Day 242-6: love bites.

Very early this morning (maybe 1am) I was woken by a phone call from my favourite little brother (I only have one little brother, but he's awesome). For at least 10 seconds (it felt like half an hour) I had no clue where I was, or what I was doing. This profound disorientation might have had something to do with the fact that over the last four days I have been in five airports in five different cities, and laid my head to rest on almost as many different pillows (or lolled it awkwardly to the side in the case of aeroplane seats). Somewhere in there a Tuesday got swallowed whole by time itself. Somewhere in there I left my Mexican surfing haven and arrived in the city of angels, home to the movies and to many a big dream or broken one. And somewhere in there I lived my own mini love story, the stuff a movie could be made of; a charmed encounter, fleeting yet potent, a pretty picture projected in the theatre of my mind. Sounds like I'm smitten. I am. I am smitten with the places I've been, the possibilities on offer, the future I have painted in my mind, and with the idea of a handsome boy who swept me off my feet with his genuine charm, sweet nature and strength of boy-ness, only to disappear again on the magic LA breeze on which he arrived. I am in love with my favourite city New York, in love with the new sensation of surfing waves, in love with many aspects of the American way, and have a growing affection for Los Angeles as I discover more (at the Chateau Marmont I could live happily ever after). And for the brief time I encountered him, I was also in love with my American boy. But all of these loves live within my holiday story. Some I can carry with me into real life. Some I plan to actively pursue. But as I headed towards the airport still high on the dream, I could not deny feeling the edge of reality's teeth about to bite; the subtle pain of a bubble of magic closing its slippery walls and floating off to wherever it is all such bubbles dwell. And of the boy? My neck still bares the marks his teeth made, the only evidence I encountered him at all. And where do you feel love's bite more painfully? In the bruises it leaves, or in them fading away?

P.S. A song for my American Boy.