ABSTRACT
The circumstances surrounding the meeting at the party were not free of complication. I had, fresh from abroad, set about finding forms of companionship at a rate which surprised even me, and suitably astonished my friends. After numerous nomadic adventures I settled down into counseling and found myself seeing Thomas with some frequency. He was a municipal clerk who promised never to leave his mother, had "bunnies" for pets, and no intention of doing anything more with his life than paying off a new car, which he termed his "little yellow number." I think in retrospect I was meant to find this description endearing, though at the time my balking mind couldn't understand how one could wear a motor vehicle. Thomas had an array of friends to whom I was introduced quite soon after we met, but the fact that they referred to him as my "wife" seemed to me to foretell doom. He was neither a woman, nor a conjugal partner, and the inference of both had an unsettling effect on me. His friends seemed to have, in the main, stepped out of some television series set on another continent; they had airs of which I was in awe, and graces which seemed somewhat incongruous with their chosen professions: plumber, secretary, clerk, and so on.
