We Were the Sunrise

Your room was cold when we sat down and decided to let each other in. You don't know this-- have no way to know-- but every man that has shared a bed with me has received similar words from me. We sit on the bed and not the couch. The room is never as cold, and I'm never as kind. But the message is the same. I have strict barriers, I am willing to let you partly in, nothing else is available for negotiation, take it or leave. They never leave. Not once. I didn't, either. I said what you wanted to hear even though I am irremediably open to you. You kissed me. It is once again you unto me. It is at this point that I usually already know how deep the other person will fall, and in response will take the necessary precautions, set up some contentions, shield them from unnecessary harm. I protect them from the unstoppable force I am. It is true that I sometimes miscalculate, underestimating at the earlier stages what will end up being, on their end, deeper and more involved than I initially thought. I regret the pain that follows, knowing that I could have avoided at least part of it, but also knowing that the heart is resilient, that they will eventually move on. What has never so far happened, M, is the opposite. I have never been unable to establish the temperature of someone's heart, and be able to estimate the potential for breaking it, the amount of care they will unleash on me, the extent to which they (and I) need to be safeguarded against. Until you.

I say that you are difficult to read, but what I mean is that I have not yet learned your language. I do not yet know how to translate your silences and pace into my own way of articulating the world, and so it all seems alien to me, unreachable. You say things, but not to me. Your voice is sheltered, kept safely tucked inside your fortress. And yet. I wonder if it’s this way with every one, with all bodies. It is childish and futile, and still, I wonder. You held me like I was a strand of silk so delicate that it could break at the lightest touch. You cherished me, praised in silence the complex creature that I am, drank me in, slowly and deliberately. You don’t yet love me, but you loved me that night. You were molten honey, warm gold trickling down my tongue, we were the sunrise. My body is a collection of musical notes that need to be sung in two voices. We were a melody, M, resonating in unison, reverberating off each other in perfect rhythm.

Utopia is not a place but a verb. There is no destination, only the daily journey, the restless work of building that other world. If love is not a goal but a work in progress, then we made love that night, M. And for that, I thank you.

On Turning Tables

It's been long. Long since I've been touched. We hadn't, not once. Do you want to come home with me, he said. I'm neither young nor prude, and yet. He is full of firsts. Like this question. In my strange corner of the universe, where normative protocols have been put to sleep and an altogether different set of rules applies, this question shocked me in its simplicity. Not for its content, but for the absolute unexpectedness of its implications. I wanted to say, boy I have not rehearsed this part of the script will you give me a few minutes to recompose myself. Boy please allow me to walk back, and in reverse learn to thread a narrative about you and I that logically leads to this moment so that I can fit it within my inner mechanisms of defense and control and fear. Am I fearful of coming home with you tonight, M, or am I afraid of the fact that it was you who asked the question? You see, I've been too used to being the pursuer, to dictating the confines and definitions, the boundaries and restrictions. I've been used to deciding, selecting, choosing, claiming. Love is exception-making, and I am lucky to at least have this maxim to lead me in the unexplored territory that this journey seems to paint. It is terrifying. It is also a quiet form of relief. For once, I will have to brake, to pause, to listen. Oh M, be careful with my heart dear boy, be careful with my love.

I said I'd love to. Your house was cold. You gave me water and talked about books. You said they felt like home. I know you one day will, to me. A says I should write this down to memorialize it, because one does not often find, despite spending a lifetime searching. I do. I find like I found you, M. Coming from the farthest extremes of life, said Baricco, we would have had to cross the entire universe by foot, and instead, we did not even have to look for each other. And this is the part I like, M, about Baricco. This is the part that still resonates with me, so many years later. All we had to do was recognize each other. This is the thing-- you are never too far, never, to find each other. We were, farther than any others. But I recognized you. This is almost all that I'm good at. Recognizing in someone else's gestures and words and silences the potential of a person I could love. It is not love at first sight-- love must of course be built, worked, shaped, kneaded, polished. It is recognition at first sight, and the rest of it is up to us. I recognized you at first sight. I knew from that first night that there was someone inside you I could one day love. And perhaps I won't, but more important than the uncertain and precarious future is this knowledge, that you and I crossed paths and across the room saw each other despite coming from the very opposite sides of existence.