“Ugh.” Theo sighs, forehead to knees. “Not exactly? I guess I’m still sort of soft launching. I’ve beentheyto all my friends for three years, but I haven’t fully retiredsheyet, because sometimes I can’t avoid it. It doesn’t feel like something I want to explain to my parents, and I’d rather die than see some stupid headline aboutSloane Flowerday’s Sister, Nonbinary Queen!I don’t want to have to correct every stranger who calls me a lady or mademoiselle or señorita. And at work, it would just be—I mean, hopeless. So it’s like, if I keepsheon the table for now, those things don’t feel so shitty. I can frame it in my head in a way that doesn’t hurt. Like pitching a really wonderful, complex, grippy Nebbiolo to a table and watching them order the house red because it’s familiar and they don’t have to think about it. It’s nottechnicallywrong, but. ..”
“You wish they would have tried.”
“I just think it’d give them a richer experience,” Theo says, smirking a little. “But, anyway, the people who know me best say, ‘That’s Theo, they’re my friend.’ And I’d like that to include you.”
My hand drifts reflexively to my chest, over my heart.
“That’s Theo. They’re my friend,” I try. “Yeah, it feels so much better that way. Meaty.”
They begin to grimace, but they can’t hide their laugh.
“Are you giving notes? On the mouthfeel of my pronouns?”
“Sure, yeah,” I say, laughing too. “Very nice vintage. Strong finish. Notes of dressing up as Indiana Jones for Halloween in fifth grade.”
“At least people knew what I was supposed to be. Everyone thought you were Abraham Lincoln in a dress.”
“How could I know that nobody would recognize Gustav Klimt? I was eleven!”
“Where did your mom even find a child-sized druid gown?”
“She sewed it herself,” I say, still laughing. “God, sometimes I worry she wastoosupportive.”
“She would have loved our Sonny and Cher.”
“Yeah,” I agree, softening. “That was a good night.”
A tour group streams out of the tower and passes us in a swish of sundress skirts and Bermuda shorts. We watch them in comfortable silence, listening to their guide recite the history of the campanile in Mandarin until they’re absorbed into the rest of the tourists filing through the square.
“I kind of love that we were both in drag the first time we slept together,” Theo says, returning to me. “Sex is better when the person you’re with really understands you, and understands how to look at you.”
I consider that.
“For what it’s worth. ..” I search for the right way to phrase it. “You know how attraction to men feels different from attraction to women? It has a different flavor, or comes from a different place.”
Theo nods; we’ve talked about this many times before. “Yeah.”
“Being. . .attracted to you,” I say, putting it mildly, “that has always come from another place completely. Or, maybe everywhere at the same time. But it’s never been like one or the other.”
“I like that,” they say.
Sun flashes off the gold in Theo’s eyes. The moment settles.
“So. ..” I say. “A regular thing?”
Theo grins. They reach out and briefly tangle our grease-smudged fingers, then jump to their feet. It’s almost time tomeet Fabrizio.
“Yeah,” Theo says. “But I did the work last time.”
“Oh, thework?”
“Your turn to make a move.” They take two steps backward, still grinning, bouncing on their heels. “I’ll be waiting.”
There is perhaps nothing as true, as enduring, as fitting a tribute to the Renaissance as being so horny you could die on the streets of Florence.
Filippo Lippi was a Carmelite monk when he fell for the nun who sat for his paintings of the Madonna. Botticelli yearned so passionately for his muse, Simonetta, that he painted her as Venus ten years after her death. Donatello was almost certainly unlacing his doppietto for Brunelleschi. Da Vinci wanted to hate-fuck Michelangelo, while Michelangelo was so obsessed with the young Tommaso Cavalieri that he sculpted himself in submission between the nude lord’s legs and called itVictory.Raphael essentially died of exhaustion from too much painting and fucking.
And I, I am standing on the black stones outside a caffetteria, watching Theo eat pastry.
