My ex-wife took this photo. If I seem distracted, it’s because I was. I was just leaving the Museum of My Perpetual Despair. I wore a white shirt and jeans. The bronze-buckled belt is lost to history, as is the single gold earring. I carried a sheaf of papers, though I cannot recall anything about them. Perhaps they concerned my then-recent divorce. Perhaps they documented my mortgage, the foreclosure, my lengthy illness, my three surgeries. I recall the museum and the exhibition clearly, though. In one especially vivid memory, I’m standing before a painting of my ex-wife, a portrait painted by her subsequent husband. I recall that the portrait was somehow lopsided and that her stubby fingers were emerging from a jar of peanut butter. Even now, the symbolism escapes me. Then the aliens decided to stun me with some sort of ray later that afternoon, a ray that made me lightheaded at first, but then more lucid than I’d ever been. They lifted me through the ceiling of my rental house on Water Street, I passed through the ceiling and the roof, emerging into a sunny day filled with the sounds of children playing. My children. Caitlyn and Laura. They looked up briefly, smiled, waved. I waved and smiled as I floated over the trees. I remember a white horse, a gray umbrella. I remember tumbling. I threw my hands forward and I rolled. Ah, my poor friends, thick with gravity, you can’t imagine the freedom I felt. When they dropped me back to earth and I began wandering among you again, I carried the secret under my tongue like a wafer of light. You can’t touch me now. Go ahead. Try.