I'm Your Man by Timothy James Beck

it.”
    In some ways, Gavin was right. My emotions about Daniel ran the gamut from anger to hurt, but I could usually block them out. Until I went to bed, when I’d replay the months before we broke up, trying to figure out how it happened. I’d thought we would be together forever.
    It was hard to know when the strain between us started. There wasn’t any one event; something easy to pinpoint like infidelity. Or the usual issues that broke people up, like money worries, incompatibility, a drinking problem, or family crap. Nor had the magic gone out of our relationship. Sometimes when we looked at each other, the entire world seemed to vanish, and he still made my heart race.
    There had been some tense moments because of friends, although we both got along great with Sheila, Josh, and Gretchen. Daniel was also originally from Eau Claire, and we had mutual friends there, including Adam Wilson, the computer genius that I’d recommended to Frank. Adam and I had become close friends, and I made a mental note to suggest that, in addition to helping us set up our systems at the new office, he take over Lillith Allure’s Web site from the company that presently handled many of Breslin Evans’ accounts.
    But Adam was part of a package deal. His boyfriend, Jeremy Caprellian, had been Daniel’s boyfriend only a few years before. They’d salvaged a friendship out of their bitter breakup; sometimes Daniel was a little too preoccupied by Jeremy to suit me. Still, once Jeremy moved to Wisconsin to be with Adam, he wasn’t always demanding Daniel’s time and attention the way he once had.
    It was Daniel’s other friends who caused problems. For several years, he’d performed as a female impersonator, becoming something of a Manhattan celebrity. Though he’d given up the job before I met him, many of the people from those days remained part of his family of friends.
    I felt as if someone was always asking Daniel for something. His time, his attention, his money. He never said no. Which was admirable, but it got tiring, especially the histrionics that accompanied breakups, cruel landlords, lost jobs, and traitorous friends—few of those whiners ever took the responsibility for their own misfortunes. I accepted that what Daniel did for them was his business, but it got annoying to live with a choir of poor-me victims singing in the background.
    Likewise, Daniel had issues with some of the people from my past. Although he understood my unwillingness to confront my parents with the truth about my sexuality, he didn’t always understand why I let it upset me so much. Nor did he like feeling that our relationship became invisible when we went to Eau Claire. But what he really didn’t like was the way I capitulated to Sydney. He could always sense when I’d heard from her. He didn’t ask for details about the money I gave her, but he found ways to silently communicate his disapproval.
    In retrospect, I supposed that it wasn’t what we fought about, but how we fought, that caused most of our problems. Daniel and I both tended to sit on our feelings until they exploded. By the time we got around to fighting, it was nastier than it needed to be. We could also both hold a grudge, so old issues tended to reappear during our fights, which didn’t help.
    In spite of that, we’d had no major problems until a few months after Daniel got his role as Angus Remington on Secret Splendor. I didn’t notice any changes at first. I’d always worked long hours, so most of our time together came on the weekends, whether we took trips upstate, enjoyed Manhattan nightlife, or just hung out at his place or mine. It gradually began to dawn on me that not only were Daniel and I no longer going out, but Daniel never went to Club Chaos, the nightclub where he’d once headlined as his alter ego, Princess 2Di4. Since his friends weren’t seeing him there, they tended to