| was twelve and my groin was just starting to
speak, to stir and bring about its language. | didn't have the smell of cig-
arette smoke on my fingers and didn’t have to wonder how to get rid of it.
| did not have to think about how much | have had to drink and whether or
not it will make me feel ill like seaweed the next day. | was not — sudden-
ly, inexplicably - in art school at, twenty-six, mouth agape at the beautiful
boys and how single | was. | was not worried whether or not | had written
my world, and if the words made sense. If the specific language i used
was translatable.

Sometimes, there are words that still don't make sense, that still keep me
gelled in a moment of undeveloped idiocy. Innocence.

And then there are words that make too much sense. | feel them hit my
skin far before they reach my ears, far before they enter my blood stream
and bump about as if in a quiet storm. (Perhaps it is true, then - the blood
is made up of rainwater.) These words are the words of lovers. They wrap
around, they speak of the quiet moments when no one else is looking. The
first lover said the second lover snored, and turning to the body that
warms him on cold nights he said:

"Last night, you snored so loud, | actually held your nose until you woke.
You made a tired noise, turned over and kept on snoring." They both
smiled, as if they knew that those are the moments that make us, that
define and solidify us. Those are the moments we never thought about in
1987.

Those are the words that slide up close to us, remind us that our body is
cold. Eventually, | assume the body tires of such banalities, and in the
end, ignores them completely. We feel tired, want to sleep like we did
when we were twelve. Inside that swimming-pool change room, back
then, when | was twelve and proudly showing the boys my age a rite |
knew nothing about (and still don't), | felt a sense of power. It was the only
time | was a man. And even then, the other boys laughed. They said that
they had more, or that they had already placed their tongue in a girl's
mouth, as if that were a prerequisite to masculinity, adulthood. As if put-
ting a body part inside another body we are made old. The act is simple
and direct. The body understands-the motions. But it does not understand
that after the act, time travels faster. | did not kiss a boy until | was seven-
teen. It was 1992. Five years after 1987, and nine years ago from now.
These are numbers; the body does not understand them. Perhaps it
makes it better. Perhaps the body is better now.