Hi again, Artiste--
I have had the privilege of becoming intimate with some very wonderful, special people in my day, but the closest I have come to falling in passionate, head-over-heels love (the kind of love we associate with Jack and Ennis) was back in 1990, when I was twenty-three and had been out for only a little over a year. I met a very handsome, very masculine fellow who was a little older than me, but who was only then coming to terms with his homosexuality--he had had experiences with women, but never with a man.
I became his first male lover when we started dating that year. I was very sexually attracted to this guy, though from early on I could tell there were some fundamental differences, possibly even incompatibilites between us. I overlooked all this in light of the strong animal passion I felt for him, in addition to those qualities that he possessed and that I felt I lacked: confidence, strength, and courage. In short, he seemed like a man of the world, while I still felt like a timid teenage kid on the inside.
After a month of dating, he abruptly broke off relations with me, citing political incompatibility (
) and the fact that he no longer found me attractive. Tact and empathy were not among this fellow's strong suits. I felt devastated...bewildered, hurt, angry, insulted, and lovelorn, all rolled into one. I had really come to have strong feelings for this man; in fact, I felt that I had fallen in love with him.
This was the beginning of a long grieving process that lasted about a year. Friends and family were astonished by the intensity of my reaction, as was my ex-boyfriend, since I had only known this guy for one month. Surely, they reasoned, one month was not long enough to fall in love with somebody. And yet, here I was, having those feelings that I could only name as love.
Looking back on this episode, I recognize how immature I was in so many ways at that time, and that a lot of my response had to do with a deep-seated lack of self-esteem. Being rejected by someone who seemed to have so much going for him, who seemed to have it all together, just brought it to the fore. And yet there
was love there, too...there simply had to be, in spite of the protestations of those around me that this could not be so. I don't know how "genuine" or "deep" the love might have been, compared to what others have experienced, but I still recognize this as the closest I have come to bearing witness to what falling in love feels like.
I have gone on at such length to say that, in a way, I think I've had some experiences similar to what you and Lee have described. And I certainly know how much I yearn for that special bond, that meeting of souls that Ennis and Jack enjoyed, that kind of union that might be described as Love as its Grandest and Highest Expression.
