I would ask you out to a drive in ,or maybe an outdoor concert, a picnic, something old-fashioned and slow and private, but outside.
Or we could go to a play. You’ll tell me you’ve picked out your dress, it’s new. I have no idea what I’ll wear, and don’t care.
I do care about your face, and your walk, and your voice, and whether you read, and what. And that’s the point of going out? Getting to know. I want to know, among nine other things, whether you have the guts to do your own thing.
I would like to ask you out. “Yes.” But not romantically—see you have not told me if your heart is available yet, and I’m not sure. I was wounded, and while I’ve soaked and healed and cried and talked and dated…I’m a hardened young man now, and no longer all so very young. I am not scarred: I am not scared of failure. But I am beaten, beaten, beaten like a horseshoe in the fire. And as the smoke of my karmic debt has dispersed, I find that for the first time in my semblance of a love life, sex is not a goal. As if this were the beginning to a race I know it’ll come in the end.
The rest begins now, though it may end in the next moment. Or this moment. That’s how first and second dates are.
First dates are thin, eager, weak, sweet, young…full of real but ephemeral love. The tired heart warms again and, childlike, a naive hope of love buds up.
Second dates are a time to talk, a time to get to know—a time to see if the potato soaked in clean water in a jam jar set on only two toothpicks in the warm sun will sprout. You may have to wait a week or more, sometimes.
I’m too old for naive optimism. I’m too young to take myself too seriously.
I would like to take dance lessons with you, my hand on the small of your back. I’m good at laughing while learning and moving through crowds: a skill that comes in handy at festivals and parties, in leadership and in playing, as I did when I was a boy with sticks and my dog skipper, drawing lines in the rained mud so the streams of water would join or route this way or that. I used to think everything was in my own control…
I would like to see how you dress: if you like stripes and belts. If you wear dresses, or prefer the comfort of a trusted pair of sweats. And I would like to remember the color of your eyes before the dusk comes, and I would like to know whether you say your middle name upon introducing yourself in a professional manner, and how attached you are to your last name…
I would like to get to know you, more.
And if, in the dance of conversation and movement, we find ourselves swimming in the warm nights, the surface water calm, a frenzy of light flutters below it , we may wish to embrace then. But we won’t.
You like neon, you like black, you like buck-tanned boots that make your feet swell.
Watching a show together, I would like to be distracted by my desire to touch you. I would like to have to focus again and again on the actor’s rapid, dense language. This is no comedy, no romance. My desire for you now is curious, it is careful, it is the kind of romantic desire that leads great writers to write timeless poetry and poor writers to write sweet drivel. For there is no greater joy known to humankind than in first holding hands—except perhaps staving off the desire to do so.
And that may seem too sentimental, but think: touching for the first time is the moment of, the passing from “you are a human and I am a human and there are thousands of millions of others like you and I” to “you are a human and I am human and we are us.” This is an intimate moment that, like smoke from incense, is easily dispersed by a wave of the hand. Fate or a brief moment of argument or a chilling of insecurity or a lapse of presence and the spark of our enjoyment of one another may cool. It has happened before. And no one wants cold; everybody wants warmth like the blanket that holds us through the night. But I can not hold your hand as an “us”, not yet.
I want to know how many brothers or sisters you have, and are your parents loving to you and one another, and how well do you love your friends, and how do you discuss ex-boyfriends who you still care for, or don’t care for, or like, or don’t like. And do you need drugs, legal or illegal, and why. And what music do you listen to, and a thousand other things like: your neck. Do you have integrity? an positive soul? a mother’s wisdom? do you smile readily, like that of the first time I’ll meet you? I want to read your thoughts and fall in love too much for just a moment. Then I pull the reins back in. I will pass along a Mason jar of canned vegetables to my friends from a garden we could grow (rare and thoughtful) I want to see you from the right, and from the left. You probably prefer your right side. I prefer both (good god). I want to keep my mind and desire at bay: beauty demands focus, early on. Later, one can relax into it, as I do when it’s snowing and I’ve had a long day and I would sink into a hot tub where I’ve brought an old whisky out with me if it’s sunny, or a cold gin if it’s dark. If I drink the first too quickly or I sip the second too slowly I will savor either as I do so. My cowboy hat keeps the snowflakes off the scarf you’ve bought for my birthday, in which both of the articles are good enough to frame and put up on a wall where I might reread them, forever, and others might enjoy when they stop by for some reason and wait in my entrance because they don’t want to take their shoes off.
I would like to want you, but I do not know you, and I finally no longer want what I do not know. It’s true: I do not want you. I haven’t even thought of opening and kissing you and bending, holding and rocking you. I have thought…I have always thought (and I am well aware that my thoughts are form, and empty, and luminous if seen as such) of your hair, your brow, your eyes , and your style, or your wide white smile, and your handwriting. Your words make me want to savor you. I’ve always tried to champion elegance.
I would like to slowly walk back to your house. I will kiss you good night, chastely, on the cheek, holding your left shoulder with my right hand. Later, not now, I would like to know (and if not, I would like to be true friends, and that would be a gift, too) your thoughts. Some may think only to marry, others will tease, it seems Cupid rules us all.
I would like to daydream And I would like to fly to you and with you. I would like to learn to surf and wear very little for a long time with you. I would like to jump off a modest cliff over a lake in the old hill country with you, and learn from Coyotes how to dog paddle and dry off. I would like to go to book readings with you, and wear white with you. And I would like to admire your stripes and desires…and even grow old with you, and live in a proud yellow house or a humble cabin and I would like to raise ten children, or twelve, or two. With you.
I have no experience as an uncle but will make an excellent father, and a strong but silly, and almost-always a patient husband. I’ll make a generous success of myself. And I’ll make a tireless, charming, stubborn public servant when my sideburns turn white and my eyes crinkle in the sun (like Gene this morning, the old lonely friendly widower who walks on the side of the road everyday and remembers when they put in the first stoplight).
I can promise a busy life, with peaceful moments. And a warm one, and a hard one, full of true lessons.
I would not like to: argue, but to debate; I want not to push you, but to be encouraged by you; I want not to be bored of you, but to laugh at myself. I want to walk behind you, closely following your golden shoulders and pregnant mind.
I would not like to think about my walking, but to be present. I want to nearly forget to plan to go on future dates together, so lost when we can be together, but then to go to new old plays and have future unexpected roofs and times of discord and degradation of integrity only serve to highlight our woolen, cozy, romantic friendship within a summer fort.
I would like to remember…how my voice grows softer around you. My soft voice surprises me, but not you, for you do not know my normal voice. I would like you to remember…your kindness surprises me: I am used to new friends and lovers feeling small around my whirlwind, soon beginning to tear at me for a superiority that I do not claim.
I want not to want…no more, but to have…and to never let go. I would like to see you if only for one or forty or twelve dates. Every moment we have is tender, fleeting and brittle.
B.P.M.
