Lie With Me

by Philippe Besson

The insults blend together regularly: “dirty fag” (sometimes just “faggot”), yelled from far away or murmured right next to me. I try to ignore them, to never respond, to manifest a perfect indifference, as though I didn’t hear anything (as though it would have been possible not to). But that only makes it worse: a real heterosexual boy would never allow that kind of thing to be said about him. He would vehemently deny it and beat up the person who gave the insult. To allow it to be said is to confirm it.

I’ve already understood that desire is visible.

This feeling of love, it transports me, it makes me happy. At the same time, it consumes me and makes me miserable, the way all impossible loves are miserable.

I think I love him for this loneliness, that it’s what pushed me toward him. I love his aloofness, his disengagement with the outside world. Such singularity moves me.

Nothing touches me more than cracks in the armor and the person who reveals them.

He adds this phrase, which for me is unforgettable: Because you will leave and we will stay.

“It suits everyone to believe in an accident. It’s less embarrassing than a suicide.”

In the end, love was only possible because he saw me not as who I was, but as the person I would become.

all around me are the artifacts of a teenage boy’s room. A boyhood I’m in the process of annihilating.

Have you noticed how the most beautiful landscapes lose their brilliance as soon as our thoughts prevent us from seeing them properly?

Those who consider travel an ordinary adventure rather than a grand expedition, for whom a quiet life is considered a slow death.

Did he want to punish them? Or did he simply hold on to this fundamental truth: that in the end, death is only a matter between you and yourself?

You get used to everything, even the defection of those you thought you were bound to forever.