It's 1977, I'm at the USA roller rink. I am buzzing from watermelon now-and-laters and fresh hormones. The scent of sugar and musk come off of everyone as they whiz around the floor. I am focused on Richie Boyle. He's tall, freckled and has shiny red-brown hair. It sits on his head like thick squirts from a tube of burnt sienna paint. His body is long and lean with a jutting roundness, a bubble butt and swelling adolescent boy pecs. I stand on the side watching him lunge around the rink, his hair yielding to the breeze. It's all action, pulsating lights, disco beats, video game sound effects, bodies zooming around like loud colored molecules. The sound of the wheels on the wood floor play against all of it like a good base line. Everytime he whizzes by me I fill up with fluids and theres a tightening just below my navel. It's pleasure with a deep suffering built into it, the early version of something I will revisit over and over as an adult. But I don't understand it yet, it's all instinct. I'm wide open and my senses completely merge with the surroundings. I have never felt so alive. I am buzzing and at the center of this new universe is Richie Boyle. It's pulls me away from my friends, I can't talk or listen.

Moving away from this feeling seems like moving towards death.
I never approach Richie.

It's 2007 and he has never known my name.