Image credit: bahri altay

Combine this problem, as it seemed to me in my lost and loveless life, with my ugliness, and even my eventual fame did not allow me to reach out for affection that was in any way lasting or sincere. I used to live for brief moments with strangers in sordid surroundings, mostly ‘rent boys’ under the kinder cover of night, hating my actions the next day, pursuing even this exceptionally rarely, never allowing anyone to see my face clearly or gain any purchase in my heart. I lived the clichéd gay life rather than a truly authentic one. I was absurd even to myself, but saw no other possible future for myself. But for almost a decade I had not even ventured out in this manner, I was celibate and more comfortable, if no happier, for it.

I was alone, for almost fifty years, and did not dare to dream of any other existence. To ask the universe for more than my talent seemed churlish. To expect love for a face I could barely stand to view in my own mirror seemed obscene. I had not the slightest hope. I was resigned to this.

But hope is a strange thing. It wakes and breathes within you so silently, but so inexorably, it takes you somewhere foreign before you realize your flight. And by then it is too late. It has begun. The music for the dance you know is forbidden has begun to play. And it will not stop until you dance.

It will not stop.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved