Hey man,

I just wanted to write and say I had a really good time at your wedding. It was great to spend some time with Mary, which I hadn’t really done before. I’m exceedingly happy for you guys. You both made me feel really comfortable. I guess I already knew this, but you’re both really good people.

To be honest, when you invited me to your wedding, at first I was nervous about going. I’ll even admit that part of me didn’t want to go at all. But don’t take it personally. I just felt guilty having not spoken to you in so long. When you asked me to be a groomsman, I didn’t think I deserved it. I have a knack at shutting people out, and I don’t really like the phone, and I automatically think it’s my fault that we don’t talk consistently. But I know your heart is in the right place.

Do you remember the time you said you hoped we’d still be friends at forty? That was almost ten years ago. We must have been twenty-three or so. I was driving and you were in the passenger seat. We’d just come around the curve at Dowd Junction, heading east on I-70. I can picture the moment clearly. I’m reminded of it nearly every time I drive there now. I guess that’s just how my memory works because the place seems really important. I made a conscious effort to remember the exact location, maybe because I thought I’d remember nothing twenty years from then. Or maybe I remember it so well because I feel like I betrayed you in that moment. I was already trying to remove, with a scalpel, my shy high-school self.

When I named this column “Love and Sensuality,” I mostly just liked the way the words sounded together—the way they complicate each other so that love either escalates or plunges into sensuality: Love could be a stepping-stone to Sensuality, or Love could be tainted by it; Love could be a crucial element of Sensuality, or Sensuality could be just another cheapened version of Love. I began to realize that Sensuality is a word that can only be understood through an intangible feeling, and soon after choosing the title, I realized I wasn’t entirely sure what constitutes a sensual feeling. Does it describe an experience beyond sexuality, like love enacted upon the senses? Or is sensuality just the receiving end of physical lust?

I knew I wanted something dramatic, maybe even exaggerated, to describe the extent of my blistering love for Lex. For that, Sensuality served me well. But the word nagged my sensibility when I thought about all the other kinds of love. In my head it was obvious, even cliché, to describe some interactions with food as sensual, but what about the experiences of friendship or familial love? Maybe a sensual feeling towards either of these things could be a form of perversion. I asked myself if I felt comfortable using this word to describe my experience of anything other than my life with Lex.

So I’ve decided to cut back on the Sensuality. I still plan to search for and discover sensuality in my life, as much as I can get; I get plenty of sensuality in my relationship with Lex. But for her sake and for mine, for the sake of our relationship, I can’t write about her and only her because I don’t want to overthink it. Nor can I write about Sensuality and only Sensuality. There is more that I want to say.