Daren’s presence in your life hasn’t made you give up your vices. You are no dilettante when it comes to the finer things in life but after years of living alone your standards have dropped. Amytal washed down with absinthe and a couple Black Devils for a chaser? That’s not a party, just your regular nightcap. At some point you stopped caring what you put into your body (or who) and how often. You didn’t have a future so why worry about whether you’d wake up in the morning or not? Things are different now, though, and you can’t bear to have the man you love think you have no taste.

So Daren’s presence in your life hasn’t made you give up your vices – it’s made you refine them. He makes you want to be a better man, after all, and that means raising your standards back up to where they belong. No more nightclub hookups and hardcore barbiturates, no more granite countertops scattered with used needles and burned out cigarettes, no more treating your expensive liquor like corner store beer swigged straight from the bottle. You’re a man of class with a fully stocked wet bar, a closet full of Armani, and too much money for your own good. Time to start acting like it.

Of course, being a better man also means sharing your luxury. All his life, Daren has lacked the wealth you’ve always taken for granted. How could sophistication thrive in such scarcity when the only goal was survival by any means? He is beyond survival now, though, and you take endless joy in introducing him to the finest indulgences money can buy. You worship him between silk sheets and drape him in Gucci and Louis Vitton; in the morning it’s imported coffee and cigarettes, in the evening cocktails mixed with the finest ingredients and served in crystal barware.

Not that he cares, of course. Your wealth is meaningless to Daren and your fancy gifts earn you exactly zero admiration or infatuation. That’s fine, though, because your pleasure is found in the giving itself; you take just as much satisfaction in watching your lover destroy your fine gifts as you do watching him indulge in them. Every time he stubs a cigarette out on your antique velvet furniture or uses your silk tie to clean blood from his knife, you fall a little more in love. You probably shouldn’t – you’re probably encouraging his habit of throwing crystalware at you – but you’ve never been very good at moderating your vices, have you?