Silver sits, stiffly, in a chair in a circle of the first comers to the party, and stands between the protection of a tall fan, and the edge of the television, his back to the wall. He is immersing himself in the gathering like a too hot bath, with the lure of my presence to bait him out and across the long drive over the border.
I promised him his first ever, real kiss, for New Years Eve. I wasn’t planning on moving that fast, still covered in Brick dust, still reeling from by what at turns was ripping off a bandaid and putting a kitten down, but when you find out that you have a perplexing puzzle box of a guy who is at once about the same level of perversity as you, has pursued it, and… has made it four decades without a kiss on the mouth, the Aesthetic demands sacrifice.