It would be nice to think that as I've got older times have changed, relationships have become more sophisticated, females less cruel, skins thicker, reactions sharper, instincts more developed. But there still seems to be an element of that evening in everything that happened to me since; all my other romantic stories seem to be a scrambled version of that first one. Of course, I have never had to take that long walk again, and my ears have not burned with quite the same fury, and I have never had to count the packs of cheap cigarettes in order to avoid mocking eyes and floods of tears... not really, not actually, not as such. It just feels that way, sometimes.
They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.
"Imagine taking that last drive to the hospital," I said quietly. "The last time you'll ever drive a car." Without looking over at me, Augustus said, "You're killing my vibe here, Hazel Grace. I'm trying to observe young love in it's many-splendored awkwardness." "I think he's hurting her boob," I said. "Yes it's difficult to ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam."
I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty one. They are so full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word.
What did I think I was doing? What did she think she was doing? When I want to kiss people in that way now, with mouths and tongues and all that, it's because I want other things too: sex, Friday nights at the cinema, company and conversation, fused networks of family and friends, Lemsips brought to me in bed when I am ill, a new pair of ears for my records and CDs, maybe a little boy called Jack and a little girl called Holly or Maisie, I haven't decided yet. But I didn't want any of those things from Alison Ashworth. Not children, because we were children, and not Friday nights at the pictures, because we went Saturday mornings, and not Lemsips, because my mum did that, not even sex, especially not sex, please God not sex, the filthiest and most terrifying invention of the early seventies.
We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained ever open
"All he wanted from the girl was for her to hold his hand again if possible. He wanted her to squeeze his hand again someplace where the two of them could be alone. And he wanted her to tell him something--anything--about herself, to whisper some secret about what it meant to be Aomame, what it meant to be a ten-year-old girl. He would try hard to understand it, and that would be the beginning of something, though even now, Tengo still had no idea what that "something" might be."
I had let down my shields, that was the problem. The crazy inside Dad had infected me, weakened me so that when Finn smiled, I'd been vulnerable. I'd dropped my shields and let myself pretend that somebody like Finn would want to be with somebody like me.
Will I be some kid's dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine?...Which girl's carrying the other half of my kid, deep in those intricate loops? What's she doing right now? What's her name?
We have to think of a question that we wouldn't otherwise want to answer.' He stood over the pot, looking down at the leaves. 'Something like, Who do you fancy?' 'That might work,' I said, even though it was the last question I wanted to answer. But it was impossible, suddenly, to tell a lie. Benjamin took a deep sniff over the steam and turned to me. 'All right,' he said. 'So who do you fancy?' I hesitated. 'Fancy means like, right?' I said stalling. 'Of course.' I gritted my teeth against the answer coming out. but I couldn't stop myself. 'You,' I said helplessly.
"Is he really so wonderful, this Westley of yours?" "Not so much wonderful as perfect," she replied. "Kind of flawless. More or less magnificent. Without blemish. Rather on the ideal side."
That's how life works. You know it when you know it. They're nineteen and in love. Alone except for each other. Jobless and homeless, looking for something, somewhere, anywhere here. They're on a sixteen-line highway. Driving west.
The spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain incomprehensible to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard-brained youngsters of today. Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams.
But between the busy heads and over-reaching arms he could see Charley and Sylvia, sitting close together, talking and listening more than eating. She was in a new strange state of happiness not to be reasoned about, or accounted for, but in a state of more exquisite feeling than she had ever experienced before;
Do you have change for a dollar? Geryon heard Geryon say. No. Herakles stared straight at Geryon. But I'll give you a quarter for free. Why would you do that? I believe in being gracious. Some hours later they were down at the railroad tracks standing close together by the switch lights. The huge night moved overhead scattering drops of itself. You're cold, said Herakles suddenly, your hands are cold. Here. He put Geryon's hands inside his shirt.
Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup?
The only place Aletta and I could be together unseen was just under the rafters in the church tower, a circumstance that propelled us into an earlier intimacy than what we would have known had we been permitted to walk together Sunday afternoons under the wide sky.