So I called him and invited him to have a drink with me that night. We had our drink and walked back to our dorm and sat down in the courtyard, just talking. It was June, two days before commencement. He was graduating, and I was graduating, too, sort of, but the envelope I was getting wouldn’t have a diploma in it. I had another semester of course work to complete.

Only the seniors were left at school, and most of them were in the courtyard. I felt exposed. Finally, getting up from the bench we’d been sitting on, my friend said, “Your place?” And we went to my dorm room, which was a single suite I had all to myself, with my own bathroom, because my neurologist had written a note to the university.

We sat on my futon, drinking out of a plastic bottle of vodka. Eventually he said, “Do you have any other rooms in this place?” and walked me to the bedroom, and lay me on my bed, and had intercourse with me. Then he asked me about the scabs on my chest from where the line had just been pulled out and listened to the things I told him, and held me very tightly.

Two mornings later, when we were in the courtyard again, seated in rows for graduation, he was wearing a buttoned shirt and sweating, because his neck was covered with bite marks.

Years passed. He and I wrote almost every day. I lived in one city and he lived in another. He told me some of his secrets, and I told him some of mine. Our letters were intimate, but I didn’t get around to explaining to him that I recovered from my disease only because he had selflessly had intercourse with an ugly version of a girl he once had a crush on.

A little less than seven years after I was cured of my disease through the mystical power of intercourse, my friend died of a sudden illness. I never told him about my magical cure, his sweet medicine. And I wish I could have saved his life. I hope he knew somehow that he had saved mine.