A crystalline moment

Almost ten years separate me from this crystalline moment. It was my first real “voyage”, far from everything that was familiar to me. I was feeling the eagerness of savoring every ripe moment of my youth that had been confined for long in a box of social conformism.
Two weeks had passed since my arrival to Paris. I was rambling aimlessly in the intimate corners of the city. With every step, I was attempting to pull myself away from the disappointment of my first night with a man. My brain cells were naturally rejecting the mediocre images of my first sexual encounter, the astonishment with which I reacted at the sight of his genital organ, the clumsiness with which I grabbed him, the tearful eyes with which I faced his breath… It was all emanating sensations of disgust and shame.
At the end, my wandering thoughts and body strangely led me to another man’s arms. My sight was timidly crossing his. His eyes were filled with promises of love. But I was convinced back then that the idea of a man loving another man could only exist in the realm of my fertile imagination. My puerile innocence was bouncing off the walls of the quaint Romanesque church colluding with the waves of the Soprano’s chant. I had no idea what to do, or if, anyhow, I had to do something. He was sitting on a chair few steps away form me. Throughout the concert, I got filled with all sorts of feelings. All possibilities of me and this man were valid, and yet irrational.
Everything that took place after that first look of desire seems trivially inevitable today. His dimly-lit room, the soft surface of his skin, his bulging penis, the pulse of his wrist, the small pearls of sweat around his neck. So many detached, incoherent images that haunt me everytime I think of this city.
Later, I found myself with him on a boat, secretly uncovering his face as he floated his sight between the cracks of the city. I recall noticing a tender look directed towards me. I remember getting filled instantly with a sensation of immense joy that lingered blissfully along the delicate waves of the river. It was at this moment that I felt my whole being carried into a light world. My body was gracefully detaching itself from its earlier existence. I was unaware then that the coming years would be overcrowded with confusion and chaos, but also interrupted with little love stories with no beginnings and no ends.
He did nothing, nothing but whisper few words that shook me violently. It was a revelation, the first real revelation, and certainly –now I can confirm it- the only one. “You are beautiful, my love”. These words slowly escaped his mouth and kept on resonating throughout the city for hours.
Later, I must have heard these words many times under various circumstances, said with numerous pitches and tones. Somehow though, they sounded outrageously frail, or even pathetic, I would say. © El Matador