O, the things that loose themselves from the forefront of my memory until I wade bodily through them again.
Boys forgive me but I missed your call last night, curled up with Manga and Red Dwarf and kittens in a beautiful man's basement, I never heard you ring to summon me to Foufs.
Instead, we spoke of the eighteen ways to polish a blade, of the best angle for a Katana to slice through a watermelon.
He explained the concepts of muscular growth and shrinkage to me, I tried to fix his TCP/IP networking so that he can host Diablo II games, and to explain how swap space, virtual memory, and RAM works... And why it makes that nasty grinding noise.
But the monitor didn't call to me the way it does when Everquest begins to tempt you with the all-too-real sounds of blades slicing air, not so much at least as the softness around his eyes and the way his cheekbones rose up to meet them.
And we purred with the cats and talked of comic books and anime and people we used to know, and the way the shadows fall on fists in an alleyway when you're 14.
But I can't help but wonder what manner of nightmares plague him still.
And so we sat, cross-legged on his bed and shared intimacies across whorls of cigarette smoke, catching each other staring at moments, or lost in memories at others.
I remember his roommate from Dawson, and recognized the photographs of his friends as people that never drew me to them, and at his invitation to join them Sunday evening for an initiation into the world of Wrestling TV, I blustered and hesitated and made half-hearted shows of intention.
But watching him with a white and orange tigress in his lap and hearing the extended serenity in him, and despite All The Reservations, Despite Having Once Been Friends with His Ex-Girlfriends, despite, despite...
Despite that, when I jumped up at the lightening of the sky seeping through the blinds and he pouted and asked if I really had to go... When we hugged on the doorjamb leading to a colder dawn, I had a hard time undoing my fingers from his silver-shot curls.
I want to touch them again.
And throughout today's Service Packs and Blue Screens and constant nagging fear about Yet Another Career Opportunity Cut Short, despite everything that hails and wails and rails against thinning walls...
...I remember the dangerous irony of his smile.
I've been down that road so many times, and yet and yet and yet, it is warm despite the air-conditioning today.
I am not accustomed to being torn, I am not accustomed to attraction that does not lead mind and certainty first. I am not accustomed to wanting that which I know I should not have, and most of all I am not accustomed to the quaint awkwardness of watching his lips as he spoke and wanting to kiss them, yet choosing instead to dance with his words rather than his skin, caught on the barbed convolutions of an irrational fence.
So many things wrong.
I am not accustomed to doubting myself or my instincts, and I don't think I like it, but I am too serene from the ommitance of sleep and from the warmth of hours spent in such romantic circumstances.
But I wonder.