And still the brain continues to yearn, continues to burn, foolishly, with desire. My old man's brain is mocked by a body that still longs to stretch in the sun and form a beautiful shape in someone else's gaze, to lie under a blue sky and dream of helpless, selfless love, to behold itself, illuminated, in the golden light of another's eyes.

Staying alive was what we did to pass the time.

It might go down better than appearing as a giant reptile encased in a ball of fire and forcing yourself on her.' 'WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BRING THAT UP?

It was not a big smile, not particularly bold or polite or ironic or glib, not asking for anything or offering anything, not stringy or careless, not, in short, like any smile I had ever experienced before. But such a smile! You could burn a hole in the world with that smile.

I felt a momentary urge to leap into the sea and swim free of the present.

I'm a century old, an impossible age, and my brain has no anchor in the present. Instead it drifts, nearly always to the same shore. Today, as most days, it is 1962. The year I discovered love.

Such a courageous boy I was. To act brazenly under scrutiny and risk further injury to my wounded heart. Ah, the resilience, the blind, dumb persistence of youth.