Things end.  People go away.  Friends become former friends, lovers become ex's.  Summer always ends.  Nothing gold stays. 

There are people who are optimists who see possibility in everything, people who do not spontaneously cleave to imaginings of disappointment.  I am not one of these people.  I have never been.  It's hard to move, when you've been stuck this long.  It's probably impossible.  Now, I'm not pretending that I haven't chosen this.  I do not pretend to be an unwitting victim, or a damsel in distress.  I have chosen this place I am in.  It's just that sometimes, when I look out at the world, and I see a little bit of what I've missed, I feel sad.  It is easy to let slip my ownership of my condition and indulge in some self-pity; self-pity is rich and sweet and tempting, and it is always against my lips. 

There is a catalog that I get, which I rescue from the midst of all the other junk mail I receive.  I never buy anything from it; it sells expensive underwear and bad clothes.  But all of its models are gorgeous young men. 

Some people equate 'gorgeous' with something more substantial than the image printed on a page.  Some people find such a presentation lacking in some regard.  They require a personality to go with that perfect smile, or they want to see some evidence of intelligence behind the sparkle of that mesmerising gaze.  For some people, nothing gorgeous can be inanimate—it must breathe and talk, it must be capable of sweat and touch.  Gorgeous for them is nothing less than this, and a whole lot more besides. 

For me, pictures are as close to gorgeous as I dare get. 

Whether 'tis good or bad, my vocation in this life—chosen, if you will—is to observe.  I see sunlight and contemplate the nature of light.  Others see sunlight and make weekend plans for excursions to the beach, and there they and hundreds of others strip off almost all their clothes and lay under the hot sun tanning—much like the boys in my catalog probably do, in real life. 

I see clouds and am lost within their folds and wrinkles, I watch them gently reshape their canyons and their mountains, their whole luminous continents distant and untouchable—and gone, for all eternity, within minutes.  Others see me cloud-gazing on their way to work or going back home; they look at me with annoyed curiosity and wonder what the hell I am looking at. 

I observe suffering and see injustice, and am driven to madness by frustration.  Others look upon suffering with mostly dread, also equal parts disdain and compassion, and from this they resolve, quite pragmatically, to strive more diligently for the top, so as to avoid being climbed upon.  Such selfish striving, like all things, will end one day; it will not be missed. 

In my boy-catalog is a pajama set, available in red and white, or black and white, being displayed upon the body of a tanned and dark-eyed beauty.  The pajamas are emblazoned repeatedly and perhaps not tastefully with the slogan, "It's all about me."  Well, "Duh," I thought at first, "Of course it is all about you, you beautiful boy."  I was simultaneously feeling a pang of shame for my long history of self-centeredness; I do not remember my friends' birthdays, I give no gifts at Christmas, and most of my paragraphs start with 'I'. 

There is a synergy here that is sought after with varying degrees of success by most serious art forms, and is seldom achieved by them, much less by a cheap catalog of cute guys in bad clothes.  I'd buy the pajamas if they said, "It's all about him", but then, he would be absent.  There is more irony; my warped observational perspective wants it to be all about him, only with me in the picture, too.  But there he is, without me, wearing clothes that say, literally, "It's all about me."  He isn't supposed to be able to do that!, according to my warped perspective, which is how I know it is warped.  On the other hand, the image of me—forty five and overweight, with bad complexion, and no hair—wearing the same outfit in his place, is comic.  And besides, he still would not be there. 

The problem is that it really is all about me, only I want you!  I want you.  And I can have you.  It is no matter that you have none of the depth wherein the real treasures of this life are hidden.  It's actually advantageous that you have none of the spontaneous animation of a real person; that would entail too much work.  I can have possession of you because I have made you an object, and you are an object because I can have possession of you. 

Gorgeous. 

The only problem is that it's all a brave and futile fantasy, a failed attempt to defend against the inevitable ending of all things, a disastrous effort to control.  That.  Which.  Cannot.  Be.  Controlled.