A day when I felt happy.

It was May. Light ran across rolling moraines. Marian, Brenna and I hiked through woodlands. My finger brushed smooth beech bark. We left the trees behind, wandering through sunny alfalfa. Brenna posed for a photo, sitting cross-legged on the middle of a domed field.

Later we rode through the countryside with windows down, wind caressing our brows. Rodrigo's Concierto Andaluz danced from the speakers. I could have driven forever that way.

But we saw a row of flowering crabs and I had to let my daughters out to run beneath the glowing, pink blossoms.

The last time I saw Shannon we met for lunch at a sushi bar in Toronto. It was a rainy day in January.

The first time I saw her was at a reading two years earlier. We struck up a conversation. Then someone introduced us. I had read her poetry before.

Immediately I said, "If I have a soulmate, it might be you."

It's not like me to be that forward, especially with women since my divorce. Shannon is soft-spoken and slender with dark eyes and glistening black hair.

Now she is married and living in Saskatoon for one year.

I didn't write any poetry for years, then in 1994 I started writing so many that I now fail to recognize some of them. That lasted about five years, through the worst depression, when my inner world chose to express itself through abstraction.

The poems connected with particular incidents are easier to remember. The day in 1994 my grandmother died I parked the car beside a country road under a brilliant October maple. I sat wroting a poem on my laptop computer. The orange leaves looked like flames burning the vapours of life. I still believed spirits went to heaven.

The saddest day of my life was when Wouter and Kathleen were killed. I shared a room in residence with Wouter and Scott.

Scott answered the phone. It was barely daylight. The halls were quiet. We went to tell Kath's roommates. Zena answered the door. She saw the looks on our faces.

"Don't tell me!" she said.

She looked around the corner, saw Kath's empty bed, and started to cry.

October 1984. They rode Wouter's motorcycle to Toronto to see the Pope. On the way home, they were hit from behind by a drunk driver in a high speed chase.

Lately I have been recalling things day to day, better than I used to do. I woke up this morning remembering what I had decided yesterday: shower and breakfast, then a walk, then three hours writing at my desk. I got a better start.

My brain didn't used to work that way. I would make decisions, then forget them and eventually spend another night worrying about the original problem. Depression does that. It eats the mind. Memories, both good and bad, get sucked away.

I take it as a good sign when my days thread together as a continuous fibre.

Last fall when I was in the hospital, I started experiencing déjà vu over strange things, like having an intravenous tube in my arm and using a bed pan. It didn't make sense. I had never been seriously ill before, or so I thought.

Gradually it started coming back. A few years earlier I developed a kidney infection and spent several days in hospital. I can't remember anyone coming to see me. I still don't know when it happened. It must have occurred when I was seriously depressed. I can't believe my mind repressed something that serious, but it did.

I have been trying to reconstruct one conversation ever since it happened eight years ago this month in my pastor's office with my wife sitting there. He said five things.

"It's disgusting," was one.

I can't remember the other four.

An abomination? A slap in God's face? Filthy? Degrading?

He shouted it like this: "It's A! It's B! It's C! It's D! It's E!"

"That's enough!" I said, standing up.

"Enough what?" he asked.

I left them and walked into the adjacent office to calm down. All I had done was decide to accept the fact that I was gay.

Unpleasant memories have started revisiting me lately because I have been allowing them. In fact I have begun writing autobiographical passages beginning with my childhood. It is a writer's effort to reclaim his life, both good and bad, parts of which I have hidden from my own recollection. Our experiences are the richest resource we writers have. Whether they are happy or not, we can't afford to repress them forever. But we must remember without bitterness. The past must be approached from a place of strength. Lately I have been finding that in both solitude and the company of friends.

The part of the brain that processes smells lies near the memory centre. That's why certain smells evoke memories. When I was younger, the smell of gasoline reminded me, paradoxically, of Lake Fletcher and clean water. I suppose the association originated from a childhood ride in Neil MacEwan's motorboat, and a small spill on the surface of the water.

Whether you experience the smell of gasoline as pleasant or unpleasant is a genetic trait. My eldest daughter likes it so much she gets out of the car whenever I'm filling up. Many people don't. The smell gave my ex-wife migraines.

One summer day when I was nine, Dad came indoors from mowing, wearing only shorts and shoes. He was dripping.

"Why are you all wet?" I asked.

"That's sweat. People sweat when they're hot."

I had never noticed perspiration before then. Sweat, the look of beaded drops glistening on a man's skin, even the smell of it, reminds me of my father. I have never gotten over this association, and it makes me uncomfortable.

Gay personal ads often read, "Looking for hot, sweaty action." To me that's an oxymoron. Sweat turns me off.

I wish I could relax about it.

There was something remarkable about Dan's skin. He was tall and strong, but his skin was smooth and soft. He had little body odour and rarely perspired. His tenderness as a lover spoiled me forever. I don't like roughness.

The first time was in my station wagon in a truck stop beside Highway 401 on a bitter November night. We had to keep the engine and heat running.

That Dan should not be confused with Danny, or with Bill's Daniel, or with my friend Daniel whose name is pronounced the Francophone way. What is it with Dans in my life?

I have several trails to choose from when I walk along the Eramosa River. Victoria Road bridge leads to a whole network of trails upstream, some along the river, others following the railroad track, and another tracing the crest of a limestone ridge. In one place atop that ridge is an orchard of ancient apple trees.

On September 10, 2001 I went there to pick apples to make applesauce. It was a bright, lustrous morning. My outing was peaceful and uneventful. I will always remember that day.

I never used the apples, though. They rotted in my kitchen for weeks.

We had wild apples at Elmbrae. In late spring a white veil would spread across the old meadow, the blossoms of apples, hawthorns, chokecherries, black cherries, red osier and pagoda dogwood. We had a passive solar house on two acres of stony moraine. I lived there the last three years of my marriage, enough time to establish a large vegetable garden and get the soil rich.

When I left, I couldn't think about the property, I had too many other losses. I didn't grieve for Elmbrae until a year later. It had been my most conscious tie to the land.

While my marriage was breaking up, my wife and our pastor convinced me I was sex addicted because I had bought pornographic magazines.

At Sexaholics Anonymous my sponsor said, "You're being too hard on yourself."

What did he mean?

At one meeting I met a gay preist who said, "You're being too hard on yourself."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"You're not a sex addict," he said. "You only have to accept yourself and experience some sexual relationships with men. Then everything will start making sense."

"Can I be gay and still have a relationship with God?"

"Yes."

Through those hardest months with my life falling apart, I would cry myself to sleep in the basement alone with Jesus sitting beside my pillow. So I believed. Now I know it was a self-preserving instinct deep inside convincing myself of anything. Anything to give me a reason to keep living. I couldn't turn my away from faith.

The conversation with the priest came a week after I moved out.

That night I went back to my lonely apartment and prayed. I cried tears of relief. I knew my relationship with God would change, but I would also be okay.

January 28, 1996, I woke up in the morning and decided, "This is the day."

I went to the gym and saw him. We had locked glances and spoken several months before. I walked right up to him and asked him out for coffee after our workouts. We went back to my apartment.

David was a handsome Salvadoran, Spanish background, with creamy skin, dark eyes and curly black hair.

I had not had sexual contact with a man in 12 years. We made love, did things I had never done before. It felt wonderful. I had no discomfort, no guilt.

My first margarita was in Potsdam, upstate New York, an eight hour drive from home. I bought a big teddy bear to keep me company in the car. I went to meet Brubear, the first gay man I chatted with online after coming out of the closet. This was spring 1996.

He introduced me to margaritas. I loved the salty, tangy flavour.

After dinner we went to see The Birdcage and groped each other in the dark theatre, giggling and driving ourselves crazy with lust.

I named the teddy Bro'bear. He still sits on the couch in my living room.

One of my difficulties as a writer drawing from memory is that the little things are difficult to recall. It is the small, sensual details that make creative writing vivid.

I don't remember what Brubear was wearing that day I met him, or what I ate for dinner when he took me out for margaritas. I can't remember what our waiter looked like, even whether it was male or female.

This is one of the benefits of keeping a journal. It can record the mundane sensual details of our lives. They might not seem important now, but they will later.

I must make a conscious effort to record sensory observations in the three journal pages I write every day, which I call my morning pages.

Often they become muddy with worry and complaint, the drivel of self-therapy. It is necessary.

As time passes and I grow to like myself better, I more often have the luxury of recording daily events as if they were a story, rather than a series of obstacles to be reviewed, considered and overcome. Now the challenge is remembering to write down the seemingly trivial details of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. What people said.

This morning while walking with Danny along the river I noticed a spiderweb suspended amongst plant stems, nearly horizontal, billowing on the breeze, shining in sunlight. It reminded me of something I hadn't thought about for years. When I was little we used to spray paint webs gold or silver, then capture them on sheets of dark construction paper, then display them as the works of art they are. The coloured paper eventually faded and the webs disintegrated. I wonder if there is a better way of preserving them.

"It sounds like the sort of thing children do," Danny said.

A day when I was happy.

I asked Karen to marry me in the afternoon of the day before our friends Chris and Leona got married. We were getting ready to go to the rehearsal, eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in the kitchen of the house Karen and Leona shared with two other women. She said yes. Sonya was watching TV in the next room. We told her first, then asked her to keep it secret until after the wedding.

It was a happy day, but looking back now, the memory does not make me happy. Funny how our perspectives change.

This afternoon Danny and I lay on the couch, alternately talking and dozing. He has clear, ivory skin and deep brown eyes. His hair is glossy and dark. So is his beard, but the moustache and soul patch are a shade lighter. His eyebrows have gold highlights, the colour of hair he was born with. When he is sleeping, I like the feel of his breath on my face, something I have never liked with anyone but Dan.

I write to remember.

Afterward, we went downtown in the rain and I showed him the easiest way to the bus depot.

Now that he has gone, little things keep reminding me. Finding the last piece of apple crisp in the fridge I remember how his eyes lit up when he found out what was baking. While I'm washing dishes stripped to the waist, the scent of my own salt sweat recalls his morning smell when we embraced.

It is pleasant to miss someone and simultaneously feel happy. My life of depression and loneliness never allowed this until now.

At night, pulling off my clothes and turning toward bed, I find it too large. It has a man-sized hole on one side.

Yesterday I hooked up with Matt, a new guy in town who I met at the last dance. We walked all the way from downtown to Victoria Road bridge, back along the far side of the river to Gordon Street bridge, then sat on a bench by the grey water. We reminisced about coming out to our parents and siblings. He comes from a Quebec Irish Catholic family, and mine are Ontario agnostics. Funny how our experiences were similar. Same guilt and intolerance, different terminology. His brother thinks gay marriage means people will want the right to marry trees next.

This morning I felt listless and grumpy, bummed around the apartment for a couple hours. I finally shovelled myself out the door for a walk, but the sky was bright and sharp as needles, smarting my eyes and soul.

I didn't know why I felt depressed until this afternoon when I started sneezing and felt a scratch at the back of my throat. A cold I can handle.

I never got sick when I was a kid. I missed two days in five years of high school. Sometimes I threw up after eating breakfast with Dad, but that was nerves.

I have the hardest time remembering conversations. Today I'm expecting a visit from Brian and Kent, a couple from Maryland who I met at the GALA choir festival in Toronto in June 2002. They hooked up again with me and my boyfriend the following weekend for Gay Pride. Kent is the kind of guy who makes my legs weeks: big, furry, soft, dark and gentle. Brian is quick, cute and friendly. We had dinner at the Green Mango then walked along Yonge Street, chatting easily. Gay square dancing is one of their favourite activities. What else did we talk about?

Tonight is Katherine and Lynn's wedding. I hear they're both wearing gowns. It will probably be more traditional than Brenda and Judy's in the summer. They wore black tuxedos. It happened outdoors in their own garden.

For years I dreamed of having a wedding in my mother's garden. Those were the days when I got along with my parents. If I got married to a man now, I can't imagine my parents wanting to come. They would come.

But I don't want to get married. I hope I have the sense to stop myself if I start wanting it again.

It was the first wedding I have attended where the guests were predominantly gay and lesbian, but what stood out was how unstartling everyone was. My friends are blindingly, unfabulously normal.

When I came out of the closet, I remember how exciting it felt to embrace my unique identity, to celebrate being different from other people instead of hiding my difference.

Last night I wore black denim jeans, a black dress shirt and vest with a geometric pattern in gold, black and grey. I was the only one of about 50 gay men who didn't wear a suit or tie.

Now I'm depressed about it. My radical online friends think same-sex marriage sells out to conventional morality.

Seven pairs of lesbian friends have done it in the past three months. Only one couple said they won't unless they see a clear legal advantage. Funny thing is, I don't know any gay men getting married.

I used to resist convention. That's why I kept my hair long for five years. Then on my birthday in 2001, the guy I slept with persuaded me to let him buzz my head. I became a sex magnet. The style turns guys on.

How superficial.

How do I end September? Perhaps by remembering a time when I felt honest love and acceptance.

That's difficult. In retrospect, many important relationships turned out to be transient or superficial. Maybe I expect too much of people.

One autumn evening in 1996, Daniel served me a stir-fry, the first time I tasted tofu. It was excellent. He wore oil of sandalwood. I gave him the poem I had written for him, Joining.

Our affair lasted only six weeks. I have sometimes accused him of arrogance. But despite all that, he has remained a close friend longer than anyone else.