I don't know when I was first fascinated by him. Was it in the bar, over soju and bad beer, talking about Gnosticism that I first looked into those blue-grey eyes and fell? Or was it when I saw him leaning over the railing, wicked smile intact, in a purple fuzzy bathrobe, bunny slippers, and a straw cowboy hat with 'Polonium' written on the hatband?
Perhaps it was during that first snowball fight, when the barracks turned out and he grabbed me, holding him against him in the icy cold. When we rolled over and over, trading the top, when he put snow in my chest and left me wanting more? The first fight, when I first realized how exhilarating it was to spar with him?
We spar every day. Words, now, only words. Touching is too dangerous, touching exposes what we really are. And we're friends, now. Friends, he says, like God and Lucifer. Always on the same side, no matter what the world thinks. And the world doesn't understand us, the way we are. The world doesn't understand that I can insult him and still want to press my lips against his to lick up his response.
Friends.
It's hard to be just friends with a man that can sing high and clear like an angel, or drop his voice low enough to make your lips dry. Hard to be friends with a man as tender as this one-the same one that can mock the stupid and still tell you, softly, "There's a first time for everything." when screwing up something you've never done.
It's hard, but it's easy at the same time. Easy to be
friends with a man that spends ten hours of his Sunday
simply spending time with you. Getting some good
conversation, and enjoying a companionable silence. Easy to be friendly with a man that can call you a little after
midnight, and talk with you until almost two in the
morning. Reading the Tao Te Ching aloud to you, and
discussing it as compared to personal philosophies.
A man that will wear silly underwear you bought him as a
prank, despite the fact that you're not dating. And show
you, with a mischievous look on his face, in the privacy of
your room. It's not sexy, of course; no supposedly sexy
underwear is. But it's funny, and you want to just laugh
and throw your arms around him, kissing him happily until
his eyes sparkle like yours.
Impatient, the man is, impatient and impossible, and
sometimes he seems to encourage strangling in the darkness. But the
lustful smile, the soft smile, the smile he wears when he
looks at me like he cares for me...I cannot kill those. I
could never kill those.
Hard to be friends with a man who you know would take you as a lover, if not for one detail. Easy to be friends
with a man you know you could quite easily love, if you
would only open to it. If you don't already.