Day 4

“I could not touch him, although I wanted to; I dared not touch him, although he needed just the slightest touch, the merest sign at that moment more than anything else in the world.”
A complex and troubled sequence revealing honesty, guilt, and fear.

The passage about how successful hunters become the hunted has a Baldwin echo:
"And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That’s all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn’t care.”–Giovanni's Room

"I called Alfred Bowles from a telephone booth at the far end of the park."
Loneliness, disorder, truth-seeking, self-doubt: this story had to go here, and it did.

“But it all feels in service of conveying the dark, confusing, self-loathing that comes with questioning one's sexuality. I think it's what makes the story—and the scene where he calls Alfred late at night in particular—so compelling.”
A great reading of the story by Ruben Reyes.