Who am I to talk?

When Madonna calls at six in the morning, although she tries to sound like any one of the rest of my internationally famous and concerned pop star friends, I can tell it is yet another of her passive-aggressive attempts at getting a jab in. She is aware of how much I have been working lately and calls to remind me that "All work and no play makes Dick a dull boy." How she revels in quoting herself off of the Tracy soundtrack. Then, feigning concern over the time difference between her country of adopted intonation and that of her language acquisition's origin, "Oh dear, did I wake you? I completely forgot about the time difference. I'm sorry..."

I interrupt and tell her that it is not a problem, that she could not have woken me as I have not yet gone to bed. "Don't cry for me om shanti, om shanti, quack, quack, quack and all that. Goodbye!"

As I put the phone down, Valentino parts the mosquito net he has set up around the hookah in the middle of the room. He cheerfully pats one of the many genuine indigenous Guatemalan throw pillows atop which we have been sodomizing each other, and motions for me to come inside.

Valentino, as you already know, is a gay romantic interest from a previous decade. All the more reason, perhaps, for you to think it odd to find us cavorting together again this hot Sonoran morning.

You know the story of our meeting due to a muffin mix up at the cafe of the Golden Gate branch of the YMCA in San Francisco's swank Lower Knob neighborhood. And you have patiently listened time and again as I relate the details of Valentino's shady, though chemically sound, work with political action committees and multi-level marketing schemes along the river banks in Sacramento.

You did not take sides when I told you of how after what began as a week of intimate bliss and spiritual discovery in Mexico City, we had our final falling out when the mescaline wore off and we found ourselves in a bitter dispute over the hypothetical ownership of Mario Lanza's dental records, and I want you to know I appreciate it.

You are quite aware too, that later that day when we kissed goodbye at the airport, perhaps sensing that "ours" had run "its" course, we both wept as he whispered in my ear the refrain to a Whitney Houston song popular at the time, and I immediately felt as though I could not breathe, knowing then and there that one of us had to put a stop to the madness. I also know that you know that when I phoned him a week later to break things off, I felt guilty because it was a hurried and cold gesture made as I was rushing to meet with themustachioed director of the language school where I was an English instructor.

And since this story always ends with you asking me to please not tell you about how the director, an intimidatingly quiet and extremely superstitious man with a keychain bearing the inscription come lo que sea, insisted I meet him for tongue tacos each week, I will not recount any of these things to you again.

Did you know, though, that I lost twenty pounds that year without even trying? It is true.

Anyhow, given our past, it must have seemed queer to anyone, not just the people who know us as well as those who pretend not to know us, to see Valentino and I there together in that Tucson crosswalk, so far from anyplace in our past and yet so close to each other's person, laughing as we recalled our favorite Flying Nun episodes.

You know, standing there in that very same favorite Jane Olivor concert tee of his he always wears when he travels, he looked just as he did when I last saw him some nine years before, except more aged and no longer encumbered with the worries he used to have about his thinning hair. He looked at peace with it all, and that counts for so much.

Besides, who am I to talk? I mean, I was bicycling home from the gym myself and must have been somewhat disproportionately pumped and breathlessly ruddy, and my hair, which is probably too thick to be practical in this clime, was matted and dripping with perspiration. So it is not as if I think time has been any less kind to me.