No one was prepared for The Rite of Spring.

True story. But not a unique one.  I wasn’t prepared for you. Like that sensuous bassoon that starts things off. You wove your way through the crowd and right up to my face, held out a glass with gin and two ice cubes, remember? And you said, “I’m Horace. You’re Howard. God, where did we get those names?”

“I think Howard is a less unusual name than Horace, don’t you?” I said. I was a little stunned and charmed.

“I was hoping you’d go along, be another misfit with me. Thanks for bailing so soon!” Then you lifted your glass and clinked mine.

I wasn’t prepared for any of this really. That sly intro. The flirting that didn’t lead to sex on the first night. How refreshing, if bewildering.

Alone in the bed later, I wondered about where you had come from, why you were not coupled (you told me later, completely reasonable), and why me? Looks alone? Hardly. Maybe a look of intelligence, though the room was full of interesting people with glasses, some stylish dressers, and men with good hair. Laughter. Intelligent laughter. Maybe it was because I was standing with my arms folded, an indication of either (or both, actually) judgment and insecurity. But you like ambivalence, Sweetheart. You like contradictions-in-terms. Nijinsky was so handsome and so tortured, too, right? Just like you.

The whole thing has been such a riotous dance! Twenty-one years of a score no one had ever heard before, unless, perhaps, in some Medieval village where there must have been a comparable pair of lovers that everyone in the village protected even though they were all terribly surprised by them and not altogether approving. Aren’t we lucky? Haven’t we been fortunate to muck around in the 21st century? Sure, now the score is not unfamiliar, but every orchestra is different, right? 

It has been all swelling and diminishing, some years full of surprises, like your mother’s impromptu visits and my brother’s ugly political outbursts, but most years full of sustained harmony: just you and I, doing our things. All of our things.

O.K., I’m abandoning metaphors now. I’m just really concerned.

Then this. This eruption! This intrusion! So wild that it was on you before we could ever imagine such a thing. 

So let go. Now you can let go.  

Open the door. Let us come in.