To AT

Thank you for the sweet taste of what it's like to be loved, if only for a little bit and if only for a little while. I'm placing our beautiful moments in a box labeled A in my head... like that one kiss, right after we watched Paris is Burning, the fire and passion and obsession on your lips and the way you held me, I could've stayed there forever. Thank you for holding my hand and staying by my bedside through one of the worst nights of my life. Thank you for the smiles, the pleasure, the conversations, the check-ins, the adoration, as short-lived and inconstant as it was.

But this ugly seed of anger and jealousy sprouted and flourished over the past month and it bloomed last night as you held her; I was so frustrated to see you so out of control -- what were you trying to prove? -- and you tore my fraying heart to pieces when you pushed me away, not violently but forcefully, definitively, with finality. You didn't want my lips on yours, my hips against yours, my hand in yours, it was what I finally needed to leave, I suppose, to wipe my hands clean of the mess that was us, that is everything that I wanted from you and everything that you wouldn't or couldn't give me.

I knew from the beginning, of course, how things would turn out, that I'd be the one to get hurt ... it's the slow-motion train wreck, the banana-peel trip in the slapstick comedy of young adult life, I could see it coming all along. I don't know why I dared to hope, to dream. I'm a dreamer, still, but at least I'm done dreaming about you, as I whisper Crystal Castles' plaintive refrain ... I'm not in love, I'm not in love, I'm not in love. I'm not. I don't know what love means. But now at least I know what it's like to be made love to, and I have you to thank for that.

Why'd I let you do this to me? Why had I let you turn me into a bottle-breaking, plate-throwing tangle of insanity last night as I told PM how utterly exhausted I was of this life, when what I really meant was that I was utterly exhausted of life as some confused little boy's plaything. He said my problem was that I didn't know what I wanted...well, I do. I want you. The problem is that you don't know what you want, that all you know is that I'm not exactly what you want, and you're too fucking proud/scared/nice/whatever to tell me so.

So I suppose I'll have to be the one to leave, to wipe my hands clean, once and for all, of the messiness that is unrequited devotion. I meant to tell you during that last intimate conversation that I'd be there to listen if you needed someone to rant, vent, complain to, that I'd be there for you. I meant to tell you that one thing I love about you is that you seem so straight-laced but you're not at all. I never said those things...the same way I didn't say so, so many other things because I didn't want to smother you with my vulnerability and neediness. Now I'm done needing you, and I'm just going to sit back and let my brain process you out of my system. I'll wait as long as it takes.

I'm leaving Wilde to you. You deserve the dirty mess, the brokenness that is her, that sodden house of misfits and outcasts, those three entire floors of broken people. I was one of them once. Enjoy it. I know you all kind of fix each other and you all kind of break each other apart, too. I'm done with the finger-painting upon each other's lives. I'm wiping this broken heart of mine clean and vacuum-sealing this box labeled A. I'll miss you. I miss you already. But next week, I'll miss you a little less, and maybe in a few months, I'll rummage through the memories some sunny afternoon when I have little else to do, just for fun, and savor the honey-sweetness of having once been held by you.

Good-bye.