Queer, as he talks to me, and we stand facing each other, feet apart as strangers do, he tells me a dog is running loose on the other side of the lake. I glance at one shoulder of his naked torso as a bead of sweat forms from nothing, there, on his shoulder. I watch the droplet formed from his own flesh, break open, slowly make its way down the curve of his pectoral muscle, crossing his chest and creating a circular path around his taut nipple, then ever so slowly over his abdomen, visibly expanding and contracting from his heavy breath, and down, down into the waistband of his damp shorts.  All this I observe from behind my dark glasses, vaguely hearing the words uttered from his full lips.

I'm not from around here, he says. Why do I hear those words and not the others? I raise my finger to his lips, and with a small, fluid gesture, silence him. He does not flinch, only takes my finger, sucks on it,  caressing it subtly with his lips — for a fleeting second — and then lets go, as a small smile reveals itself on the corner of his lips, seeking out acknowledgement the way only our kind do, sending a sexual charge through me, and a flashing vision of bodies rolling and writhing in the dark, of soft sounds and body scents borne in those flesh dances you want not to end, that worship of the hotly immortal.

I feel his eyes on me, assessing me and my thoughts, which he’s trying to invade, I look away toward the water, still feeling his eyes on me.

I see the dog, I say, and swiftly jog away, looking back only once, lost in an erotic reverie, weightless.