Dear Oscar,

I am wondering how to address you after so long, what to say, how to communicate the world we are now in to the world that you inhabited ….

In many ways – in awful ways – it is exactly the same; people are still persecuted for their passions, for their loves, for their stolen moments and primal urges, for having a good time, for giving into their nurture or their nature.

In some ways things have changed: there is an identity, a way of being which allows for a certain level of intimacy between loving souls – proscribed ways – controlled ways with levels of control varying across the globe, dependent upon social mores and social understanding. There are ways of being that permit the holding of hands, some kissing, and behind closed doors an absolute of congress, whatever that may be. There was always a locking of eyes, a long held recognition, a fleeting engagement – through millenia. An understanding. I wonder if now the new proscriptions limit and inhibit, set parameters which cannot be breached, dictate a state permitted.

Variance is still not encouraged.

There are laws and there are rituals, and dependent upon where you find yourself on the surface of the globe, in whose company, how observed, how interpreted, you can live as a free sexual entity, or you can die in trying to attain and express that freedom.

I love what you were trying to do; it is as difficult now to try to do what you might want to do as it ever was for you.

Your loving friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.