Free The Art Of The Heart by Dan Skinner

hand. Like a Michelangelo painting. It held a number two yellow pencil over a spiral notebook filled with almost perfect writing. The other hand traced words over a seventh grade American History book. I remember the olive-skinned hand now as if it’s bathed in luminous sunlight, even though I knew it couldn’t have been since the windows were to the back of the classroom.
    But that hand mesmerized me. Made me look at my own and wonder why it wasn’t as perfect. I studied those flawless fingers diligently holding the pencil, the way it moved across the paper. And it seemed to me, at that moment, there was nothing on earth that had greater beauty.
    And it was then I noticed something completely different in me. Some kind of sensation of longing and need. I felt instantly hot all over, sensed droplets of sweat in my hairline. They trickled to my collar with each heavy drumbeat of my heart. My mouth went dry. I wondered, “What is this? What is this feeling? What is this fascination?”
    I’ve no clue how long I sat hypnotized. I just remember the spell was broken when he turned to look at me with those bright brown eyes…and smiled. The smile that changed everything. The smile that I can remember more than forty years later with concise clarity.
    Forgive me for my sappiness, but it’s the only means I have to convey the molecular destruction I experienced caught in the vision of his smile. I felt myself vanish in it. When I returned from it, I would be someone entirely transformed. It was then I understood the meaning of hand-holding and the kissing behind trees.
    I dropped my eyes from his and stared at the pages of the book open on my desk. I don’t remember what book it was at all. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. All I could do at that moment…was feel. And the feelings were overwhelming…and out of control. I trembled, and it confused me. When I had trembled before, I’d been scared. Something else had made me shake. I wanted to look back up at him. I couldn’t. That did scare me. It scared me because it made me feel weak. But I couldn’t get him out of my thoughts. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I saw my shirt moving under the thunderous thumping of my heart. I put my hand over it. This is what going crazy must feel like, I thought.
    He didn’t know it, but I followed him on his way home. He lived just around the corner from me behind the lot of the Catholic Church. I don’t remember the name of the church, but I remember his house distinctly. A duplex on the corner. 394 Osage Street. It was the only house that didn’t have trees in front of it. I watched him unlock the door, disappear inside.
    I was half a block away, behind an oak tree. I stood there forever, staring at his house, wondering what had come over me. I’m sure people passed me on the sidewalks and cars drove by. The passersby probably all looked and wondered what was wrong with the gangly, blond boy standing behind a tree, staring into space, soaked by the early summer heat. I didn’t care.
    What I was aware of was that I now understood that I was feeling what all the others felt when they talked about their girlfriends. But that I felt them for a boy. And that actually terrified me because I’d never seen or heard of that happening. But there it was, and I had no control or choice in the matter. I was helpless under its possession.
    I haven’t given you his name because this is true. I’ll call him Greg. That isn’t his name. But it will do.
    I’ve heard so many people refer to this as “puppy love” or your “first crush.” For me it was so much more than that. It was the single event that would forever change my life.
    That night, the boy that lay in my bed, the boy who used to fantasize about building secret underground cave hideouts and super powerful spaceships that could take him to different planets, lay there visualizing the face, the hand…and the body of a boy named Greg. I fantasized what it would be like to be