the earth and then later, you will detach and float above the earth, and maybe our paths will collide again at thirty-one thousand feet. In the unlikely event of an emergency, please remain calm and seated. A mask will drop down in front of your disbelieving eyes. Please place the mask over your face and breathe in deeply until you become light-headed and filled with meaning, and purpose. At this point, you may consider using the bottom cushion of your seat as a floatation device or, alternatively, as an excuse to skip the next lifetime altogether.

Maybe there will be storm delays over parts of the South, and Midwest, one last stay of execution, before the final detachment. I picture you there in the airport, sitting alone with one carefully measured carryon. You are looking at a blue wall of Departure and Arrival monitors, blinking now and then, waiting for something better to come along. I watch you for hours from across the terminal, mesmerized, waiting as well, but even from this distance, I can see it: not the faintest trace of what once passed between us.

I offer you a daisy for a donation; you feign nonrecognition, and decline.

20 JANUARY
DISSENTDISPERSEDISSOLVE
In the crowds, maybe, I will see you there, waving your small cold fists, watching the parade, and it will be a brief, knowing glance between us, eight years in the blink of an eye, before I dissolve again into the mass like any other anonymous stranger you once thought you never knew. Just another piece of variety to you. This is the rewritten history of our love. A mass variety of bodies, the fun of emotional terrorism, the final dissolution of a heart.

Detach. Disperse. Nothing left to see here but a series of broken condoms, and words. Move along now.

I am still drunk.

Signs in Dupont Circle:

BIGOT UNQUALIFIED STUPID HIDEOUS

DISRESPECTFULLY, I DISSENT

I'M HOT FOR YOUR LESBIAN DAUGHTER

THE THINGS WE GET FOR THE THINGS WE GIVE UP

TV TOLD ME TO

ILLEGITIMATION NATION

INJUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT

THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU BLINKED AND LOST ME IN THE CROWD FOREVER

LAST DAYS OF BABYLON

WE KNOW YOU—YOUR FATHER WAS A KILLER TOO

THE PEOPLE UNITED CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED

THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE

15th and P: a black man stands next to a church and blows The Stars and Stripes Forever through a battered muted trumpet; he cheers the marchers on, and hands out jars, and torches, and horns.

In this Period of the (non)Judges, it is Gideon’s finest moment.

Rerouted at K Street—WHOSE STREETS OUR STREETS—anarchists on telephone poles, quick movement down an alleyway around impromptu human barricades.

Along the parade route, an old drunkard sways and grabs at snatches of chants where he can, and at some point, he turns to me, and leans precariously, and says, Yesterday our love was a telephone game between children, whispers passed around the room from one person to the next, again and again, till we were nothing more than shadow referents of a nonexistent species, just one more haphazard gathering of chattering monkeys in simulation sweaters, and rain boots, and silver watches, and poorly spliced DNA.

Somewhere above us, from rooftops, from behind darkened windows, from quietly circling satellites, our images are being gathered, and stored. I picture us caught on the same roll of film together, reduced to background filler for secret government surveillance slides, our cold wet faces permanently separated by the crowds and a growing lack of awareness and the spacing of mere frames—

—in a split second, the thief has stolen by us, windows up, face as concealed as always. I picture myself taking form later, in his dreams, on TV, a sea of rage around him, the shapes of angry mouths around his true name, the mass face of bitter angry truth.

21 JANUARY
DISSIMULATEDISSIMULATEDISSIMULATE
It's too horrible to consider the possibilities of what really transpired those eight years between us. A million recounts will never clarify the (un)truth of our love for one another. There is no Zapruder here standing on the edges, camera in hand, waiting to catch that defining moment when you lean and reach in desperation for the rapidly detaching bits of brain and skull at the back of my head. The media coverage of our short time together was sorely, mysteriously, miraculously lacking. I will have to piece together my own theory of conspiracy—home video footage, photographs, handwritten notes, emails, television scripts, mug shots, secret meetings with the KGB, the spare key to J. Edgar Hoover's vacation chateau in Switzerland, the longitude and latitude of Rachel, Nevada.

Somewhere high in the atmosphere, flames all around us, the sounds of children and adults crying, and praying through tear gas, we fought one final time over the last unopened bag of honeyroasted peanuts. You won, of course, but almost immediately I sensed regret in the tips of your fingers, and the taste of salt on your tongue was a bittersweet reminder of all the thousands of words that had clung there and died over the years.

Floating now, survival mode kicks in, and I realize (convince myself) that you were right all along—I caught the wrong transfer back in Denver, and now all my baggage has been rerouted to an airport that has not yet been built. In the blue prints there are markings indicating the haphazard placement of my suitcases and boxes. They lie scattered over x-ray belts, and tarpaulin, and German shepherds sniff at them suspiciously. In one of the bags is a picture of us on a street in New Orleans at night. Drunk, you are struggling to unzip my pants. There is a mask on your head—it leers up at me at an angle in your hair and calls out to me, SHOW US YOUR VAS DEFERENS. Red and green and yellow and white feathers.

Errant deviant members of the Zulu Krewe.

In another picture you are looking directly into the camera, your face almost pressed to the lens, and in this one, you are telling the truth for once, clearly, directly...

Sober now, this is the one I cling to on the open sea, and for a few moments, I am held aloft, before water and salt set in, and the dissolution begins.

EPILOGUE
A variety of exciting new colors and styles to choose from.
A variety of makes, and models.
A variety of reasons, and excuses.
A variety of shared memories.
A variety of intertwining lifetimes.
A variety of extra value meals.
A variety of stock options.
A variety of zesty tastes and fruity fruit flavors.
A variety of missed opportunities.
A variety of unspoken words.
A variety of simulated motions, and vocalizations.
A variety of paralyzing fears.
A variety of one true loves.
A variety of ways to avoid speaking truth.
A variety of ways to say I will always love you.
A variety of ways to finally say goodbye