The Apostate's Diary, Februrary 10, 2005

You, my dear, are a revelation. I mean to say, you are (seem to be) the love I have always been searching for.

I wanted to record, especially now, before I forget, the beads on the necklace of my time with you. I won’t forget, but still want to lay them out, in brief:

There was the Luna concert. I was so happy to be there, so buoyant, so jubilant, and there you were, this steady, strong presence in the turbulent crowd. I’ve rarely, perhaps never before, felt such strong a connection, like rope, like a ribbon, with a stranger. But were you a stranger?

Then there was the first meeting, at the British Library, when we walked around King’s Cross like a pair of 15-year olds and ended up in that uninteresting pub, which we wanted to be a hotel room.

After that you came to my flat, and you brought what seemed to be ten armfuls of flowers, and a vase, and music, and champagne. And we sat on the couch and listened to McCarthy and Damian and Naomi and Spiritualized and kissed. And I started crying to Low--a song about heartbreak-- because it was so beautiful, the music, and you, and the feeling of perfect harmony, at last, after so many lonely years, and of settling for less than what I wanted. We couldn’t eat because, as you said, the stomach felt like a washing machine, and so we drank some more and locked legs on the couch, sitting at each end, facing one another, and discovered that we both like vintage classic cars. And we thought it wasn’t possible for the other to be more perfect. But then you were more perfect. In the bedroom I encountered in you a delicacy, a sweetness and softness that I did not know could live in a man’s body. Such dark rich loveliness and hidden pleasures, such deep beauty. We didn’t make love because, as you said, this was about more than sex. And so we hungered for each other, and still do.

Then there was the week in hell, after we met in the bar for lunch, in Kensington, and you said you needed to sort yourself out and I couldn’t’ stop crying. Later I told you I wanted you to be free for me, and felt I had lost you completely. I thought I had to do this, because I would lose you anyway, and you wouldn’t be true to me in the long run, that whether I gave myself to you or not, you would lose interest, or find that you did not have the courage or desire to free yourself, and I would lose you, and had lost you, and my heart had only more agony to bear, the lacerations of your future rejection, the knife of the story that you could not leave because of this or that, and you were very sorry, and I would be bloodied there, eviscerated, destroyed, as before. I would not recover. I would die. I thought I was dying. I texted you and you wrote back:

Too busy
dreaming of you.

And I thought that meant you were too busy to talk to write to me, but that I should be placated by the comment that you were “dreaming” of me. But dreaming was not thinking or hoping and certainly not loving, and that meant that I was only a dream, only a wish you didn’t expect to fulfill, and that I should therefore leave you alone. And I tried. But failed. A few days later I texted again, “please call me,” and you did not get the message for days. I thought you were ignoring me. You said you left your phone in the office all weekend, and I believed you because you seemed so genuine on the phone and in person. You told me, that day in Kensington, when I could not stop crying, that you would always love me. I believe you then but during the week of hell of lost faith in you. I stopped believing.


We had then that amazing day on Portobello road, walking along from used bookstore to record shop, and you showed me how well read you were in an area I have always wanted to know better, and let me read poetry to you. And you said that I brought you to the brink of tears. You seemed to love me, the spirit inside of me, as I love the spirit in you. And I told you that you were the love of my life, the only one. And you said the same to me. I saw my first blooming tree of the year, a maroon spray of cherry blossoms arching like a wedding veil across the sidewalk. We passed under it and its petals, already falling. I decided to be free and gay and loose with you. You said, “I will walk you to that lamppost and then have to turn around.” Before we got there, I pulled you into a doorway to tell you that, just for one minute, I was going to pretend that you were free and I was free and that we could be together, And we kissed what seemed a thousand times, our eyes blazing.

I said that I loved you for you, not because the situation was impossible, and not because I couldn’t have you. I wanted to prove this to you and for you to feel it, to feel free to take me or leave me. How did you feel when you kissed me then, I wonder? Did you feel released? Do you think you could love me if you could have me? Could I love you if I could have you? Don’t doubt.

There are so many things I want to say to you, to ask you, to talk about with you. When? When will there be time? Will there ever be time? Will I ever know you really? Will you ever be my comfortable old man whom I love in spite of your farts, your softening belly, your silence, your preoccupations? I long for this, too.

You are like rain, the life-giving sun, a flood of golden water and light. Or so I imagine you. And it is therefore fitting that we will be meeting in a building filled with life-sustaining seawater, by a river, soon.

So tomorrow I will meet you at the Aquarium, and meet your little daughter, Mia, and fall, I am afraid, deeper into love with you. I am so afraid. Afraid of losing you, I think, more than of loving you. Although I am also afraid of that…of really loving and needing someone. It will be good to see you.

I have a dream of living under one roof with you and our children, Mia and Brendan and more, and of learning from them and from each other, and of learning, finally, how to love..

This is not the document I sat down to write. I had meant to compose some beautiful lyric piece that would capture the beauty of our early days, hours, together, and have ended up writing what I usually write, a rambling confessional meditation.

I wonder how I will look back on this. I hope I will be able to.

I want to say this last thing. I love you with all the ardor and idealism and foolishness of an adolescent. I want more than anything to be able to love this way, and not to have rein myself in, because I am loved in return with all the blazing glory of life that I feel inside of me, and which longs to shout in exultation, to expand and finally to find its room. Doesn’t everyone want to love this way?