In the foolish self-imposed idealism of my youth, I had yearned openly for a lover who knew instinctively not only how, but when, to comfort me when I needed comfort, and to challenge me when I needed be challenged.

I found exactly that lover in a young poet named Simon. Our love was immediate and intense. We found each other costumed at a ball, undeniably attracted not to the shell of the person, but to the substance underneath. We were gods together, commanding the worship of all who saw us glow. We loved each other like graven images, idolizing the words that vesseled each other’s thoughts

One weekend we had driven to the beach. Bathed in salty ocean currents, we twisted there on the shore, in that space that is neither heaven nor earth, where the land meets low tide. Pleasures rose and then predictably vanished, not unlike the waves that slapped at our entwined bodies. He kissed me like a fawn suckles its mother’s teet, searching desperately with his lips to withdraw from me some life-sustaining substance that might help usher him through this innocence-stealing stage of his life. Together, there, we shared our first, last, and only fuck.

As we lay on the shore, dusted by sandy breeze in the night, listening to the waves crash and watching the stars shoot across the darkened southern sky, I remarked that a thousand years ago lovers likely sat upon this same, untouched shore, and that a thousand years from now, on this same untouched shore they’d still remain. His arms curled within my own, Simon told me that the head and heart were irrevocably intertwined and that anyone who argued the dichotomy of the human nature as being a distinction of love versus logic was an out of touch fool. I asked him which one of us was the apple, and which one was the worm.

My love for him was insane, twisting me about to unknown places where I sought to capture of him a notion that might somehow give definition to my as of yet unnamed life. It was Simon who explained to me that it is always better to be the lover than the loved. The lover gets to awaken every day to a dawn that shines not like any other seen before. The lover gets to drift through his days armed with that feeling, coloring his vision brighter and amplifying his sounds to their richest peak. The lover gets to lay head to pillow with no thoughts other than those of his fascination’s face, and what opportunities to perfect that image the next day may bring. The loved gets not but for to carry the burden.

I believe even now that he and I both felt exactly the same. He would have never said, of course. The only difference between Simon and I was that he was afraid of our love, whereas I embraced it. In speaking of our relationship, he had told me damp-eyed and strained-faced that he wanted to immerse himself in this fully. The sentiment was double-edged. As I’d longed to hear him admit he felt what I did, I also knew that that admission would mean the end of it. Simon had said that we were destined to fade away, becoming nothing more than strangers who had known each other once for a short while, a long time ago. I argued that we could hold on. But I never believed it.
We were too young and too busy in our self-imposed