I’m in love.
I’ve fallen so madly in love with Artem that it’s almost embarrassing. I feel like a giggly teenage school girl having a crush on some LaCrosse dreamboat. It’s impossible for me to think of what my life was like without him. Until this morning.
Life without him is something now confronting me. You see, we’ve upset one another and now the bell has rung and we’ve retreated to our respective corners. Panting, I sit on 
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!”
Oh, Christ, my devilish corner man says, listen to him crying over there.
But my heart is going out to Artem and as I hear the bell sound starting the next round I notice that whatever impetus caused me to cause Artem’s pain no longer exists. I don’t
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.
I’m sorry, Artem, I whisper, I’m sorry; please stop crying.
“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.
A part of me was leaving but that part of me’s come back. Come on, Artem, it was a misunderstanding, that’s all. Please? Please stop crying, I said as I kissed his damp cheek, and finally kissing his salty and moist mouth.
“Do you promise to never say goodbye? Ever again? Because I can’t stand to say goodbye. Not to you. And not ever. I just won’t be anyone if I can’t be someone with you,” he said 
while laying back and pulling me atop him.
Looking down at him, the trimmed beard, that pouty lower lip, the tear stained eyes I said, never again, I’ll never ever say it again.
We’ve never been apart since we met. Not even on that almost goodbye day. To quote Mark 10:9 in the King James Bible, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.“
When we are born we are born alone. When we die we die alone. And somewhere in between if we’re lucky we’ll get the chance to fall in love. But falling in love is by no means a guarantee. I have male friends who have never fallen in love. And now that I think about it, 80% of the men in my life haven’t had the God given pleasure of declaring to their lovers that they’ve fallen in love with them.
relationship can ever be sustained unless all parties are equally represented. You see, we’re all bruised fruit in some way or another. But what makes us stronger is when we combine ourselves with like fruit to create a beautiful medley. A relationship is like a delicious Ambrosia salad.
in life, I discovered that indeed I had an eye for taking photographs. I never understood the desire that friends had for taking photos of everything. And I certainly never thought I would ever host a dinner where I forced guests to sit through my latest thousand photos of my last trip.
yearn for him even more (we’ll reconnect in a week). But I realized that the only placeholder for his beauty was my mind. Which plays tricks on me. Which distorts his image depending on how I feel about something.
pelts, body paint, piercings, tattoos, loin cloths, uniforms, denim, gabardine, super 180’s, sea island cotton, face powder, handcuffs, perfume, cologne, and the list goes on and on. In many respects, we men have adorned ourselves much like our fairer sex counterparts have adorned themselves, and probably, to a greater degree, even more.
their body is the only thing that even begins to come close to paradise in this whole lousy world? And don’t we love them sooooo much that the experience borders on cultism?
but an actual ass. As in asshole. I did something that I now regret with the whole of my heart. This morning I made my beloved Artem cry. I made him cry because my insecurity caused a quarrel. It caused a man-fight.
bruising or broken bones. They do cause a tremendous degree of collateral damage. They place a tremendous degree of angst on broken hearts and push the whole of sidelined poker chips with an “all-in” call. “Show ’em,” we’re saying, “I think you’re bluffing.”
HARLAN DIDRICKSON 