Always surprising and stealthily--even painfully--moving, Als plumbs longing: "I inched closer to him as he danced to you, Prince. But already he was you, Prince, in my mind. He had the same coloring, and the same loneliness I wanted to fill with my admiration. I couldn't love him enough. We were colored boys together. There is not enough of that in the world, Prince--but you know that. Still, when other people see that kind of fraternity they want to kill it. But we were so committed to each other, we never could work out what that violence meant. There was so much love between us. Why didn't anyone want us to share it?"
"One thinks," Als adds, that "looking into Prince's eyes must be like looking at the world. Or more specifically, the world of one black man loving another. How freaky is that? And who's on top in that kind of mind fuck?" Who knows, but what's on top in MyPinup is the heart: Love, in all boundless soul-sustaining beauty.