“Mitch,” asked Robert, “was that dreamboat that graduated your sophomore year, right? He dated Sarah, my mentor, for a period. I think. I don’t really remember, but if it is the same Mitch I’m getting a starry-eyed, glazed look in my eye thinking about him.”

“Mitch is that same dreamboat. He, like no other before him, reigns supreme on my memory’s desire list. If he were to appear suddenly before me, offering me a drink or himself, I’m sure I would accept. Sorry, Tony!

Unfortunately I don’t think he is anywhere near this part of the country, and he’s probably done kissing boys. I pray I was the only one. It would make me feel exulted.”

“I was always so jealous of your desire for him,” Robert confessed. “Mitch. The unattainable. And I was attainable but wasn’t desired. Goodness. These love triangles.”

“But my how the tables turn! If you’ll recall, I believe it was you who eventually rejected me. In a manner of speaking. But that is why this is all so interesting to write about. It has no relationship with age or situation, just time. A developing chronology. We invest so much in desire: identity, image, love, art…and for me these things never depart. Or diminish. The only reason Mitch still exists in my head is because he is my own creation now. I haven’t seen or heard from him since that year so now his existence depends upon my memory and these charred pictures. He is a fiction. Something I build from fragments.

First there is simply the night we kissed, drunk on jagermeister and rolling on the floor with Audrey. Mitch and I at the drag ball, hazy and twirling. He took me back to his dorm room to show me pictures he took of a playground. We touched, briefly. (Did we?) Then there was our ‘date’, dinner at the Abbey and a play at the Phoenix theatre. He asked me about liking boys, if I ‘always knew’. Yes. And the concert, Tricky, we met and danced and drank. He was a vegetarian who made avocadoes sexy. Honey covered peanut butter. And when I went to the formal with Jenny I wore his suit. He sang and played guitar. And he loved Patty Griffin; I forgot who taught me about her. Why I still get sad and happy when she plays. My obsession. And finally these photos on the railroad tracks, a boy in a tree, love.”