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He doesn't know the reasons that laid the foundation for his overflowing passion...maybe it was her angelic smile or puppy dog eyes in the middle of a crude party or even the tinkle of her voice calling him halfway across the college campus or the triumphant gasps as he undressed some girl on the modest bed in the dusty Oxford room he loved so much to sit in or it could have been the gentle passage of her arm across his shoulders or the swell she exerted on his hair with her long fingers when she saw him enter a place. . she doesn't know for sure but she understands the only thing that really matters....she loved him so much.... fucking so much that she HATED him, hated it when he wasn't around, when everyone in a room seemed to want to wildly undress him with their eyes, when the choppy sound of his voice came through as he ejaculated on a random woman's belly, hated it inordinately when he seemed to tease as he nuzzled her neck gracefully, hated him more when he looked at him with the open and sincere smile that God sculpted for him and most of all HATED HIMSELF for loving him so much, but who in their right mind would not love Felix, this being full of charm and beauty that opened himself so preciously to the world.
Felix is the one he has loved the most but whom he most wants to destroy.
But even that remains only a memory... Felix will always remain the same as he was that summer of 2006.
It began like all the great stories of yesteryear, with a simple eye contact in the distance. He remembers it so well, so vividly that he can feel the strange feeling of anticipation rising in his diaphragm just as it did that day. Felix was surrounded by a rotting mess of girls and boys drawn to him like a moth on fire, as if he was giving off some kind of spell over the others and he thought it was poetic, because Felix was giving off thin strands of smoke as he whistled low over his cigarette, as if he was on fire inside. It had been enough a simple lift for the ocean of his gaze to catapult the sandy brown color of Felix's, only he moved. After that everything unraveled like a spool of thread on the threshold.
That was the beginning of the end...
Perhaps it is the alcohol dulling his senses or the fervent overwhelm of his already uncontainable desire for Felix that makes him stumble into the labyrinth, guided only by the laughing trill of the voice of this being whom he loves so much and who, without fear of being wrong, always will, he does not know and perhaps never will, but at this point nothing matters, not the two hundred guests scattered in Saltburn, nor the comfortable room with its sheets and blankets, nor the two hundred guests scattered in Saltburn, nor the comfortable room with Italian silk sheets slipping into the frame or the elaborate web of lies he has been weaving so neatly over the last few weeks or whether he has everyone eating out of his hand, for the one he truly desires and loves above all these gold-plated riches is unattainable, but today will be the one and only last time for the history of them both. And that primitive feeling tears at his insides, so that long ago he would have slipped down the trails of green grass that form these immense Frenchified walls had it not been for the iron hand of his directed anger that keeps him anchored to the earth, the more steps he takes, the greater the burden becomes and overwhelms him so much that he begins to wander into a future that will never come but imagination and selfishness have always been his forte, they have been what has brought him here and what will make him leave.
The beautiful things they could have done together, how beautiful it would have been to walk these acres holding hands hidden from the eyes of the world, where lies and deceit have no place, where their love finer than the finest of wines would have washed over them...it would not have to feel this way, dirty, messy, depressing but lovely, blinding and eternal but even the cold winter ends and even the most undying of loves kills.
He does not realize the precise moment he has reached the center of the labyrinth until the moans wake him from his reverie, the golden wings on Felix's upper back as his golden arms hold this stranger's legs, make him lose himself in the finitude of the moon's sepulchral glow, he is so consumed, so repressed and completely blind in his heart, that he can see himself beneath Felix, taking his penis better than this woman could take him inside her, he could hold on with both arms, rip her back and lick the sweat from her neck, he could do that for Felix, he could submit under her hand if it would show her the inordinate way she worships him, not just here, while they are both bathed in anger, anger and lies but in the beginning of good times, when blushing Felix would caress her knee at a party or in the nasal flutter on her warm neck after running boldly through the corridors of Oxford after a stressful afternoon or even better, the memory of HIS Felix being vulnerable in the darkness of the bridge after the invitation to Saltburn. On that night, Oliver had not only seen the Felix, the golden boy of Oxford, the perfect boy and favorite brother that everyone loved, but he had discovered the overly sweet and gentle walking boy hidden behind his long limbs and the precious vibrating hummingbird heart that dozed in his chest, perhaps that was the beginning of his infatuation. It was like the white color left by snow in the winter while Oliver, more like the blinding May Sun threatened to melt him.
Oliver wants to be all of Felix but more than that, he WANTS TO POSSESS FELIX, to consume him like the nectar of the estate's summer fruits, to hold him tightly on his thorax, to shred him on the pristine sheets of his bedroom so that his spent essence washes over his legs, he wants to erase him so that when he leaves his body, the only thing that lives is his name. Because after having him, they would both know that their love is not only grounded in forgiveness of lies, anger and stubbornness but in blood, sweat and tears finely immersed in an obsessive clamor.
For Felix, however, Oliver's words are ephemeral and so is his blissful love.