I write to you to let you know that I ache for you. Here is a Spanish woman unhappily married to a Swedish man, in the middle of America with three young children. Yet you do not lose your spirit. The fire of your personality is still strong even though your life is in turmoil. Whatever I can do to help you, I will. for Belia, you have awakened my heart. I hope you see that even this placid soul is deeply moved by your beauty. I sometimes, despair that you will vanish from my life, that I, will never get to see again your dark eyes that hold the sun.

But I know this is not the time for me to express such thoughts. You need all of your strength and wits about you. You need to care for yourself and have people around you who will help you become independent. To this end I will give you what I can. Take care my friend, be good to yourself.

Love, Bruce
July, 1995

I do not know if I will send you this letter, but it needs to be written.

You have stolen my heart. I love you. How horrible and wonderful this is. Every time I talk to you, my words halt ,,,and hesitate because I am struggling between two powers: The power of a love that has come from who knows where and the power of trying to do "what is right. One part of me wishes you could be with me and that the power of love would solve all problems and meet all challenges. The power of doing what is right says "leave Belia alone! For God's sake, the sake of the children, for the sake of Belia herself, and for your sake, let this woman come to terms with these awful decisions alone. What can a love, quite untested and unsure add to anyone's life at the moment? So, I am indeed an unhappy man. But I am a man of deep feeling and I must at least try to express this to you, otherwise I will burst.

You are so beautiful. Your whole person rings with life. Your face is open and honest as the breeze off of the sea. I have longed to touch your face, to have my hand move down your cheek and my fingers lightly skim your lips. When we have walked, my arm has grown stiff next to yours because I have wanted to clasp your hand in mine. It is terrible to have to concentrate so hard on not doing what seems natural. And how funny this all is. I have laughed with you so that I thought we have been together for many years, two comfortable and intimate friends. Is the world set up by the devil? Why should desire be made so hard? I have nearly hit my head against the wall trying to figure this all out. I wish I could just let go and find myself swept up by a dream where we could travel the world, fight injustice and suffering, and love in all ways that humans can possibly love.

You know that I had a dream about you. I was sleeping in my dream and you were calling me in the sweetest voice I have heard. I so wanted to wake up to you but it felt so good also to sleep. I now understand this dream. I did literally wake up, but I found myself alone in a dark shadowy room with a small bed. The only way I could -stay with your sweet presence was by continuing to sleep. But alas, in my dream, I re-member that I lost consciousness and then woke up. So, if I wake up, I lose you; if I continue to sleep I lose you. My longing to sleep and to wake up was my longing to be with you, sadly realizing that no matter what I did, you were but a brief, tender voice soon to be gone. My dreams have spoken to me throughout my life. Even though I am a rationalist, I have never ignored my dreams, always finding the most vivid among them full of meaning and portend. I wish I could have a dream within a dream within a dream that would unlock some way for this love to come together in the light of day. But I have not yet had this dream and probably never will.

I am a man with fears. But believe me when I say this Belia,, it is no fear that keeps me from acting on my desire. Just as I can't help loving you, I cannot help feeling that I cannot act on this desire without harming you. The pain this has caused me is both physical and mental. I am a man on the beach with his feet held firmly by ancient wise stones. am crying tears as a sweet breeze caresses my cheek before it heads out to sea. Oh,Belia;.Belia, Belia! I think the time has past where we could slip onto a dragon's back and fly away. But I am glad in my sadness that your breeze entered the summer of my life, even for such a short time. I am and will be your forever friend.

Love, Bruce
July 14, 1995

Today is Sunday. I just spoke to you a few hours back. Now that I think about it, It is already Monday, sometime around three in the morning. my sleepless nights seem to be dragging on forever and ever . How hard it is to make choices in this world of ours, isn't it?

I was just writing to my children a long letter trying to explain life to them. It is not finished and tears made me stop. So, as I usually do lately when I'm drowned in tears, I thought of you, and that always makes me smile.

I threw away the angry letter I wrote after reading yours last week. After reading, and rereading your words many times, I'm glad I did. I decided to write to you now, because my brain has been thinking on its own again (thanks to your stupid advice) and now I can't stop it.

How beautifully and sweetly you write. I wish I too could, just as you do, put my thoughts and feelings on paper in this barbaric language and make them sound as if they were alive and carrying me with them. I read your words and feel them jumping off the paper and touching me gently, softly, the same way you speak.

This is an intent of talking to you by paper, I hope you don't grade me because it is not my -intention to do grammar or spell checks right now and besides you're not my teacher anymore, so there!

How to start I don't know, I don't even know what I want to say. Maybe I do and I'm just too afraid to, maybe I don't and I'm just too afraid not to.

I know I love you. I've asked myself (many times, mind you) the eternal question 'WHY???'. Among all the men I've known, all the men I will know, and all the men I've ever dreamed of, you were the less likely I'd imagine capable of producing this crazy effect on me, and here I am.

After reading the first paragraph of your letter, I do confess I jumped in joy. 'YESSSS , I thought to myself, 'he loves me, he truly really loves me, I felt that last wall of yours, the one made out of hard, cold diamond breaking into pieces and letting me in. Me, the me I am, the me I will be, the me I was. And it was hard to stop the pounding of my heart, it was hard to breath. I didn't want to spoil the moment because I knew already that what came next wouldn't be as joyful.

And your pain and your dilemma hit me hard. My poor, sweet, placid soul, if only I knew for sure that it isn't too late to jump on the back of that dragon! You stupid man, my love, it might just bee too early. I don't have time to think about time now. I have so many things to sort out and so many painful choices to make. And these choices will accompany me for the rest of my life, good or bad choices, choices of conscience, of love, of obligations, responsibilities. Choices that will define and shape my life forever. I have no intention of making you part of these choices, I can't.

I feel as if that magical train of chance, which only shows up once in a lifetime, hit the station of my life, hard and strong, for the first and last time. This train, people say, carries hopes and opportunities for the future. . Mine comes loaded with good scholarships, good opportunities, good friends, and a promising life for myself. I' feel that if I don't jump on this magical train now, it will never come again, and you know as well as I do that this is true. I know that catching this train means loosing so much of myself, maybe more than I will ever gain. I don't know if it's worth it, and I'll never know if I don't catch it.

I wish I could have it all Bruce, I wish I could keep cry children and jump with them on this train. My rationality tells me to forget that. MY .heart and my soul tell me different. Which should I listen to? I've acted throughout most of my life listening first to my heart and then to my brain, and look at where it I s brought me. And my heart tells me now nothing can be worth loosing your children".

During these sleepless nights I think about the first pain of labor I felt with each and everyone of them; that stabbing pain which opened me up from the inside to let a new life show itself- to me flat pain that made me see the world tinted of blood- and sweat for ,unending hours. Women think this pain is unforgettable, but it's not true, one never remembers it fully until it's time to repeat it again, otherwise we would all have one child and forget about everything else. I think off my sons and my daughter and I see them coming out of me, I can feel their first bite to my breast, a bite so painful and so full of life. I see their first sickness, their first word coming out of their mouths, their first step, their first calling of my name, the first time I realized how much I loved them and how much I would give for them my heart transmits to me the call f rom all the women of my tribe, that ancient tribe born before time had a name, and they too tell me to hold on to my children with those claws that only motherhood, womanhood, can provide. Why can- I not have it all? Why can I not have them and me - a life, a career, a meaning?

Will I be able to live without them? Will I be able to spend a single day not knowing how they looked when they got up, what they had for breakfast, how they did in school? Will I be able to sleep at night without their good night kiss, without feeling their warm, young pure, skins, their soft cheeks? Will I be able to concentrate on my life without having their laughter and cries all around me, caressing me, filling my head with noises, questions, comments, . And again, T analyze the advantages and disadvantages, but how can one analyze love? This pain is so great one would think it leaves room to nothing else but it does. It leaves room for you within all this chaos and inner wars I'm living, you are to me the peaceful lake, the sturdy -rock on which I sit and touch the water of infinity with my ice cold hand, that warm water which seems so becoming and soothing.

I think back to the first time I saw you. How odd and appealing you looked to me. I recall all those days in class, days in which I not only learned our dear subject, but also about you. About the man who hides behind those glasses and those wrinkled pants. I try to pin the clay in which I fell in love with you and I can't. It wasn't a day, I've been in love with you most of my existence Bruce, ever since the day I discovered love. That familiarity you talk about in your letter, the same I feel every time we're together, goes beyond words. It exists here, between you and 1. We don, t know how it got there, we don, t even know if it will stay we acknowledge its existence, painful and forbidden existence, and there's nothing more to do about it than enjoy it. I know that when I'm with you or when I talk to you on the phone, life turns into a smile, a sunshine, an unending garland of jasmines. I feel you close, so very close, that sometimes it's hard to separate you from me, and yet you are so far away.

I started this letter because I wanted you to receive it after I'm gone. I wanted you to go to your mail box and find it there, unexpected and smiling. I wanted you to feel your heart jumping, just as I did when I saw your hand writing on the envelope which came to me with your love inside. I also wanted to tell you that my feelings for you cannot and will not matter when I make my choices. I want you to know that although I feel you in my body, in my soul, you are not part of my decisions, your are barely part of an undetermined, foggy future. I know I will love you to the end of my days with this pure, quasi platonic love, and I also know that you have no role to play, except for that of a faithful friend and counselor, in my life right now.

Whatever happens can't involve you whichever choices I make can't be made with you in mind. Whatever the future holds for me has to be for me alone. I have to plan and think by myself,, with myself. Making you a part of this would serve no purpose, it would end up staining whatever pleasure we could ever hope to give each other and I will not allow that.

Don't feel as if you have to sweep me away from my miseries, my sweet man, please don't; even if you could I wouldn't let you. I have to be myself Bruce, my own personal self, once I've accomplished that, the story will begin, and maybe it will be our story, and maybe not.

I won't lie and say I haven't fantasized about you coming and sweeping me away from all this mess. But how long would it last? Not very. If that day in which our love can freely roam the skies ever comes, in won't be tainted by hasty decisions. I love you too much to have it any other way, too much.

I leave you now. I'll be gone maybe for a long time, maybe for three short weeks, I don't know. I do know that wherever in the world I am, you are with me wherever there is a sunset or an orange cloud, or a stone, or the gentle murmur of water, you are with me. I've never felt like this before. I've never felt so full and empty at the same time. I've never wished for someone as I do for you. I hope someday we will get to explore our love together, with all its pain and pleasures. In the meantime, be my friend, my confidant, my flannel shirt, just be with me and be my anchor in this sea of doubt which carries me in ',-all different directions. I need your brain and your rationality, and by God, I need your love, a love which I've known to have even before you did.

Life is full of surprises my sweet friend, you can't - spend a lifetime thinking because sometimes thinking makes you miss on living, just as you can't live too much without thinking. Neither way gives us the answer to what's around that next corner?", but life is indeed beautiful.

It's close to six in the morning, I'll dream of you.

I love you.
Belia
July, 1995

Dear Belia:

Over the last few weeks, I have been struggling with a personal issue that has haunted me for years. It is becoming apparent to me that I can no longer try to be what I am not. I am a gay man. A complicated gay man, but when all is said and done, my desire always comes back to what I have tried every which way to deny. I am sorry that I have not been able to be more direct with you. If I could share with you the nightmare of my inner struggle, you might understand my strange ways a bit better. We can talk more about this later. Forgive me.

Love, Bruce
October 15, 1995