I pull Hannah against me and whisper, "I love you". I hold her a little tighter and can't squeeze the words from her, but instead something similar but less committal. She is my sister, a rare quality shared only by Melissa, someone with whom I feel instantly and irrationally comfortable no matter the outward circumstance. But even as that, I can't make the idea of love something totally safe to her as long as I persist in being male. To her, at this stage in her life, I can't imagine any male not sharing her blood can ever be one hundred percent trustworthy. (And, given that she hails from West Virginia, I'm not positive of my math even here.) They can want her and, indeed, have her, for however little long that possession lasts, but there is a marked paucity of men willing to love her in a way that survives the next morning. She can acknowledge the platonic love she has and does, but in writing or over the phone - always when there is a barrier.

This, while getting ready for our pre-Thanksgiving sleepover, isn't the first time I've said that I love her, nor will it be the last. While I am certain I made our feelings known (justifiably throwing Melanie's in with mine, as we share triangular endearments), I most memorably told her just after Daniel referred to her as a whore.

Listen, for whatever this is worth, Melanie and I love you. Seriously and in a very real, very lasting way. You have rapidly become my absolute best friend, someone with whom I feel comfortable and content. I love how we three are together, how we can be close and honest and affectionate. You are worthy of the love we have for you and I am certain you will find someone who will realize that in a romantic way. You are a stupendous person and Daniel is behaving like an ass. He once knew, or allowed himself to acknowledge, how amazing you are. You are sweet and sassy and intelligent and funny and, yes, sexy. You've perhaps visited a bed or two you shouldn't have but that does not make you a whore. I wouldn't lie to you ever. And I know that wasn't the whole of this letter, but it is what I wished to address first.

[...] I just got you and I want to keep you around as long as I can manage. If you ever need any love or support, I welcome you to call me.

I've been meaning to tell you this for a while, but if you ever need a night away from your apartment or anything like that, my apartment is always available to you. I'd love you to take me up on this. You've made a definite difference in my life and I am grateful to you.

I don't know if she more needs to hear it or I need to say it, but I don't stop myself from reminding her of the intensity of feeling with little preamble.

Before she and I go to bed that night, as a needless statement of intention, I tell her of an afternoon nap I'd shared with Zack and Kei a lifetime ago, before the former abandon me for transience and the latter for maternity. I don't wholly remember the context, only that Kei was a little in love with Zack and he was a little in lust with femininity. We all lay together, unmoving and lightly dozing on my loft bed, my arms around her waist and her arms around his chest. Babies should be that loved and serene. After the nap, three early twenty-somethings in love with the moment, no more was said of it and the rest of the day, along with its preamble, is lost to me now.

I wanted Hannah to know through this that it could be done, this nonsexual intimacy I'd never tried before in such fullness, and I wanted to attempt it with her on the eve of her filling in at a holiday for Melanie, who had to attend to her own family in Ohio. Aside from that long ago nap, mutual unconsciousness in a bed had only ever been shared with women who already were or dearly hoped to be naked and given good reason for such exhaustion.

As we go to bed that night, changing in separate rooms before sharing my bed, I feel anxious that, at some point, I will forget just who is cuddled next to me, that the night will make us man and woman sharing the bed and not merely sexless siblings. I do not want Hannah in this way, echoing her disinterest in ever discovering what the other looks like nude. It's not that it would necessarily be unattractive but that it would be so familiar as to be like walking in on a cousin in the bathroom. Yet the worry plagues me so that I get up from her chaste allowance of my embrace in sleep and read so as to remember myself. Then, in returning to the bed and to my slight shame, I turn my back to her and wrap myself in a sheet so there can be no suggestion of impropriety. She does not reach out in her sleep to reaffirm some physical connection because, I hope, she is stone asleep and not merely the slight witness to my grappling against some brain gunk of Puritan forbearers, pointing out the lack of a bundling board between us. More than anything this night, I want to be capable of this level of chaste intimacy with someone I have really come to love and depend on, that she can be loved without ulterior motives.

Soon in Xenology: Christmas, independence, keeping.

last watched: Lost in La Mancha
reading: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
listening: Nixon

" On Remembering ««« 2008 »»» Friends and Partners "