Moving between lover and friend is like walking over one of those rope bridges you see in movies over crocodile-filled gorges and raging torrents. There are gaps, there a loose planks, the rope is rotting. I can do it – just as long as I don’t look back and you don’t make me look down.
He left me in a palazzo on the Grand Canal to walk rope bridges in Africa, but I’ve had no practice.
Postcards from the Slough of Despond 