This piece of music from the AMC television series ‘Interview with the Vampire‘ (of which I am thrillingly enthralled at a time when not much on television enthralls me) struck me as incredibly moving, as it formed the backdrop to when two vampires met for the first time and didn’t realize they were at the beginning of a centuries-long love affair. No one knows at the beginning – we all think we do, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we never really know. Even if it turns out to last a lifetime, we didn’t know it at the time it began. All we knew was love.
The first summer I met Andy wasn’t what we initially knew as our first summer – it was simply summer. Who could foresee the twenty-four years – and counting – that would follow? As much as I felt like it might be for more than a single summer, I didn’t truly know, and as much as I wanted it to be, I was only one-half of the equation.
Looking back at our story, to the very genesis of how it began in the summer of 2000, I’m more and more touched by our innocence then, by the tenderness of how we learned to accept and love each other. Watching Andy clean the pool – something that seems like such a simple act – is a part of the daily mundane that I’ve come to appreciate as magical over the past few years, when the world has revealed itself to be so much less than kind.
Back when we were the young men, maybe we just didn’t notice it.
