Oscar Wilde, the novelist famous for literary masterpieces like The picture of Dorian Gray, was also famous for a scandalous lawsuit - he sued his boyfriend's father for denouncing him through insults of his homosexuality, only to lose that very same lawsuit and get thrown into prison. Fortunately, being an ingenious novelist, a sentimental boyfriend and everything in between, his time in prison gave Oscar a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sharpen his wits and reorientate his conceptions of love - to view love not just as the wild moments and burning sensations, but to also perceive love as chastity and restraint - as yearning and holding back, as being carefree and being meticulous in concealment, as moments of recklessness and tender stretches of tranquil affection; love is all of such contrasting emotions, everything, everywhere, all at once.
And that is the state I currently am, in composing this second letter for you, my dear boyfriend. I like to imagine myself as a caricature - for my face cannot even be remotely considered a portrait - of Oscar Wilde, having sober time to think sober thoughts. But then again, who am I kidding? I am not Oscar Wilde; my words are always tangled together like a mesh of spaghetti, and my vocabulary - especially for describing my love for you, but that is the topic for another day - is liminal. Either for wariness of public reaction or for plain lack of clarity, of perspicuity (look at me trying to use these complex words I just learned), it is always hidden under layers of implications and abstract imagery, never direct, never on point, never at once so simple, yet so sincere as yours. "I love you" took me almost a month to utter to your ears - and even then, only in the safety of the darkness, a barely audible whisper - how can my words ever ring so true, so poignant, so full to the brim with love, like yours have always been?
Ah well, I dare not compare myself to Oscar Wilde. A cartographer then?
A cartographer is someone whose job is to draw maps. The landscape, the mountains, the forests surrounding our world - he who is a cartographer observes them all with patient eyes, before willing his meticulous hands to replicate them onto another world of paper and pencil lines. That is the usual description for a cartographer - a job of fabricating a miniature Earth within our authentic one, of condensing what the explorers' eyes witnessed into neatly calculated lines on rolls of parchment paper. What most people don't consider, however, is that a cartographer is not merely a compliant secretary of geography; he is also a master of creation: by giving that particular mountain, that unique lake a name, by nailing that river forever onto his maps, he thusly shapes its conceptions, forever alternating its meaning, gifting it with stories and memories. An ocean is a mere stretch of saltwater; the Mediterranean for me cradles my imagination for our love, sustains my pipe dream of building our summer mansion in Italy, and just being genuinely happy together.
A cartographer I have been; I have, over the last month, added new labels to old places. A prison exhibition, my label reads "Where our love first blossomed"; the McDonald's nearby, I have renamed "My first meal with him; many to come"; the coffee shop near my school, one with the old French windows plastering the ceiling, one where tables are made out of car tires, I have noted "The first time our lips discovered the landscape of the other. Condensed sunlight. Peaches.". A certain cinema near a certain lake, I have intentionally left my label blank, except for a single mark "!" - for such passion and affections my words cannot describe, such intense yearning for your body my phrases cannot convey, such fear - fear that my body will not be accepted, fear that you will recoil with disgust when you see me - and the exultant emotions, so happy I could've wept, when I knew, finally knew, that you not only accepted me for who I am, but love me even more for it - no sentences could adequately describe my feelings, my love for you then, my love for you now, my love for you forever.
And yet, and yet...my love, do you see now, as I finally see, as I should have foreseen even then, my fatal mistake?
In painting our love over landscapes and locations, by contracting my labels to include only what we experienced and not their true nature, in looking through everything with the rose-tinted lenses of someone drunk in love, I have forgotten my sober rationality, have deactivated my logical intuition in favour of emotional reception - for why be sober, stoic, pessimistic and wary of others, when you can be carefree, elated, euphoric, blissfully oblivious to the presence of everyone else? Such was my foolish way of perceiving love: I have forgotten, that as strong and resistant as it is against the currents of worldly opinions and prejudices, love, too, requires stolid stretches to regenerate and strengthen, requires not only the flame of intense passion and desire but also the fuel of patient affection and observant expression. The combination of that, and not one excluding the other, is the true form of love.
After all the books I have read, after all the suffering I have witnessed, should I not be aware of this, should I not have been better prepared for it, should I have known better than to keep my mind unchecked, my emotions unfiltered, my actions unconsiderable of their effects on others, on you? Shouldn't I have known that my acts were indecent, that they misinterpret my love for you, that they may alter how you perceive me - and that is my biggest fear of all: would my actions tear down what we had for each other, would they not erode our precious yet so precarious connection, our love, luminous yet fragile? Would they cause me to lose you, so much so that one day in the future you would look at me and smile perfunctorily, and I would smile back, not because I was happy but because proper etiquette said so - cold as ice, like winds blowing through trees, like strangers passing each other?
I am terribly afraid of losing you. And I will never forgive myself if I am its cause; that because I could not keep my impulse under control as I have always excelled at doing, that because I could not check my mind in mere moments, I would lose you for an eternity. For what am I to do, what is my life without you?
I, then, swear by the river Styx. I cannot offer you a Time-turner to reverse what had passed, to shake my head so hard my sense of rationality came back in all its logic and agony; but at best what I can offer you is a promise, sworn on my very life. I swear by the river Styx, that I shall forever and always know our love of both water and flame, that I shall know the time and the place for our love, that I shall learn, through whatever pain it may take, how to love you - properly love you.
Forever in love with you, forever learning how to do it,
Your boyfriend.