For you, I need this to be perfect. For you, I need to find the right words. Because if I can’t, if I fail (and I will fail), you would ask me, expectantly, is anything real if it cannot be said?

You stood outside the door, and hesitated, I thought, at the threshold. Your chest was naked above your shoulder line, and your nipples, I confess I looked, were hard. Your skin, so playfully and delicately white like fresh linen, was flushed, and your face, I think, (I hope) was damp with sweat. I wanted to ravage you, I won’t lie. I wanted you.

Hi, you said. Your voice did not shake, but I felt like it might, and I am sure I smiled, and smiled far too broadly and strangely. A strand of your hair hung across your forehead, loose and free from the others bunched in back. We stood inside for a time, we were hung over and felt languid in the sultry heat that felt more like July than May. We looked at bridges. Perhaps you said it then, but I’m quite sure it was later: if I were to jump off a bridge, it would be the Whitman. You know, because I love Walt Whitman like that.

But the Whitman isn’t much of a bridge. It’s kind of stumpy, really, and not very graceful. This probably only steeled your resolve in the Whitman as weapon of preference. Imperfection suits you in the most beautiful, endearing of ways.

I said, I have an alley way I want to show you. And, for all our honesty, I must confess here to lying. I had been there before, and I had thought when I first found it that someday I might like taking a girl there, to walk, and talk. Someday, I imagined that alley with me in it, a woman on my side, and the evening reaching its golden apex shortly before dinner. Then, after I imagined this, after I found this alley, you happened along. And so I lied. I said I just found this alley I would like to show you.

Do you like tunnels, too? You asked. And we laughed. I don’t much like tunnels, though for some instinctual reason I said I did. Nor do I much like caves, either. But I do like skyscrapers, and alley ways. I fear, despite my love of skyscrapers and alley ways and bridges, that already I am beginning to fail, that already the words are not quite here, and this is not quite real. But there is little choice left but to keep searching.

We walked to the alley way, and it was exceptionally beautiful and romantic. It stretched almost as far as our limited eyes would take us, lined with trees that I don’t know the names of but tend, in my fiction, to call cherry blossoms or crab apple trees. We walked to its climax, once, then walked back its length once more. We searched rather blindly and without purpose, and soon found more charming alley ways. Some were cobble stone, and all were flanked by the most romantic of brick row homes, over a few of which American flags (of the thirteen star kind) sunk listlessly in the still air.

Then, we decided to walk more. You were hung over, but like me I think the allure was too much: our imaginations, or at least mine, had placed us amidst these brick and stone rows, in the courtyards and tree lined streets, and it would have seemed rather unjust to deprive ourselves of that fulfillment. It was nice out, though my head was beginning to throb, and my stomach was churning. You were flushed, and in a sense glowing from the warmth. You carry sun screen lotion in your bag at all times, which I admit I found quite practical even if I laughed (did I? Probably).

On Pine Street, you were clumsy and I was the man with broken bones in my hands. “I would like to show you this graveyard.” What I did not say was that I would like to kiss you in it, as well. And then, though it was certainly not possible, I would like to love you in it, too. I thought about telling you this, and theorizing on why it is I would like to make love to you, or anyone, in a graveyard, but I don’t think that’s something worth theorizing over. So instead I talked about plane crashes.

And this, may I add, is what I like most about you. Though that isn’t true, because at this early stage, I like almost everything most about you. You listened to me talk about plane crashes, and broken fingers, and bridges, and found a way to find it all interesting. And not only that, but you made me feel interested in it, too. I felt smart talking about these things, and charismatic and charming, and even funny. I am none of these things, which I fear eventually you’ll find out. Though for the time, you seemed to think all of them, and I was too pleased to stop myself from going on about that DC-10 in Chicago that lost an engine and flipped vertically.

We came to the courtyard; it distracted us from the graveyard. This, you said, is what it would feel like to have money. And that is something I will never feel. You smiled when you said this, and laughed, and I suppose now would be the appropriate time for me to write about your mouth, which I know some other author, it seems, has already accomplished. You have a superb mouth. I don’t think it is terribly wide, or full. But instead it is well proportioned to the fine taper of your jaw (which, might I add, is wonderfully feminine). Your lips, I believe, were slightly cracked, though I might just think that because mine were. And when you smile, your teeth add a whole new level to the superbness of your lips. They’re crooked in such a beautiful, almost intentional way. When you smile, I am always reminded that you have English blood in you.

Back in the courtyard, we were pretending for the time that we had money. It is something we both know we will never have. Though, it is something neither of us much wants, or has much use for. From time to time, however, it is not a bad thing to pretend. At this point, I was most likely pretending you were my girlfriend, and trying out how that might feel. How did it feel, you ask? I will cop out and say I’m not sure. I’m a relativist, after all. There is only one road, and there is no point in imagining that road as taking a turn it has already bypassed or has not yet reached. Of course, despite my best efforts, I do this kind of imagining anyway.

I told you about George Mallory.

You men. You all have this fascination with climbing mountains. Do you realize that no women want to be mountain climbers?

I smiled, and laughed. Yes, it’s this whole challenging nature thing. You wouldn’t understand because you aren’t an idiot. So I told you about George Mallory, and pulled my leg up underneath me. And, until I kissed you later, I spent the entire evening regretting not kissing you in the courtyard. I’m tempted to say that some inherent, prescient emotion told us to wait, but that would be ridiculous because I don’t believe in inherent, prescient emotions. Except that when I’m around you, I feel my lack of faith wavering. I start to believe in things that I have no logical business believing.

At this juncture, I am tempted to skip over details. Writers do this: they cut things that aren’t essential to the story, or that hamper the narrative motion. And this story, I think, is about release. Or, perhaps, it is about honesty. Or better yet, maybe it is about searching. But whatever it is about (and it is about none of those things, except maybe searching), what comes next would likely be deemed unessential to the plot. But here’s the thing: I feel it is all essential when it comes to you. As you listened to me talk about George Mallory disappearing into the clouds, lost searching for all of time, I think you felt the same thing. That is the worst part about memory, and about writing: it fails to remember so many essential things.

You were quiet for much of the night, except when that guy hung out of his window and yelled at you on our walk home. I was impressed, I admit, by your reaction. I was glad you were offended, just like I was somehow impressed that you had refused to kiss me for so long. It was a sign of strength, I think. And I tend to like strength. If you were here now, you’d joke that it’s a masculine trait, and maybe that is why I like it. Maybe so.

We talked for a long time in the ever creeping shadows of my living room. I’m ashamed, but I have already forgotten much of it. What I remember is, I fear, rather selfish and egotistical. “You’re no Joe-Schmoe, you know. And you don’t realize it, and that makes it sexier.” Around you, of course, I realize it. You leaned forward, and your iridescent eyes, a deep, ancient, Chinese jade, caught a waning piece of light before disappearing back into the shadows. I want to tell you: I guess my problem is that I’m not all here, sometimes. I can’t tell you this of course, but I left some part of me, some part of the beating, thumping heart which we are supposed to love with (you find this concept absurd, I’m sure), back with a wicked brunette. I would like, I have begun to realize, to retrieve what part of me is in the past, though I’m not sure that is possible. I tell you about Sarah, and about Rebecca, about what I’ve left with them, and you look as if a part of you lingers with someone else, too. This is what I like to think life is like, bits and pieces of our physical being floating about the world, occupying the empty spaces of others. If this is true, we’re all just a conglomeration. Which I think might be true.

A smile. I’m so internally conflicted. Another smile, this one seductive and playful and Christ I want to fuck you. We would have deep, animalistic, passionate sex. You would scream, and I would grope you, and caress you, and spank you. “Ah, Fuck.” You sigh, deeply. You said: I am internally conflicted. Well, no shit. You said: But then I don’t know who the hell I am half the time, though I certainly fake it.

Oh, but what is identity? What is I?

You laughed, and I was relative. Experience, perhaps. A conglomeration (again, that word!) of experiences and memories and thoughts. Also, of faking it, and of facades. Faking it is almost more I than anything else. An idea, too. Yes, I think, an idea. But also this: remembering sitting across from you, and flailing at the missing pieces that won’t come now but might come in fifteen years when I’m sitting across from my daughter at a diner in Canton, Ohio, but that will never come together all again, all at once, the way it did in my living room with the shadows hiding your green eyes. You said: I like to think it is more than that, that there is some essential core to find, and grasp at. I like to think there is some cohesive me to understand and know. I would like to tell you there is a me. Like Virginia’s matches, however, me burns quickly and brightly, but is rarely present.

“Are you hungry?” But of course. We gathered things, shoes, thoughts, and corralled whatever we left in the shadows for a later time. You left your internal conflictions for the overbearing chic-ness of an Italian place on 13th and Spruce. (Locust?) We’re massively underdressed, though not nearly as underdressed as I would like us to be. “You want to get out of here?” I’m much more of a diner girl. So we bolted, and with a considerable amount of pride on our side. It felt right.

And then, while I elated, you sunk into some melancholy and quiet. I took your hand. It didn’t help you, I know, but I’d hoped it would. “Hey, look at the Comcast Tower. Isn’t it sweet?” Gamely, you tried to laugh. You try so hard sometimes, and I’m not sure I deserve it. I ached for you. I wanted you to smile. I would have thrown myself beneath a car to make you smile. I ached, and ached. And, somehow, your pain has once again become about me. This, you will soon realize, is one of my many flaws, though maybe it is one of the biggest. I hope you know that it wasn’t about me, though, even if I tried to make it that way.

You said: there’s a lot I want to say, but I don’t think I have the words for it. You could barely talk. You said: I fear this is going to sound trite, and it’s not, and I don’t want it to be. We were outside of Kitchen Kapers. It’s the place for triteness. Once more, you tried to give me a laugh. Once more, I was eternally grateful, and found this small, thoughtless note of grace a sign of some larger goodness that I see in you. It’s there, I’ve thought, from the first time I complimented your boots, and you told me you were like Emily Dickenson. You fear it’s not there, that you are a bad person. But you aren’t. We all try to live decently (I told you this, and wish I could remember where), even if we tend to get in the way. An overwhelming majority of humanity tries to live kindly, and with compassion for others. Sometimes, we’re just selfish or unlucky or careless.

You, however, are not, because you laugh at my unfunny jokes even when you need kindness far more than I do. We were outside of the diner by now. I stopped you. “This is an outside the diner conversation.”

You waited, and tried to speak but couldn’t. You said: when I’m with you, it feels like I’m myself again. And you were expectant in the way that makes me want to hold you. I thought, Updike says our faces are like dams holding back an enormous weight of sorrow. You said: It’s more than that, but when I am with you, I feel like me, or the me I want to be. My face might have cracked, though you didn’t notice. You said: that’s a pretty big compliment. And I pulled you close to me because it was all I could bear, and the only thing I could think to do, and because I needed to have you next to me. We were standing there, inches from one another, and I needed to be closer. So I pulled you close to me, and I kissed your forehead, and somehow my face did not break beneath the weight.

“Ok. You ready?” And in we went.

“I’m a counter kind of girl,” and although I had been a booth kind of man, you won me over without a fight. We ordered omelets. Spinach for you the vegetarian. Swiss and tomato and onion for me. It seemed a royal tragedy when we got fries instead of hash browns. Hell, it was a royal tragedy.

You were still melancholy, and I still ached. All I could offer was ice cream and booze. That was the best I could do? What do you see in that offer? What about a trip, I finally said. Where would you like to go if you could go anywhere in the world. “Portland, Rome, Paris, Istanbul.” I offered Portland, and you scoffed in disbelief (I would much rather offer Istanbul, but I might not have the balls for that, though if you came with me, I would). It’s more possible than you think, I said. You just go. You buy a ticket and go. I’ve done it, as you know. And you just buy a ticket and go, and turn off your phone. It’s selfish. But not when you’re twenty. Then, it’s merely irresponsible, and if there is one thing you can afford at twenty, it is irresponsibility. I would be irresponsible with you. I would also go to Portland with you. Or Istanbul. Or Oklahoma, where you flew back when responsibility did not worry you and you had balls. I would. I would go to Portland with you tomorrow, and miss my finals and my papers. And you, kiddo, would be worth that.

Of course you won’t go. Which is part of what I admire so much about you. In me, you might see rashness, and ease, and insouciance. But in you, I see the practicality I probably need. And, for the lack of a better term, it brings me to my knees. It makes me want to beg. Then, so much of you makes me want to beg. I think part of you might be satisfied with that, too, secretly.

We left. You said: my mother has ruined a lot of people’s lives by searching. “For what?” I don’t know. For meaning, I suppose. For meaning. And I don’t want to do that. “So what is the problem then? You’ve stopped searching? That’s it?” Maybe. I don’t know if I have stopped searching. Although, perhaps I have. But I’m not sure what exactly to search for.

What is there to search for? I tried to answer you, but I fear I never have a good response. I’m always searching myself. “Well do you think there is meaning to be found?” Yes. I’ve never told anyone this, you said, and it makes me sound egotistical (although it didn’t), but I feel there is something I am supposed to do. There is something out there, bigger than me, that I am supposed to do that will help a lot of people, you said.

Shrink your scale, kiddo. Narrow your focus, I said. You have changed people on a smaller scale. You’ve done it with me. You’ve changed me. You’ve affected me. And there are others, too, no doubt. But this, I know, wouldn’t fit you. Because you haven’t yet accepted what I have: the ordinariness of yourself, the commonality we share with the rest of humanity. I said: “It’s amazingly humbling. There’s no more pressure on me. I will live, and most likely fail, and disappoint, and that is all that is expected of me because I’m not exceptional.” You haven’t reached this yet. And I hope you never do. Standing next to you, telling you to narrow your focus, my entire being lept up and screamed no. Because you aren’t ordinary. You shouldn’t have to settle. And I fear it’s cliché, but there is meaning out there for you. There is something. And you might not find it. Hell, you very likely won’t (who, after all, reaches Z?). But I hope you search. Because, around you, I start to have that inkling myself. I start to feel less unity with my fellow man. I feel possible.

So about narrowing your focus: don’t. Or, perhaps, don’t just narrow your focus. I meant what I told you my living room, sitting across from you, my own world seemingly contained within the four walls around us. There is meaning to be found in the search. There is meaning to be found in this: creation of language, creation of existence over a void. And there is meaning, too, in pulling someone close and kissing them on the forehead because there is no language that can be conjured. There’s meaning everywhere, though maybe I just think that because I’m the one who has really stopped searching. I should stop being such a relativist.

As we walked down Broad Street, narrowing, that homeless man by the Kimmel Center stuck his arm to the side, jerked off his imaginary horse cock, and made some horrific buzzing with his lips. It was perfection, in a way. “That is not helping him be less homeless.“ So we walked, and we laughed, and we jerked off horse cocks, and we searched. For each other, for meaning, for god knows.

“I’m writing a story about you.” Me, too. We write stories.

Exhausted, I think, we went to the roof. The city was clear, and sharp, and beautiful. It’s home, I said. It’s home in a way no place else has been. Home in the way home should be: that it becomes an identifying part of you; that the parks, and courtyards, and alley ways, and diners carry intimate memories that haunt your body. I have tried to write a story about this idea, but it is as convoluted and opaque as Philadelphia was clear.

It is a beautiful city. You looked away from me as you said this, your back turned, and I may have put my hand in the slight indent at the end of your spine. I drove through Philly a couple of weeks ago, I told you. I was early in picking up a friend. So I drove through Penn (and thought of Rebecca), and turned onto Market street, and the city unfolded before me like a valley viewed from around the last bend in a mountain road, and I was overwhelmed. Then, I had no words for it. And I still don’t. What do you feel when you love a place? What does love mean when it refers to a place?

Somehow, we switched spots. I stood with my back to the city, between you and it. Between two places, you and home. And now here is how this story is about release: we kissed. And it wasn’t monumental, was it? For me either. But then we kissed again, and again, and it felt like something other than monumental, but maybe more important. Perhaps ordinary, but that almost seems harsh. Because we expect love to be monumental (and here, for the first time, I will call it love, though it certainly is not yet love in that lived in, adult way). And there are times when maybe love is monumental, as unrealistic as us asking that of love might be. But on the roof it was not. I am failing here, if you can’t tell. I am failing because it wasn’t monumental but it was, all at once. It wasn’t, but it had meaning. Because I kissed you, and you told me that you were ready, and so was I. “Why don’t we go fuck in the shower?” And somehow, fucking became boning (words change), and we had a joke, and a desire, and a meaning. You said: this got exponentially more complicated. And we kissed, and talked about anal sex. And we kissed and talked about sheets being wet, and sweat, and fucking in the shower, and humiliation being sexiest of all.

Why? I asked, wanting to be humiliated, wanting to humiliate you, to bend you over in the shower, to ask you a question and see your answer. You said: because it shows you really love someone.

So it wasn’t monumental. Maybe nothing was. But we are hopeless romantics, and because of that, it was perfect, and I stopped regretting not kissing you in the courtyard. And in hindsight, perhaps, it will become perfect as so many imperfections become. Yet we both know it wasn’t. The silence of it, perhaps, was perfect. We finally stopped talking, and it was right. There was meaning, I tell myself, in that silence after we first kissed and I tried to place the smell of your hair, and you nuzzled into the side of my neck. But it was imperfection above all else. We saw then that all we had constructed, the whole world we had built around ourselves, was not monumental. So we kissed on the roof, and were ready, yes, and I wanted to fuck you in the shower. And, somehow, through imperfection I found it perfect. Whatever that means. Because what, after all, is our expectation of perfect? Clarity, perhaps. The promise of transcendence, of answers. Of yes.

I helped you down. We walked down the stairs. At the gate, we paused in the ethereal, harsh florescent light. And I think we knew the world was about to open, that it was no longer just us, imperfect on the roof above Philadelphia. There were other people, and expectations, and decisions to be made. I will confess to you: given the choice, I would have stayed on that roof. Of course there was no choice.

So we stepped out, and found your bag, and you made a phone call. I love you, you said, though it was not to me. We walked in silence. “This wasn’t a bad silence.” You said: no, no. Just one of confusion. So I took your hand, almost ripped it from you, and apologized because we both knew it was for me and not for you. “You know what isn’t confusing? Boning in the shower.” For the first time, you did not try to laugh, and instead threw up your hands in disbelief. I felt I’d lost you.

I couldn’t talk by the time we reached the train station. I worried I would never see you again. I still worry. “We have to mini golf. And go to a baseball game.” Instead of pretending to throw a baseball, I shot a basketball before correcting myself. Pretending, it seems, can be dangerous, too. We kissed, briefly, curtly, almost professionally. I stopped you half way down the steps. “Erin.” You turned, expectant once more for the night. “Nevermind.” And you sent me off with a wave. But also, you sent me off with the line you would later write about our parting. That line I can’t remember, that line that is more beautiful than anything I can conjure, that line about sending me off with a prayer. And that line is important. The line you wrote about us, the story you wrote about us, is important, because it is the only line from you in this story. This is all from me. There are parts of you in here. But it is you through me. And although I feel you are a part of me now, that I have been opened so fully, and you have given so much, that I have indelibly found myself part you, it is still not you, not real. It is all expectation, and perception.

Yet maybe that’s all this is: expectation and perception. But then I go back, and I search, and I think to myself: Maybe there is a meaning out there. Maybe it is in this girl. And I truly think this. And I know it’s impossible. It’s not possible. But, I think, I tell myself, maybe in this girl, in all this searching, in those eyes and beneath those lips, in whatever this is, this ineffable, untouchable thing that I can’t shake, that makes me incapable of anything but wanting you. Well, maybe there’s meaning in that. Maybe you’ll lead me somewhere, somewhere that isn’t full of this pretense, where I accept things, and waffle, and am not certain of anything. Of course, probably not. But for now, for this moment, there is. There is meaning in Erin Rose, in these last days, where the only thing in the world is in you, in those walks, those talks, the courtyards, and restaurants, and alleys of our world. Why couldn’t you help me find meaning?

I know the answer, of course. But I think that’s love, at least for me. This possibility of meaning; the promise of transcendence, or I guess the promise that you’ll try to take me some place that we both know is unreachable, and hell, at least we’ll falter together, and be left searching still, always searching. But together.

I walked away from the train. As I write this hours later, the sun is beginning to come up, and the world is drying from a night’s rain. Now, just as last night, I need contact. I needed to find someone. Last night, as you waited for the train, I walked and found a homeless man. I talked to him, and he gave me a cigarette, which I inhaled. I thought, and thought, and felt full of possibility and afraid of losing this possibility so soon. I feared I would never see you again.

Now, as the rain stops and light begins to spread over my room, there is no homeless man. And, for the time, there is no you. All I’m left with is what I have here, what I have perceived and remembered and searched for and tried to make sense of. I guess I want to say that words fail. But you already know this. Words fail. Yet we search for them, and we search for each other, and we search and search. And what do we find?