Pretty Lynne Writes

I was driving for a couple of hours recently and a song came on my shuffle: “Delicate” by Damien Rice. It’s a slow, sweet song about how tender – delicate – a new relationship can be, how the two people take things slowly and quietly. There’s a question in the chorus about what it all might mean to them.

Damien sings:

We might make love

In some sacred place

The look on your face is delicate

You know when a song brings something back to you in an instant? I was driving along, and I heard those words, and I thought of Gary. 

Gary and I were involved in a volunteer organization in our early twenties and we spent a lot of time together. We had become good friends. He was everything I wanted in a man: smart, funny, kind, athletic, and giving. He thought I was cool, capable, and pretty. But we circled around each other. There was someone else on the periphery, as I recall. 

We were staying in Cleveland, doing some volunteer work. We worked hard all day and collapsed each night. On our last night, the group of us went out to a jazz club. It was one of those nights in your young life when you felt like your idea of an adult; doing something more sophisticated than drinking in someone’s grubby student house, hanging out with people you’ve met doing something important, listening to music that feels smarter than your usual grunge choices. 

A local church had put us up for the week, and it was very late when we got back. I wasn’t tired. I didn’t want to crawl into my sleeping bag in the big Sunday school room with everyone else yet. I wanted to savour the time there, the night, the feeling of being up late by myself. I have always been an incurable romantic, so I went into the sanctuary and sat in a pew in the dark. There was nothing but the sound of rain pelting down on the roof, and a streetlight shining through the stained glass window. 

I may have closed my eyes for a minute, and when I opened them, Gary was sitting next to me. He whispered that he had been looking for me. We sat in the quiet for a few moments. 

I don’t exactly remember how it happened, but then we were kissing. Gary had beautiful lips. I remember it being really soft and slow at first – delicate – and then we progressed to making out in earnest, lying down on the hard wooden pew and feeling each other’s bodies with abandon. 

I’ll let that scene fade to black, and leave what happened next between Gary and I. 

The next day we were both exhausted. We were driving home with two other members of our group and we both sat in the back seat and tried to pretend we hadn’t been up all night. I remember Gary in a white t-shirt, his curly brown hair sort of wild from little sleep. The skin on my chin was a little raw from the beard Gary had grown over the week. My eyes burned with fatigue. 

The drive home was pretty long. This thing that had taken place between me and Gary was like a passenger in the backseat with us. The tension between us was palpable. We were trying not to look at each other too much, to sound normal when we talked, but for most of the trip we were letting our fingers touch on the seat between us. Every touch, every movement was charged with desire and hope, and a little fear, too. What was going to change? 

Even now, even after all this time, that night, those memories – they are special. Tender. Erotic. Delicate.