Lie With Me

by Philippe Besson

Today, I’d like to slap this seventeen-year-old kid, not because of the good grades but because of his incessant need to please those who would judge him.

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.

Difficulty, you can cope with; you can deploy ruses, try to seduce. There is beauty in the hope of conquest. But impossibility, by nature, carries with it a sense of defeat.

I understand and yet I can’t help but hope for a sign, one only detectable by us, his brushing up against me inadvertently, a glance that no one else can spot, a brief smile. I dream of a brief smile.

I discover the pain of waiting, because there is this refusal to admit defeat, to believe that a future where it happens again is possible.

Yes. One day it will happen, one day you’ll miss horribly what you described as “unbearable”—

As I’ve said, nothing in life moves me more than these moments of pure abandon, of self-oblivion.

In the first image, the young man appears stunted, with slumped shoulders and an anxious look in the eyes. In the second one, he’s completely different, a smiling youth with sun-kissed skin. Of course circumstances played a role, but I’m convinced that it was this hidden love that accounted for the transformation.

I do believe that there are certain men who eclipse everyone else in the room and leave you breathless.)

There is the insanity of not being able to be seen together. An insanity that is aggravated in this case by the unprecedented situation of finding ourselves in the middle of a crowd and having to act like strangers. It seems crazy not to be able to show our happiness. Such an impoverished word.

Jealousy, though not an entirely unknown feeling, is nevertheless somewhat foreign to me. I’m not possessive, figuring no one should have exclusive rights to someone else, as if a lover were a piece of property. I respect everyone’s freedom too much (probably because I can’t bear to have mine undermined). It

I cannot stand the idea that he could be taken from me. That I could lose him. I discover for the first time—poor idiot—this stabbing pain of love.

The terror of losing him outweighs any other consideration.

she must like to remember her youth. (Or else she confuses youth with happiness, as people frequently do.)

Desire does not go out like a match, it extinguishes slowly as it burns into ash.

It’s the most simple words that destroy us.