One day she told me that they'd decided that my gender was divvied into two neat piles-Men and Guys. Basically, all the saints of the world: Men. The jerks, the players, the wet T-shirt contest aficionados? They were Guys.

And I kissed him back so hard, like I was trying to merge our bodies through our lips.

I'm also starting to wonder something else. If maybe the point of this crazy quest I'm on wasn't to help me find Willem. Maybe it was to help me find someone else entirely.

Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.

The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.

Travelling's not something you're good at. It's something you do. Like breathing. You can't work too much at it, or it feels like work. You have to surrender yourself to the chaos. To the accidents.

Standing here, in this quiet house where I can hear the birds chirping out back, I think I’m kind of getting the concept of closure. It’s no big dramatic before-after. It’s more like that melancholy feeling you get at the end of a really good vacation. Something special is ending, and you’re sad, but you can’t be that sad because, hey, it was good while it lasted, and there’ll be other vacations, other good times.