I used to contain a consuming cynicism about an old lover who scorned me and moved to NY. But the last time I slept with him on one of his homeward visits, laying in bed naked after cleaning ourselves, our hands slippery and entwined, he recanted the most tender story of when he first felt attraction towards a man, a boy who would order black coffee at the kiosk where he worked at LAX and of how he subconsciously started to dress fancier to impress the young man and would serve his beverages free of charge, all the meanwhile unbeknownst of the strange desires burgeoning within himself. The image dripped and clung to my mind like honey, invincible and sweet, and I felt strangely touched that this man who could clearly never learn to love me had at one point in his life allowed his heart to flutter and the frosty bitterness in my chest swiftly melted to reveal an organ that could still pulse.