Bravo, Andrew! Your dismissal of “community” was a pleasure to read, even if it did make us wish you would find a similarly pessimistic lens through which to analyze political regimes and nation building. But no matter, this is an important notion, one that faithful readers of The Gay Recluse will recognize as the foundation of our first post, almost ten years ago today. Though it cannot be doubted that we live in a world rich with opportunity and wonder, we should not deceive ourselves into thinking that it is also not (and more often, as history is all too willing to remind any who care to look) host to depths of longing and despair made all the worse by those who delude themselves into thinking that we are ever more than utterly alone (but in this one way only, utterly together).