1

The small room was full of warmth and camaraderie. There were no more than twenty people, but their presence filled it comfortably. At one end there was a small raised platform, on which stood a music stand. The remaining space was filled with chairs grouped around tables. A man, apparently in his middle years, stepped onto the platform, smiling broadly as he faced the gathering. In his appearance, dress and manner, he contrived to combine an air of fading gentility with a certain raffishness, expressed most obviously in the angle at which he wore his trilby hat.

"Welcome again, my friends to a night of art and intimacy, to our regular celebration of the word both spoken and sung. Performers are assembling among us of all ages, of both sexes and none, united none the less in one important particular, that being their skill and devotion to the arts of the word.

"We have so many eager contributors that there is no time to lose. Let's welcome our first contributor, who has the honour this evening of launching our session, I should say that few could discharge it as well as he. We have no need for names or superficial identities here, welcome, please our sailor of lost waterways, who will share with us his explorations of the most distant tributaries of love."

2

As the compere stepped down, his place was taken on the platform by a lean
and intense man, who carried the enigmas of youth with him into early middle age. The trim of his beard, and the intensity of his gaze suggested a benign Lenin, a man who might promulgate revolutions within the hearts and minds of those who already knew too much.

His voice discovered an unadorned melody, as his cadences filled the room like swirls of mist. He described forms of tenderness that had long been accounted sin. He was an adult and worldly Eros, who could wear the god's authority lightly on the lilting of his voice. He beheld his audience with his magical eye, enabling them to see how comfortably intimacy and warmth could wear the despised habit of the outcast. How love could blossom through the cracks of even the least promising opportunity.

His was the voice of those least visited parts of the city, where unusual pleasures were cultivated and pursued, where those who wore a common badge of rejection found a fragile solidarity in the tangle of their shared sensations.