After blaming my inability to sleep on the myriad thoughts of him that were chasing each other round and round in my head like cat-after-mouse, dog-after-cat, and rolled-up-newspaper-after-dog's-behind, I finally went to the computer to type/purge some of them out of my system and onto the dubious permanency of a document file.

Our first day together actually started at night, at the airport. Walking away from the arrivals gate, I had one arm snaked under his backpack and around his comfortingly warm waist, barely registering the surprised stares of people seeing two young men clinging to each other, drinking in the smell of him very hesitantly like a person who still plays the unbelieving skeptic even after seeing the evidence before his very eyes. A part of me wanted to whisper to him, "You aren't real, are you?" but that part of me couldn't seem to grasp proper hold of the speech center of my brain, as I was too enthralled by his hair, his dazed smile, the curves of his ear, his touch, his feel, and by the concept of the sight of him at close range to do much more than dazedly grin back.

Whenever I talk to him on the phone, or through the computer, I worship technology. I worship anything that gives me a link to him, so much so that whenever I talk with him on the phone, I get high. The high lasts from the moment the phone rings or from the moment I start dialing, and doesn't really end even after we've hung up, even if after the call I'm overwhelmed by an odd feeling of happy regret - which might be better described as a painful, agonizingly slight dampening of that wonderful high, if that makes any sense.
So much so that being on the phone with him never fails to remind me of one of my own quotes: "he sanctified the concept of telecommunication with his voice." In one way it annoys me to apply an old quote of mine to him, as it implies that what I have with him isn't new and special, but I never have the time to think in such a negative way, as I'm too busy listening to the dips and rises and fluctuations of his voice and dreaming of when I'll hear it in person again to really care about much else at the moment.

Showing jealousy is terribly undignified. It happens to me easily, I must admit, especially when the subject is him, but a couple of things prevent me from showing it too often: 1. my own realization that I'm being stupid/irrational when I'm jealous and that I'm usually being jealous over nearly nothing, and 2. my pride at not wanting to appear jealous, at wanting to be "above" idiotic vagaries like jealousy. So naturally, when our mutual friend's grandmother died and he had driven up to where she was to be there for her for three days, I was jealous even if I did my best not to show it. I wasn't jealous because of him personally, or because of my friend personally; it was just the fact that other people got to spend time with him, that he was able to go and take care of our friend, while I was stuck going to work a couple of thousand miles away.
And when I'd heard about the wonderful gift he had prepared and given to my friend to cheer her up, I was overcome with such a tsunami of conflicting emotions and thoughts - amazement at his thoughtfulness, masses of love for his sweetness, jealousy in bulk due to the fact that I'd never gotten anything so nice, and a sort of humble-pie feeling that told me how much I didn't deserve someone so good - that for a brief moment I questioned myself, asking myself if what I was feeling was anywhere near the insanity I had felt just a little over a month ago, when I stood at the departure gate at the airport and for the first time in my life realized why people said things like "damn it, I need to get drunk" as I watched his form disappear into the gate's doorway and out of my reach.

In the first few nights after he left, the full moon would rise late in the full darkness and coolly shine in the portion of sky that was perfectly framed by my bathroom window. Each of those nights, I'd go into the bathroom and look outside the window, and I'd be taken off my guard whenever I saw it shining, even though I was expecting it to be there. And each of those nights, I'd shut the bathroom door, turn off the lights, and resume staring out the window at the full moon. I would then step back, observe how the moonlight flooded through the rectangular aperture in the color of nonfat milk, and as I saw the shadows it cast in the dark bathroom, I'd hunch over and cry, feeling sick in my chest, because each of those nights the shadows that were thrown about would almost deceive me by making it look like he just might be there, he just might have been standing there in the dark by the window all along, if only I turned the light back on.
The night before the day he left, we had gone into the bathroom late at night to take a shower together. He walked in first without turning on the light; as I followed I noticed how moonlight was pouring into the dark from the window and giving the room a pretty look, so I shut the door behind us without turning on the light and I made him stand by the window. He looked a bit bemused as I looked outside the window at the almost-full moon and then back at him, and I clung to him, kissed him lightly, cheerily half-joking about how pretty he looked in the moonlight - and it was true, for one part of his face was gilded with blue light, while the other was artfully cast in shadow. It was amazing that I could be so happy when just a few hours earlier I had cried my eyes out in the car because he'd be leaving the next day, but that was the effect he had on me: everything small like the moon, everything large like the great pain of his imminent departure and absence, all of it became nearly nothing compared to him.

It's always when I'm writing the end of such retrospectives where I feel the most nostalgic, where the memories begin to flow into my conscious brain at such a fast rate that I start to go into overload, to feel that annoying feedback beginning in my mental speakers. Therefore, I'll give in to that without a fight this one time and list the most dominant memories, which at this moment are six in number:
The first a memory of repose, of me hesitantly/gently pressing up against him from behind and happily feeling our skins interface with each other before we tried to/would fall asleep together.
The second a memory of play, of me pushing him back onto the leather couch, attempting to hold him down so I could tickle him "good and proper" as we both laughed and struggled.
The third a memory of lust, of me lying back and looking up at him straddling my hips, his eyes at half-mast and his beautiful lips at rest and slightly parted.
The fourth a memory of a depressive note, walking down the street holding hands with him and hearing a stranger a block or so behind us start swearing at us in Spanish before shouting out that he didn't move to that city "to see no fuckin' faggots!"
The fifth a memory of movement, watching his eyes practically sparkle and flash and feeling his body next to mine, his flesh under my hands as we danced together in that hotel ballroom.
The sixth a memory of sheer joy, of me staring at him deliriously as he dozed lightly in the afternoon after our first night, lying there curled up on MY bed, in MY room, within MY reach.
And lastly, soon but not soon enough, soon even this distance separating myself from him will be a new memory to add to the list, a memory of something at once both painfully bearable and wonderfully unbearable.

Darling:

All are memories of love, yet all are nearly nothing compared to the number of things I'm unable to verbalize or expound upon; perhaps that's because the feelings I have for you surpass such mundane limitations, or perhaps it's because I'm just too dumbfounded and overwhelmed by my good fortune to phrase myself properly, but whatever the case, as long as you know that I love you, as long as you know that this letter isn't near HALF of what I feel for you, as long as you continue to lavish your wonderful patience on this child nine months your senior whom you've caught and the obsessive/repetitive letters and poems he can't seem to stop writing for you, and as long as you remember even just one of my memories along with me, I'll be forever grateful.