You'll never read this. You don't have a computer or access to the internet, and even if you did, I don't know how you'd stumble over this site. So I guess that makes this even easier than I thought. Or more cowardly. I'll try and figure out which as I go.

I've loved you for a long, long time, Erik, even before I knew what I was - before I "came to my senses," as I call it. I knew it the moment we were both forced together for the Good of the High School Band, selling $10 coupon books to the rich people in town (who bought the least, amusingly enough), dashing through the rain in a vain attempt to stay dry and eventually giving in to aquatic abandon by splashing in puddles. I knew it when the lot of us went to Disneyworld, and you were the first person I saw when everyone else had vanished. I've known it for seven years, and regretted that I didn't know it sooner.

There was something there, back in those ignorant days, that made me want you, need you as a friend. I wish I had known it for what it was. It made me adjust my schedule as I walked through the school, it made me buy ungodly amount of REM tapes, it made me act as the spokesman when your friends were worried about you.

And then you were gone. Or I was. Six years gone. During that time I wondered if you had succumbed to the slippery path of drugs and alcohol you were traveling when I was a senior, I imagined you dead, or so ill as to make no difference.

Six years. I learned a lot about myself in that time, and you were always in the back of my mind, a constant presence that engendered hope and regret in equal amounts.

When the impossible happened - I found you again - I couldn't know where to start. You were alive, you were healthy, you were clean again. You answered my cryptic card with an immediate phone call, and six years vanished like a dream in the morning. You were the only person I have ever told, without them asking or hinting or assuming, that I was gay. For obvious reasons, I suppose....

I visited, and we wandered about New York, remembering times past. We shared a bed, as friends. For a while, anyway. What we started to do, you stopped, and I respect that. Despite what you may have experimented with in your "Fear and Loathing" days, it wasn't what you wanted to do anymore, and I was willing to accept that. I still am. I may hope, and I may dream, but I know that you know who you are, and all the hoping and dreaming in the world won't change that.

You are beautiful, of that there is no question. You have an artist's soul and a philosopher's perception, and you are kinder and more truthful than I could ever hope to be. Between your calm and thoughtful demeanor and my cynical intelligentsia heart, I think we could have done well together. Had you but asked, I would have shattered the labyrinth I wear around me to lead you home, and done so without a second thought.

But those things never were, and to regret that which never was is a fool's errand. I found you when I thought you were lost forever. I know in my heart that you are safe and happy now, and I know that I can talk to you just by picking up the phone. For those things, I am grateful.

Never forget that I love you.

Chris