
A shared bed is warmer.
(Nils-Aslak Valkeapää)
Beltanes up at Sioux Portage were always cold, and that was the year that it snowed while we were dancing the Maypole.
I was skinny as a boy well into my 30s. In the time that it took to empty my bladder and fumble my way back into the tent, I was already shivering uncontrollably.
Fortunately, I had offered tent-room to my friend Daniel that year. Though we weren't lovers at the time—that would come later—in an act of pure body hospitality, only half-awake, he wordlessly opened his arms to me and enwrapped me in primal mammalian comfort. Willingly I dove into those warm waters.