“It didn’t occur to me to want more from that moment”
Charles Tex Smutney and Charles Buddy Stanley, 1941 ©George Platt-Lynes
As we walked away, laughing again, K. hung his arm around my neck. It was a casual gesture but one I wasn’t used to, and I was almost frightened by the happiness that overtook me, that filled me up and charged me and at the same time carried a threat; it was too unrestrained, there was nothing to keep it in check. I felt solid again as I walked with him, more certain of myself than I had been for years, with his arm around my neck and my own slung at his waist. We knocked against each other but what did it matter, there was no one to see us, we moved with an awkward freedom but a freedom nonetheless.
We lay beside each other, as always endlessly talking, and then K. complained about his back again, asking if I would rub it for him. […] I worked his neck and down the column of his spine, the muscles bunched on either side, and maybe for the first time in our friendship our constant chatter had ceased. I had never tou…
As we walked away, laughing again, K. hung his arm around my neck. It was a casual gesture but one I wasn’t used to, and I was almost frightened by the happiness that overtook me, that filled me up and charged me and at the same time carried a threat; it was too unrestrained, there was nothing to keep it in check. I felt solid again as I walked with him, more certain of myself than I had been for years, with his arm around my neck and my own slung at his waist. We knocked against each other but what did it matter, there was no one to see us, we moved with an awkward freedom but a freedom nonetheless.
We lay beside each other, as always endlessly talking, and then K. complained about his back again, asking if I would rub it for him. […] I worked his neck and down the column of his spine, the muscles bunched on either side, and maybe for the first time in our friendship our constant chatter had ceased. I had never tou…