HAROLD AWOKE IN BED. He was naked and there was another man beside him. The man was young and thin and vaguely resembled a young Rob Lowe. He was kissing his arm. “So glad you finally came,” he said, nibbling away. A sense of dread and unease passed over Harold, for he could not recall how he wound up in bed with Rob Lowe and was even more put off by the idea of staying there in those sheets. “But I can’t have sex with you,” Harold told the man. “Why not?” he said, kissing his forearm. That’s what we’re here for.” Harold glanced at the man’s tight, hairy chest. Just the sight of it disgusted him. There was an utter revulsion at the chest and Harold cried aloud, “But you don’t have any breasts!” The man looked up at him suggestively and smiled. “I have a very lovely chest,” the man said. “What are you on about?”

After that, Harold fled. He collected his clothing from the floor and put on his shoes in the entrance way. Just looking at the man’s enormous, canoe-like masculine shoes made vomit inch its way up his throat. He did not like that he felt such disgust at the idea of it but, alas, the life of a young Lord Byron was not his. The man called out after him as he slammed the door.

***

The sick feeling haunted him all through the city, where he had strange encounters. He could not especially say what city it was, but it was hot and there were palm trees. It reminded him vaguely of Bangkok, for people were making food right on the street. Mango vendors, coconut vendors, fish soup vendors. One man, an American expat in a Hawaiian shirt, was stirring a cauldron of linguine, but washing his trousers in it at the same time. “It’s really too bad,” he told Harold, stirring. “The pants have been clean for a while, but the pasta still isn’t al dente!” Harold tried the trouser pasta but the American was right. The linguine still wasn’t ready.

Harold also encountered some urban DJ types perched around the fire escape to an apartment building. There followed some friendly banter about Radiohead and the Pharcyde, and how 1990s hip hop and alternative rock were actually two prongs of the same musical movement. “Which is why if you play ‘Passin’ Me By’ followed by ‘Creep,’ you’ll notice they’re absolutely seamless,” Harold said. The weird scenarios and discussions of the city were nice. They took his mind off the Rob Lowe Incident. But the trail of disgust followed him everywhere, a sad ominous cloud. He searched through the floors of his own subconscious. But on the topic of Byron’s Greek love, Harold could only find an innate distaste for the taste of his own kind.

***

Eventually his wandering brought him to an old windmill on the edge of town. Perched among the reeds of an inlet, he knew he was somewhere along the Atlantic coast, whether it was on Long Island or Massachusetts, or perhaps somewhere even farther north. He went into the old mill and was at once blinded by a warm, sun-like light. In its center, on the floor, sat a nude blonde woman. Her skin was a natural tawny color. At once, he fell into her big-bosomed embrace, and began to feel, for the first time since he was a small boy, a large and complete love, a love that was in harmony with the twirling spheres of the cosmos. He was naturally aroused, but again felt ashamed, for he did not know the voluptuous windmill lady. Or did he?

“Everything is wonderful,” she whispered to him, in a silky, almost inhuman voice. “Everything is fine, Harold Childe.” Harold then began to kiss the woman’s enormous breasts which, to his surprise, were tender and swollen. A delicious sweet milk began to run from her nipples, like birch juice runs from a springtime tap, and he lapped it. But how could she have milk? Was the woman pregnant? Or had she recently given birth? Again anxiety swirled around him. “I sincerely hope,” Harold whispered to the woman, “that you are not my mother.” The woman kissed him and said, “But I am the mother of everyone and everything. For I am fertility itself.”