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I was eighteen when I fell in love.
I had sometimes wondered, when I was younger and interested in such things, what it would be like when it arrived for me. I remember sitting on grass in the fields of my father’s estate, feeling heated rays on my skin and staring at the horizon, all gold and crimson from the turn to dusk.
Earlier that day, I had seen a man and woman kissing by the sea. The woman’s cheeks had been ruddy and flushed, dimpled with a wide smile. When the man pulled away, he had looked at her with glinting eyes that reflected the surface of the turning waters, as if she were the only thing that mattered. My mother had shuffled me along quickly, casting them disdainful looks and a tut of her tongue.
I had felt something then; innocent and thirteen. A small tug at my heart. Small, but insistent. It did not plague me for long, perhaps two or three months. I knew it was something I would unavoidably have to revisit in my later life: love. Kissing. Holding hands by the sea. Someone who mattered more than yourself.
Yet, as any thirteen year old boy, those thoughts eventually drifted to be replaced by more pressing matters of juvenility and boyhood.
When it did come, it was like the parting of clouds before the sun, the drop of a stone to the floor of a pond. It was as natural as breathing, as brilliant as ancient kingdoms. Towering, rocky summits and outstretched shorelines. Inevitable, when I first laid eyes on him. Suddenly, love became the most important thing in the world.
His skin was golden brown, the curls of his head a shade darker. There was a delicate curve to his neck, a strong angle to the bolt of his jaw. He was standing outside the head master’s office, not in our school uniform. His was flecked and tweed, a crisp white shirt underneath and dress shoes; terribly proper. A new transfer, I imagined. I was on my way to the staffroom to discuss an upcoming triathlon event with my coach.
Our eyes locked. He seemed to startle at this, despite his noble appearance, soon after sweeping his gaze to the floor, as if he had not just turned the oars to my boat and set my life in a new direction altogether.
The moment was too weighty to have reacted appropriately. I stopped in my tracks, looking at this boy with his eyes cast down to the worn carpet beneath our feet. It was thinning terribly, the grey backing showing through in several spots. It was most certainly not interesting to look at, surely not more interesting than I was.
Struck by the urge to have his eyes back on mine, I spoke.
“Principal Chiron is in the school yard. Saw him just now. I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”
He blinked, gaze returning to my own. My heart thundered. He blinked a few more times, the slight frown on his brow lifting as though slowly recognising I was indeed speaking to him. He coughed softly, “Oh - alright. Thanks.”
We stared at each other several moments more. From a couple metres across the hall, I could distinguish the details of his eyes. Nutty, like cooked honey, swirling with both the fire of a phoenix and the stillness of a nightingale.
We said no more, then. I turned to continue on my way, opening the door to the staffroom.
When I saw him next, two days later, he was in our uniform. His locker was five down from mine. I saw him putting away a handful of textbooks, then pulling out folders and a pack of highlighters. He did not notice me, or if he did, he acted as though he had not.
This continued for weeks after. We did not speak again. He had joined my year, in another class, so I discovered. Over time, I noticed that he made friends. We would pass eachother in corridors and hallways, and he would be huddled close to whichever companion he was walking with, sharing gentle words that I could not decipher, though I longed to. I longed for his secret smiles to be directed toward me.
Every day I looked forward to seeing him.
He was poetic, in many ways. In how he looked, his graceful walk, the way his tinkling laugh would waft across rooms into my ears like a pressing phantasm.
He was a deity amongst men, a head taller than our peers. A quiet spirit inhabited him. He was alert yet unassuming. Often, when I’d watch him talk amongst others, those secret smiles would play on the curl of his lips. Knowing smiles; affectionate but detached. Always, I would wonder what he was thinking. Were those conversations interesting him? Were the intrigues of school and youth of any consequence to him? He seemed far more lofty than the rest of us, and I desired him, desired his attention.
It was a year before university.
I had been prince of my realm. At school, unmatched in all domains. At home, denied nothing. Loved and cherished by my father and mother, peers and educators. Spoiled, acknowledged, favoured.
His entrance to Phthia High had set me off-kilter.
Rarely in life was I refused what I coveted, and certainly not ever what I needed; but he felt entirely unobtainable.
I never had to act. People would take interest in me with little effort on my part. Conversations with others felt imbalanced; my words heavier than the rest. The boys and girls would hush when I contributed, whether to serious debates or coarse jesting, to hang onto my every word. Delighted smiles and barked laughter were forced from them all; my small entourage. In my own mind, nothing I said was ever particularly remarkable to warrant this, but I was loathe to refuse the recognition.
However, increasingly, I found myself performing. There was one on whom my apparent charms had little effect.
He would seldom look at me.
So, I made a show of things. When we were in the same vicinity, perhaps in the school yard or across from one another in the bustling canteen, I made sure to engage more animatedly with my loyal retinue. A shouted joke, unfailingly met with cheers and cackles. A play-tussle with one of the boys which would soon descend into a scrum of boisterous bodies.
In those moments his eyes would scan, drawn to the source of the raucous. Then, they would meet mine, for I was always watching him, and they’d pin me with the force of an arrow set loose from its quiver. It was electrifying. It would be the end of me. I wondered whether he felt it too; this thing between us.
Regrettably, he did not seem to like it when I was loud. Though everyone else did.
He would contemplate me with a drawn brow, a scrunch of his nose, as though I were an unsightly disturbance. This irritated me, because he had left me with little choice to begin with. If he had paid me more regard, acknowledged that we had already met and spoken, thanked me for my help back then, I would not have had to resort to such obnoxious measures.
Despite this setback, I resolved to still count it a small victory. At least he was noticing me. Thus, the ritual continued.
At home, in my room, I was in the presence of his ghost. I guessed that his lips would be sweet, soft as petals, tasting of figs - for that was how they were coloured. I imagined his skin under my hands, smooth as polished bronze, the haunting mirage of his throat beneath my mouth. I would imagine us kissing as lovers would, hand in hand by the sea.
I came to understand the poets, the lyricists. Love was driving me mad. Love was causing me to see that which was not there.
There were girls that would sit with him at lunch, that would walk with him to lessons. I would burn at thoughts of his possible fondness toward them, any tenderness that I did not know of. There was one in particular that I would see him often with. I was indifferent to most people, but I found I could not help the impulsive dislike for her that arose within me because of this. He was the first, and surely the only person I would love, and love was opening gateways to my baser instincts; passions I had not felt before. I was proprietorial, jealous, aching.
I embraced all of these emotions, surrendering to what he was making me. To hide or pretend I was not feeling them would make them no less true. I came to understand why love may start a war, or may end one. I came to understand that what my mother and father had was not love, but rather transactional. I both pitied and envied them, for this boy had coloured my world where it had been previously dismal and featureless, but he had also turned me inside out. There was pain to it, a sort of violence, and I knew things were never to be the same.
I do not know why I did not make my affections known to him sooner. His presence disarmed me, terrified and intrigued me. The longer I left it, the harder it became.
The school year eventually ended. He had graduated top of our cohort - bumping me to second place - and he was going to medical school. At the final assembly, he stood at the front of the school hall and gave a speech. He was as dignified as ever up there; his presence carried suns. He opened his mouth and I am certain I fell in love once more, hearing at last the deep trill of his voice again. He smiled at the end of his oration, one of his secret ones, and we all clapped. Like a dream, his eyes found mine amidst the audience and I swore that his smile grew wider, a little brighter. I determined then to not let him pass, for that would be my life’s greatest blunder.
I cornered him in a quiet corridor at a graduation party.
“You transferred from Opus. What’s your name?”
I knew his name. It was the first thing I had sought out after I saw him at the principal’s office. Plus, the school was not large, and the headmaster had introduced him before his address in the final assembly.
“Pat.” He answered me. He was swirling a cup of dark red liquid, looking intently at the contents. I had supposed he drew away from the crowds of the event for some minutes alone.
I tried to smile approvingly but my lips felt wobbly, my fingers clammy. “That short for something?”
Patroclus. It was short for Patroclus.
Surprisingly, he grimaced, as though the question grieved him. It took a short while before he answered me. “It’s short for Patroclus. You can call me Pat. Everyone else calls me Pat.”
“Patroclus.” I decided aloud. Pa-tro-clus. To him, I refused to be ‘everyone else’.
He regarded me as I said his name, and I noticed the corner of his rich mouth twitch. I too, smiled. Soon we were grinning foolishly at each other, and I took a step forward.
“Patroclus, can we talk?” I asked, and crowded him into an adjoining room before he could protest.
Alone at last, he appeared unsure as his back rested against the wall behind him. He was looking at me, his eyes a storm. There, I felt more alive than I ever had; wild murmurations of starlings beating in my blood. Though I did not know him, he was my favourite person in existence. I admired him most, yearned for him most. I told him such.
His eyes had widened plainly, his hand tightened against the cup he held. His expression was indeterminable as I poured out my soul to him in that sacred room. I am not sure how long I spoke for, but it must have been several minutes. It was strange, unloading my months of despair and craving for him. I must have seemed deranged, I surely felt as much. Conversely, it was a relief, and my desperation was strong enough for me to not have felt humiliation.
I invited him to the beach that weekend. The beach where I first learned of love.
He came.
We walked side by side, the taste of sea salt on the wind. The skies were grey and cloudy and gulls flew low over the waters.
I felt my chest swell, my lungs fit to burst when he spoke.
He told me he had been surprised by my confession, but that he felt the same. I stared up at him incredulously, sure he was tricking me. He laughed then. A secret smile from him; directed clearly at me, and it was staggering.
I took his face in my hands after, and his cheeks blushed with the tint of dawn. Up that close, his scent was of almond and earth. I brought his lips to mine, and it was like campfires on the sand, like the peaceable plucking of stringed instruments and lying beneath the stars. When we pulled apart and our eyes met, he was all that mattered.
I was eighteen when I fell in love, and I felt that I could eat the world raw.