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.