Love Letter to Doug

 

I think it's true what they say in all those songs: falling in love requires overvaluing the tiny ways in which one individual varies from another. It's true, but also beside the point. When I say I value your tiny ways, cherish is the word that could be substituted. I like things better when you are around. You are my preference. If I were ever to replace you, for whatever reason, however much I liked the new person, there would be a space, a lack, left from your departure that would remain forever empty, unfilled. 

When I was in grade 8 I would sit in history and dream about the other guys in class. My imaginings were vague but systematic; I went through each of the boys in turn, not alphabetically but according to their proximity. I seized upon whatever boy fell into my line of vision. The classroom became a libidinously charged arena of possibilities. In my promiscuous imaginings I had them all, and liked them all, though some more than others. It was a series of crushes, each lasting three weeks which took me till the end of the school year. I imagined the warmth and luminance of skin beneath t-shirts and jeans. I imagined them jerking off as well as jerking them off. But mostly I imagined some distant future as an adult and what it would be like living with them. Of course, at the time these seemed impossible imaginings. Two men, a husband without a wife. I didn't think about that though, I kept myself a genital blur, erasing everything but my myopic eyes and a little patch of skin. All I knew for sure was that I wanted the guys to be guys, even if that meant I had to be nothing. 

Anyway Doug, this letter is just to say that whether or not you are the product of all my pre-pubescent imaginings, you are the one I want to live with. And now when I imagine the future you are always there.