Me and Steve were drunk. Sober, we'd never listen to a show like that. Some late-night thing where women call in to talk out feelings. I'd been flipping through the channels and everything was country music and that Jesus guy with the high voice, and after a while my arm got tired and I settled back into the seat. Midnight Psychology came at us like the snow against the windshield, something mere drunk mortals like me and Steve could not hope to tamper with. And anyway the lady had a sexy voice.

"Margie, please," she said, interrupting some woman wandering at the edge of tears. "All men have intimacy issues. It's how they're wired."

I sucked in cigarette smoke. Steve and I had synchronized our inhales and exhales. The truck was going too fast, considering how hard it was snowing and how drunk Steve was. My seatbelt was unbuckled and I mouthed my prayers into the open window. Sober, I'm not even remotely religious. Sober, you can convince yourself you've got control. Only when you're drunk do you realize you have none.

My meditation had a melancholy tint to it. The party had been fine, fun, the same party we went to two or three times in any given month. But for the past four weeks our friend Jeff had been in town, on break from college, and this morning me and Steve drove him back to school. The party seemed sparse and lonely without him. I spent the whole night thinking about Jeff in Albany and us in Hudson, and the roads we were heading down and the places we'd end up.

"New research suggests that autism might be 'the extreme male brain,' an exaggeration of behaviors triggered by male privilege," she told some mom scared her son was autistic. I pictured Sue short and bone-thin, with hair graying early. And totally depraved bedroom tendencies.

Coming off of Route 22 and onto Spook Rock Road Steve took the turn too sharp, or not sharp enough, and we skidded in slow motion through a barbed wire fence and out onto a field. A fence stake came with us.

"Whoa," he said, when the truck stopped. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I said, and smiled at him.

He turned the wipers off. Snow sealed the windshield in under a minute. The empty field was all gas fumes and the twitter of snow against the truck, like an army of mice scurrying across the ceiling above you. That, and Sue Bridges.

"That seems to be what all the calls boil down to, honey," Sue told someone. "What is the problem with men?"

Steve said nothing. A bad sign: shortly before blacking out, Steve tends to lose the power of speech. I didn't dare offer to drive, for the same reason I could not have refused to ride home with him after his twentieth drink. You can't call a buddy into question like that.

"Up next we have Jeff from Albany," sexy Sue Bridges said, several guests later.

"Hi, Sue, how are you?" Jeff said.

My Jeff. Our Jeff. The Jeff who got us drunk for the first time at ten years old, on scotch smuggled from his grandfather's wake. "Holy shit!" I said, and slapped the dash. "That's our boy!" Steve nodded, leaned forward a little.

"What's keeping you awake tonight?" Sue said.

"I was talking to this girl, back in December, and she asked me 'why is it that guys never make eye contact with other guys?' I told her she was crazy, but it started me wondering. The last few weeks I've been home on break, and I've had my eye out, and I realized — she's right! We never make eye contact with each other."

Sue said "Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know!" he said. "It's weird, right?"

"Tell me something, Jeff." Her voice was sexy and supportive, but it had the same tone as the Jesus guy. "If you're in a business negotiation with someone, and they don't make eye contact with you, what does that normally mean?"

"...that...they're lying to you."

"Exactly. Some kind of dishonesty is going on. So what is happening when you and your guy friends can't make eye contact?"

"I don't know. I mean, I don't think it means we don't like each other."

"Do you believe this shit?" I asked, and Steve nodded.

Sue said: "But do you think there could be some kind of fundamental dishonesty going on?"

In my head Sue Bridges was flung face-down on a mattress in a basement, smelling like shampoo and sweat and sex, her throaty voice urging me in.

Jeff sounded truly sad. "I heard what you said earlier about how men have a hard time expressing their feelings. But — what if men just don't have the capacity to form strong emotional bonds at all?"

Steve's head gave a tiny nod, something you'd never in a million years notice unless you knew Steve better than you knew your mom. Then he mumbled "fucking faggot," affectionately.

Sue said, "Men and women are two different species."

I pitied her. Her and Jeff and anybody else who thinks something doesn't exist unless it can be written down and analyzed. How many midnights had me and Steve and Jeff watched the world slip by our windows, knowing for a fact we needed nothing from life but each other? Steve snored and I listened to him, felt the way he filled up the cab of his truck, watched the way his hands lay in his lap. I switched Sue off. The wind picked up and I bit my lip, hard, til I tasted blood, to keep from blurting out a love too sacred and basic to put into words.

Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His work has appeared in literary journals such as Fiction International, Fourteen Hills, Permafrost, Pindeldyboz, and The Minnesota Review which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize. He is the recipient of a 2008 Literary Fellowship and Residency from the Bronx Writers Center. Visit him at www.samjmiller.com, and/or drop him a line at samjmiller79@yahoo.com.