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“10-16-13
I, soaking in the bath, O on the toilet, talking, talking about what he's been thinking and writing- short personal pieces, a memoir perhaps. He had brought with him two pillows to sit on and a very large red apple. He opens his mouth wide and takes a gigantic bite. I watch him chewing for quite a while. After he finishes, 'Bite me off a piece', I say. He does so, dislodges the apple from his mouth, and puts the piece in my mouth. We keep talking. I add more hot water. Every other bite, he gives to me.
There is a quiet moment, and then, seemingly apropos of nothing, O says: 'I am glad to be on planet Earth with you. It would be so much lonelier otherwise.'
I reach for his hand and hold it,
'I, too,' I say.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“12-27-10
Palace Hotel, San Francisco- Over Christmas
In bed, lights out:
O: 'Oh, oh, oh...!'
I: 'What was that for?'
O: 'I found your fifth rib.'
In the middle of the night: 'Wouldn't it be nice if we could dream together?' O whispers.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“2-1-10:
A languid Sunday, afternoon turned into evening, evening into night, night into morning.
'I just want to enjoy your nextness and nearness,' O says.
He puts his ear to my chest and listens to my heart and counts the beats.
'Sixty-two,' he says with a satisfied smile, and I can't imagine anything more intimate.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“He'd been thinking about the quality of sunshine, that is, how daylight wipes away the stars and the planets, making them invisible to human eyes. If one needed the darkness in order to see the heavens, might daylight be a form of blindness? Could it be that sound was also a form of deafness? If so, what was silence?”
― Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing