A former candidate for the Tory leadership and I bare-knuckle box beside the Watts Towers in LA. His profile – plump, sweaty, vinous – looks absurd against the spiralling ironwork, but he punches hard, and the crowd gasps as he lands blow after blow on me. We clinch, and the clinch becomes an embrace – we are having sex under a floral-patterned duvet, downtown in the garment district. He cracks a popper under my nose and everything goes blue and then black.