Chapter Three

1.Paragraph begins with: Thirty-seven years old, and I was hiding in my own bathroom…

Alexis:As a general rule, I try to avoid too much emphasis on sexual safety. I mean beyond what you'd get in a non-queer book. Because I think it can feel othering and potentially sort of shaming: reinforcing this idea that the only thing straight people have to worry about is pregnancy but queer folks are, you know, hideously diseased. I mean, obviously straight people can catch STIs just like anyone else, but it's not part of the rhetoric of straightness in the same way.

And, let's be very clear, licking someone's ejaculate from your finger is extremely low risk. But then Laurie is a doctor and kinky so I imagine he's got safety routines drilled into his brain—for better or worse. I mean, he later worries about Toby being in a car crash. It's just sort of who he is.

2.Paragraph begins with: Against the protests of my knees, I made it to my feet and into the shower…

Alexis: Anal retentive Hall (ARH) is on the case again over the double "own" here. But I'm leaving it because I like how it emphasises how lonely and disconnected Laurie is right now. His own hand. His own pleasure.

3. Paragraph begins with: "Oh my God." Whatever was in his voice…

Alexis:I'm kind of a sucker for this. Care when you don't deserve it. I mean, it's potentially quite a problematic trope. Obviously the idea of "deserving" things is messed up, but so is treating someone badly and then receiving kindness. But equally sometimes we need kindness most when we probably shouldn't get it.

4.Paragraph begins with: So we trooped upstairs, and I ran him a bath…

Alexis:I was going to celebrate a reference that hasn't dated, but apparently Radox Nourish has been discontinued.

I no longer recognise the world I live in.

5. Paragraph begins with: "Traditionally, baths are."

Alexis:Speaking of settling into old age, I have to admit that while there's part of me that's thinking, "well, this is a hot, intimate scene you wrote there," there's a much more significant part of me thinking, "wow, Laurie's bathroom sounds amazing."

6. Paragraph begins with: "How about…" His eyes gleamed at me.

Alexis:This is from ‘Dolores' by Algernon Charles Swinburne. It's a pretty weird poem, a sort of reversal of the idea of the sacred feminine into this grim figure of cruelty and punishment. It could be very subversive. Or it could just be Swinburne indulging his kinky imagination. Which he did a lot.

Swinburne (a contemporary of Wilde's) was kind of an extremely messy bench, even by the standards of the messy benches around him. In his youth he kind of went out of his way to exaggerate his own depravity, which including laying claim to bestiality, atheism, sodomy, vampirism, and necrophilia. Of those, Wilde claims he did exactly none, but I have read accounts of his life that argue that he probably experienced some kind of same-sex desire. Obviously, talking about queerness in a historical context is complicated because, while ideas around queerness as identity rather than queerness as act (sodomy) were beginning to emerge, it was still far from what we'd understand by queerness today. In any case, in later life Swinburne got super homophobic, maybe because he was genuinely terrified after what happened to Wilde, but who knows?

One aspect of his personality and sexual behaviour that is pretty comprehensively established, however, is that he was a raging masochist.

7. Paragraph begins with: He blinked at me through a coal-dark fringe of water-heavy lashes…

Alexis:And yes, I did name Laurie after the hero of Mary Renault's The Charioteer (one of my favourite books). Read into that what you will.

I mean, okay. There's not much to read into it. I wanted to pay homage to a book that means so much to me. And while I don't think this Laurie is very like that Laurie, I think they both grapple with shame and repression, their carnal natures and their better natures…the white and black horses of Plato's Phaedrus, which are so significant in The Charioteer.

8. Paragraph begins with: He splashed me.

Alexis:Of course, Toby's name carries its own literary connection. But I guess I'll get to that later.

9.Paragraph begins with: "They're not ugly, Toby."

Alexis:I know romance is a place of fantasy and that's not only okay but to be celebrated.

But I really do think there's also celebration to have in, you know, human bodies with all their flaws and challenges.