Today, I saw a boy. The same as every other boy, but different: I was at the beginning of this boy. And I ran the whole gamut in one day.
I saw a boy. I swept over him several times before he became really clear, separate from the others and worth notice. In my eyes, he blossomed. Tall and thin, with a love for his art that had to bespeak his love for life, his creative soul.
He played the guitar. That is concrete. And he was good at it. He must have been, for he made squinted eyes and slack-jawed o’s in his concentration, his face a portrait of the notes he dreamed and the focus they required.
He wasn’t beautiful enough to be immediately and obviously popular. His was a secret popularity. He existed in a sort of clean, intelligent, neutral bubble–his actions restrained and intentional, his movements certain and exact. He did what he did and he did it well, silently. In the background, in the place that made you think you could scoop him up before any one else found him.
He didn’t have an age or a name, only a face and a talent. He had to be young, the last little tendrils of boyhood growing out around his face. He had to be a little older though, shoulders already muscled out into long, lean arms.
His was a secret possibility. Of the beginning of hope. He was a new opportunity, fresh and perfect based on no information whatsoever. With none of those facts that crowd in and make an opportunity impossible.
And then, it was over. Unbeckoned, the facts of the thing marched themselves up to me, flaunted themselves, sunning themselves in the flicker. A girl, a photograph, the youth; the name and the age came, and it meant that it was over.
And back now. The story hadn’t been about the boy, he had merely supplied the situation. And he was over almost as soon as he had begun.
