1) The Capture

It hurts, watching him. Not because any one part of watching him is upsetting or stressful; but rather, the sum total is overwhelming.

To be here, in this place, with a landscape that forms a three hundred and sixty degree circle of fairy-tale all around. Indeed, to be right there, with that view. And with all those other actors, actresses, and industry folk that should be the primary target of my awe and adoration. But no, not this time. Not this project. This time, it's him that I watch. It's this boy that my eyes devour.

So yes, it's painful, to watch him. He's so far removed from what I am. He's young, yes, so very young: but actors are all young at heart—something to do with adaptability, if my theory serves. So it makes no sense really that he should captivate me the way he does.


2) The Conversion

He's sort of like looking at a painting from a time in history that you're not familiar with. You know the vague name of the place in history. You can understand what it might mean, when people tell you its name and its place of origin.

And it's all there in front of you, including the neat, tiny card poised on velvet that gives you the information it thinks you need to know.

But it's not in your heart, that painting behind velvet ropes, announced by its place card. It's outside of you; your mind doesn't sink around it the way it would if you were, say, a Historian with a thesis about the art of that period.

And that's what he's like.

And I've decided to become a student in the study of him, searching for knowledge and enlightenment in massive blue eyes and cologne that tickles me from the inside.


3) The Devotion

When I first saw him, I thought him kind of homely and sort of ugly; and a second later I tilted my head a bit and he looked indescribably beautiful. It fluctuates like that, all the time, and the end result is this: he's beautiful at every moment to me, because the variation in him perpetuates that beauty.

And the reasons to adore him fall desperately, like tracks being laid before an already moving train. The heart and soul have been so easily seduced by the prospect of my study that the reasons for such a thing are indeed like train tracks; small, almost inconsequential when thought of, nothing compared to the size and danger of the machine they carry.

But without them? Without them—surely, logically—one must accept that the train would crash—disaster. Illogically, it has never happened to me, and I don't want to know, don't care to think, and can't possibly fathom.


4) Cream

And then there's the guesswork involved in my study. I lay theory in front of theory; surely the taste of him is peppermint and cream, with a touch of orange. Maybe he's salt, or perhaps tart.

But it always falls back to cream, because cream is the color of his skin. It's the dominating shade in the landscape of him, in which soft curves topple boyish edges which then wrap round a smooth, compact frame that makes him look like everyone and no one but himself in the same moment.

And perhaps it's like cream because of the smoothness: I can imagine it all at once on my tongue, in my nostrils, and between my fingers. Yes, cream, then, finally, because it's a smell, a taste, a texture, and a color all at once, and it best describes him, and it is the most fitting support for the theory. Ah, write it down, then; don't forget it.


5) A Journey

Once the whole covering has been discussed, we move on to the body, and it begins at the top, as always. The hair, yes, so soft: I've had many encounters with it. Ever the dedicated student, I can take away much from a split-second of a moment that others might never notice. Such a temptation, the wanting to press my mouth into the hair right around his temple. Later, I might do that; and he might let me.

But it's too early in the research now, to do that.

And let us not forget; cream sliding over cream—even near that hair, so softly.

And the eyes, well; what can one say about the eyes? They go from the lightest gray to the darkest blue, at times intercepting silver, and they can be heart-poundingly beautiful or frightening, if they so choose. They're wide, offset by a smaller face, fringed by dark lash, and so perfectly white round the edges. Even the way he moves them is calculated, as if he knows exactly what the tiniest shift of his gaze can accomplish.

So powerful, my subject; so very forceful.

Man sheathed in the body of boy; regal elegance wielding small hands; limitless seduction under a thin crust covering one who is so gentle.

The mouth is an afterthought of the eyes. The two have no direct correlation, but this researcher cannot help but notice how they seem to work together or are, perhaps, related. It's small and not at all remarkable: a smudge of pink on the artist's palette. But when it moves, it shifts the grandeur of continents. It is all the velvet in the world brought home under the span a few inches.

To see it part, to feel it breath, to press it and trace it; ah, courses of study I haven't been granted permission to take. But the thought comes, yes; the fantasy plays itself like a projection; because this student loves to torment himself so, knowing it will never be.

We part with the face at the chin, as with most subjects, and here is a lovely wave goodbye; his jaw, that heart-shaped span of tangible heaven, that thing that shapes his entire face and head; lovely, indeed. To slide your fingers around that, to cup it gently, to draw it close—but no, not now, not ever.

The neck revisits us with gifts of cream and slopes again, so much like the whole. Working in tandem with the chin as it tilts or flexes, its tiny creases of softness present a challenge and a temptation to the student. I can only picture the feel of such a thing, all filled with moving, flexing parts and expanding breaths. The seat of life seems to live there; so fragile and necessary to all other parts.

And the rest of him is a straight and narrow path downward; you, the audience, will not find womanly curve or dramatically masculine angles here, oh, no—forbid that, even if it were possible! Because the simple straight fall of his body, cut neatly and gently from almost nothing it seems, is so very pleasing.

His arms betray his gender; just faintly curved with muscle; but also hairless. Flat chest, stomach, legs—all of it a boy's form.


6) The Fantasy

What might it be like, one wonders, to have that form under you? To squeeze it and press it and fill it until you've altered it. Oh, the lure! The temptation to work magic on that form, even for a little while; make it red, make it shiver, make it cry out.

The idea of the whole, of all those tiny parts, uniting under one pleasure; working together in ways unimaginably erotic and perfect. The eyes, the mouth, the chin, and the body: all together for the cause of rushing want? Oh, be careful not to betray the scholarly approach of our research, I tell myself.

And so the watching continues and the observations flood in; sparks of thought like jolts of electricity through a narrow space. They arrive indeed with the quality of a spark—there and shocking one moment and gone the next. But not lost, no, never lost—merely absorbed.


7) Shutting Down

In the end, the theory takes shape and definition and is imprinted on the inside of your skull permanently; a fixture of love, a symbol of obsession, a reminder of slippery, elusive fragments that never made sense to begin with.

And it's never enough. It will never be enough to slate your hunger, because what that would require is something he has never thought to give. And so there is no dramatic climax; there is no into-the-sunset shot, fading to black. Time trickles on, heeding not our pursuits or desires, but one thing only: itself.


8) Immortal

The research collects dust in its old age. Its edges are cracked and finely yellowed. From time to time you revisit your student days, thinking fondly and a bit morbidly on the capture and enslavement of your soul.

You wonder if he still keeps your beating heart in his fist, somehow. You wonder if he remembers your middle name or the way that you liked your coffee. You did, after all, worship him so.

No answers to this. The theory is outdated, finally. The support no longer applies. Years are threatening to become decades.

But one thing that never happens is this: Forgetting. I've never forgotten those long days and nights, when I spent my hours floating between Samwise Gamgee and myself: and thereby between Elijah and Frodo. I will remember always the faint impression of cream on blue and blue on cream. I will remember the exquisite heart-pain of unsatisfied desires.

He lives on, that boy of twenty, retaining forever the soft radiance of all his combined perfection and imperfection; down the staggered line that goes between my brain and my heart.

He hangs guarded, behind velvet ropes. His place card that sits on velvet trappings tells me what it can; and finally, with this painting of substance and memory in perfect view, my heart tells me all the rest.