A drunk, 17-year-old Jonny giggles into his palm, smiles with his crooked teeth and follows me around.
“You are interesting,” he tells me, nodding his dizzy head, “You talk about such things, such things – why do you care about them? Why? I would never think about them. I’d rather think of something of my own,” his hand lands on my shoulder, curving around it, fingers on my shirt. He stammers a bit, brushes his thumb against my neck, against my ear lobe. “Why,” he says, softly now, and it is weird to smell alcohol on his breath, “Why do you talk about things what are far away? About the politics? Why can’t you live in your life?” he asks, looking down at me, his broad warm palm against my neck.
A reserved 23-year-old Jonny picks at the loose strings on his sweater and asks me questions I can’t answer. We sit on the train station on the cold morning and I watch his extremely white fingers on his green sweater and feel quite uncomfortable and ashamed. I try to broaden my shoulders or raise my head, or straighten my back, but in my head there’s nothing more graceful than him. I don’t know how to act, and I don’t know what to tell him, and I wish there was a third person.
An amused 30-yeard-old Jonny can’t keep his hands off of me, and I don’t quite understand why. He realizes that he, too, doesn’t know the answers, but that doesn’t bother him at all. What bothers him is what I write and what I think, and after the lights go out we talk endlessly into the night, keeping each other up. We kiss a lot. More than in the past and, it seems, more deeply. We were impatient when we were younger, about everything, and now everything is starting to find its place. We even kissed on the street on time, given it was at night, but still as thrilling. In the middle of the well-lit street, leaning against each other shamelessly and not listening to the sounds around.
A warm 37-yeard-old Jonny wraps his arm around my shoulders and kisses my temple. I think he realizes that, in the end, nobody has the answers, but the thought is old and shabby, and passes as a tepid memory from long ago. He tells me he loves me one morning and I smile against his face, the sun fighting its way between our faces. I play and sing for him softly when he can’t sleep at night, sitting on the bed while he traces his hand over my spine lazily. I think about how to tell him I love him back.
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