Sex, she thought, as she watched his body hit the winds, was being massaged by one's own hormones, turned on by oneself, or more accurately one's sense of pleasure, and making love to fantasies of one's mind rather than the individual locked into one's body. Yet she was titillated if not inveigled by such physical pleasures that kept her imagination more bound than what she would have liked. Sensate hungers of animals and men were ineluctable but inconsequential "things" that she would not allow to be the synopsis of herself even if upon occasion she explored these appetites fully. This night was more than just diving into sensual experiences when she could no longer stay logical without slipping into a philosophical void: it had been a sociological experiment of seducing the opposite sex in a gay bar called "Heaven" more from compassionate and empathic dialogue than sexual ploys; it had been because of the humidity of Houston; it had been...she was not sure what it was. She, having gone with some of her gay friends to "Heaven," had become one of those "fag hags" that such non-lesbian gay bar-going women are often called. Ostensibly, the night had been so different and so speciously amusing but really any nightclub was the same: that same loneliness and that same sense that appetites were fueling a human form like a smart bomb that was out of control. She scorned having had sympathy for him. She rebuked herself for having sympathy for situations that did not exist, which was so much worse. To think that he had been in a closet crying was worse than insane for one who was so proud of her logical skills, and so believing that she could stare down the eyes of wild leopards and not shirk from the eyes of lepers. Sorrow for him, she told herself, was a brief misfiring of neurons in an awkward situation that brought on a second of a brief hallucination and an emotional barricade that she now had to scurry around. Gabriele ate a piece of cold toast abandoned near the bacon. She did not delude herself: he had prepared this meal (such as it was) to minimize his feelings that he had used her, although really she had used him. She was hungry so she ate. The fact that it was cold showed his hostility toward her. She knew this but ate the toast with a smirk on her face. A minute later, she took out some snuff from her purse and a cold beer from the refrigerator and then went onto the porch. Outside, the wind was still bringing the coolness of winter nights that the sun beat down with the days. She drank and watched him. She felt repulsion for her one-night stand and wanted to get into her car, which would move her to her apartment, exclusive to herself and her logic. The impulse to play, however, was too much; so after mildly draining the tobacco-saliva from her mouth into the beer can, she crossed Dunlavy street to join him on the swing set.