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did not return my wave; I couldn’t decide if her shadowed eyes were expressing perfect indifference or smoldering intensity, her signature form of ambiguity. I tried to turn from Alena’s gaze to talk with Sharon as if I’d barely noticed the former’s expression, but I spilled some of the wine as I lifted it to my lips. I glanced back at Alena, who was smiling slightly.
    It was impossible, as at most openings, to look at the art; indeed, the opening as a form, insofar as I understood it, was a ritual destruction of the conditions of viewing for the artifacts it was meant to celebrate. Sharon and I tried to circulate a little, and, while the afterglow was slowly diminishing, I still experienced softly colliding with so many bodies as a pleasure, not an irritation; it was as if the crowd were a single, sensate organism. I said hello to a few people I knew from art magazines for which I’d written, but soon I could tell Sharon wanted to leave, and we began to swim our way to Alena, to congratulate her and move on to a drink.
    Alena and Sharon kissed hello, but Alena and I didn’t touch. I explained, trying to feign cool, that Sharon and I were going to catch up somewhere quiet, but that she should text me when things were winding down and I’d come back to help clean up. She said thanks, but she doubted she’d need help; her tone implied my offer presumed a greater degree of intimacy than our exchange of fluids warranted.
    I was alarmed by the thoroughness of what I experienced as Alena’s dissimulation, felt almost gaslighted, as if our encounter on the apartment floor had never happened. Here I was, still flush from our coition, my senses and the city vibrating at one frequency, wanting nothing so much as to possess and be possessed by her again, while she looked at me with a detachment so total I felt as if I were the jealous ex she’d wanted to avoid, a bourgeois prude incapable of conceiving of the erotic outside the lexicon of property. Maybe she’d separated from me only so she could reencounter me coolly, asserting her capacity to establish insuperable distances no matter our physical proximity. On the one hand, I felt a jealous anger rising within me, a desire for her to desire me, the only kind of desire, Alex had once told me during a fight, I was able to sustain. On the other hand, I frankly admired how she appeared capable of taking or leaving me, of taking and leaving me simultaneously, found it exciting, inspiring even, as if the energy we had generated were now free to circulate more generally, charging everything a little—bodies, streetlights, mixed media.
    We walked west to a bar Sharon liked. It was lit in the speakeasy fashion, dark wood and a tooled tin ceiling, no music. “Jon says she knows Krav Maga. Remember to agree on a safe-word.” It was quiet enough to hear the bartender shaking an artisanal cocktail.
    â€œWhy do you assume I’m the submissive?” The drinks involved gin and grapefruit and were served in Collins glasses.
    â€œBecause you’re a pussy.” Sharon desired to be vulgar with an earnestness that defeated vulgarity.
    â€œI’m the one having casual sex in a stranger’s apartment with a mysterious woman who probably doesn’t care about me. You’re married.” I had officiated their wedding, first ordaining myself online.
    â€œShe cares about you, she just doesn’t attach.”
    â€œWhen a male octopus ‘attacks’ in the attempt to mate, it uses its suckers to grapple with its target and insert the hectocotylus.”
    â€œIf Alena ever reproduces, it’s going to be through fission.”
    â€œThe breath-play thing,” I said with the help of my second cocktail, “makes me nervous.”
    â€œWhat if you stopped worrying about protecting women from their desires?”
    Now we were walking down Delancey, a gas I hoped was only steam rising from the street vent.