The boy on the couch

George See was my first version of some of you, I suppose. We wrote letters (licked stamps!) and learned about each other. When he drove down to see his friend in Florida he stopped at my house. He gave me a half-hour's warning.

George was beautiful and his eyelids and lips I watched and his lots of hair and maybe he didn't play the guitar really but I felt in my heart he should. He smoked clove cigarettes without irony or showoffiness or looking silly. He couldn't have been older than 17. I was younger. It was hormones, it was hormones, but it was valid and it has never been as strong.

As a result, maybe, we could not talk to each other. Differences we had ignored to each other came out hugely and blocked us both off. It was late and we were both glad for it, claimed to be tired. He was bored by me and I knew it; I was showing him nothing interesting. It gave me pain to think how much of him I was missing. He should not have come.

In the morning I took the stairs silently and slid one foot at a time to get into the den. Hair sprawled, arms flung, caught in mid-flight George lay with beautiful eyes shut. Deep-set eyelids which people laugh when I try to tell them about, but you didn't see them, you don't understand how striking everything was.

The couch was where I left him, and if I need to find him again, I will find him there, silently absorbing other worlds. And if I join him, he will watch me with astonishment...amazed by my existence, it seems, surprised every time I laugh at a joke, he'll chuckle. I'll ask him, "What?" and he'll say "Nothing." If I press, sometimes he'll say, "You're just sweet, that's all." Later he will reach for me, draw me close to him, with my left ear pressed against his chest, listening to his heart beat respond to my physical presence.

We can sit here like this for hours at a time, wrapped in eachother, hands slowly exploring eachother's hands, faces, shoulders and stomachs, memorizing the paths traveled dozens of times. The television or what's on it, ceases to be of any importance, it's varying lights and sound merely an excuse to stay here, right here, and touch without speaking (and without thinking). I might feign sleep, curled up on his chest, and when I do, he'll tuck the blanket under my chin and rub my head. When I "wake up", it will feel as if I have slept, I have just been highly conscious the entire time.

When he wants to kiss me, he'll first bring his fingers to my lips, then he'll take his glasses off, laying them on the arm of the couch. He tastes just like he smells, wonderful, and no matter how hard I try to forget, I cannot. Sometimes, hours later, I will taste him when I lick my lips, smell his scent perfuming my skin.

When I leave it will be as though I was never there, he is an American monk trying to unlock the secret.