Purple Bottle

Sometimes there are things that make you believe--that make you not want to give up.

It’s alarmingly easy to end up cynical and jaded and pessimistic—especially when it comes to the mushy stuff. If you have not yet had the personal experience of meeting someone who—at the very thought of them—you melted a little and got weak in the knees...well, there’s no way around it. This will be hard for you to understand.

But I’m a sucker for love. It’s ridiculous, really. I’m starry-eyed over love.

I reach a point where I’m personally fed up with the whole business. Love can occasionally wear steel-toed boots and unceremoniously kick you in the teeth. Then things like this happen that ignite the flame of hope in you again.

Seriously, I’ll shut the fuck up now and get to the point.

Short version: A close friend of mine met someone online. They wrote to each other for several months. Last night they met in person for the first time. It was intense and amazing and they were very happy. If you see a sudden shadowy shape appear across the sun, it is most likely them floating above the world in their bliss, smiling down benevolently at the rest of us poor beasts trying to get by.

Today he attempted to articulate through typed words how he felt. With his permission, I’m sharing a portion of it that I found especially beautiful with you, gentle reader:

(Let me again apologize for being so full of shit. Really. But c’mon…I got jerked off on by a random stranger on MUNI in the midst of all this love in the air. I’m feeling a bit off kilter!)

My fingers miss her fingers. Mmmmm, my fingers no longer understand why they do anything else. They are Elena*-hand-holding machines….

He describes them sitting side by side listening to a lecture together during which she grabbed his hand, intertwined hers with his, and lay both of them on her thigh.

There our hands stayed for the rest of the talk, our fingers occasionally sliding slowly against each other, feeling the friction and newness and sense of exploration, back and forth. Our thumbs quickly became great friends. They like to slide and swirl and stroke; a little like a thumb wrestling match but with total tenderness replacing the aggression. Oh god! I miss her thumb right now!...

Oh my god, Amie. Oh my god….

I'm feeling DEEPLY vulnerable right now. A fucking feather could kill me right now. I am hers. I am had. That's all there is to it….I feel like I could fucking conquer nations if, ya know, I had any interest in that sort of foolishness.

Wow. If you don’t find that absolutely heart-warming and delicious and fantastic--well, then you are made of stone and you and I would not get along.

[*name changed to protect privacy]