I try to be empathetic. Honestly, I do. But sometimes my ego gets bruised and the cake 
just doesn’t seem to rise. And then I become defensive, hurt, and angry. When that happens my diplomacy gets sucked down the drain along with hope. Artem elicits a greater degree of empathy than I. He calls me negative. I call it Age.
Age differences in couples isn’t a new phenomenon. In ancient Greece, it was common for an erastes (adult male) to welcome an eromenos (younger 
male) into an erotic and homosocial relationship. It’s hard to debate the age differences between these two men in our 21st-century morals, but in ancient Greece, it wasn’t the age of the younger male that determined his fate, but his consent. Today there are couples that are attracted to each other that are the same age or decades apart. In America, we tend to turn a blind eye to age differences so long as the younger man or woman has achieved the age of consent (eighteen, nineteen, twenty or twenty-one years of age).
So what’s it like for an older man or woman to fall in love with a younger man or woman?
Heavenly.
Oh yes, and challenging!
Being in love with someone that’s a generation apart requires the adult male to accept the challenges of a yearning, sexually active, inquisitive partner. The younger male’s Joi de Verve is intoxicating. The adult male’s temperament provides the younger male with aspirations.
Both Artem and I have fallen in love with each other. And not with our generations. You see, I 
spy a younger me in Artem, and he sees an older self of he in me. We’ve found that both he and I mirror ourselves in the other. But we’re clear of this one important thing: Age doesn’t matter, for the heart knows no bounds and doesn’t understand the man made construct called time.
basis, I also enjoy the gutteral sounds eminating from throaty voiceboxes heralding his oncoming eruption of ecstasy. But even more than satisfying a carnal urge, I enjoy that simpler, drowsy time post coitus. That moment when the throaty growls become the soft purring of BedSpeak.
giggles, and tender moans. Sometimes it can be heard amidst the pouring of rain showers or as an elipse between the popping of bathtub suds.
my three-legged stool and stare across the ring of our bedroom to his sobbing frame sitting on the edge of the bed. He says between tears, “you’re the shoulder I’m supposed to cry on!”
want to cause his upset. I am his shoulder to cry on. I walk to the side of the bed and sit down next to him and see his jeans stained with drops of tears and runny nose. My hand reaches out to his face and he flinches as though burned by a match. My finger wipe away his tears and I turn his face to mine and I see his reddened eyes which resemble those of my childhood pet rabbit.
“Why did you say goodbye? You used that word; Of all the words to use, you had to use goodbye. Were you leaving?” he asked, still crying.
while laying back and pulling me atop him.
Recently I’ve been intrigued with the ideas of creativity and greatness. What most of us think of as creativity is limited to the arts like writing, painting, dancing, acting, and sculpting. What people don’t consider is athletics. But think of the greats like Michael Jordan, Johnny Orr, Alex Rodriguez, Mario Andretti, Richard Petty, Joe Montana, Brett Favre, Jean-Claude Killy, Apollo Ono, Evgeni Plushenko, and Michelle Kwan.
he’d practised hundreds of times before; creating the hole requires a pulling guard to double team the defensive tackle and the center to move the nose guard to the right causing a gap in the defensive line and subsequent hole; theoretically, in the gap normally covered by the middle linebacker reading a run, but who now reads a pass from the secondary, yelling “pass pass!” The safety bumps and runs with the wide receivers as the tight end drops back to move the defensive right tackle to protect the quarterbacks blind side, while the fullback picks up a nimble cornerback blitzing wide, but the fullback buries him in the backfield; the the handoff finally happens just as the hole appears like an apparition in a dense fog; a hole, first imagined by a coach on a sheet of paper, placed in a playbook as “off-tackle left on two”; practised hundreds of times but
never recognized by the RB; but now, the hole has opened and he’s about to step through the paradigm and into a new future; what’s on the other side of the hole, what does the future hold; this is creativity at its rawest form; this is the result of imagination and practice; it’s a coach’s hypotheses, an offensive lines determination, and an RB’s commitment to his future; yet, he hesitates until he hears his conscience telling to run through the hole; then he runs headlong through the gap while realizing that the 
hole isn’t the future, it’s simply a doorway, his future lies on the other side of the threshold.
HARLAN DIDRICKSON 