Late Night/Early Morning Reading

From Edmund White’s A Boys Own Story

“I hypothesized a lover who’d take me away. He’d climb the fir tree outside my window, step into my room and gather me into his arms. What he said or looked like remained indistinct, just a cherishing wraith enveloping me, whose face glowed more and more brightly. His delay in coming went on so long that soon I’d passed from anticipation to nostalgia. One night I sat at my window and stared at the moon, toasting it with a champagne glass filled with grape juice. I knew the moon’s cold, immense light was falling on him as well, far away and just as lonely in a distant room. I expected him to be able to divine my existence and my need, to intuit that in this darkened room in this country house a fourteen-year-old was waiting for him.

“Sometimes now when I pass dozing suburban houses I wonder behind which window a boy waits for me.

Advertisement