Today's writing

Matt first turned me onto Peter Gabriel. He popped in a CD while we were on the 56 one day, headed west toward the beach. The first time I heard the guy I couldn’t stand him. He just seemed like this whiney English dude whose music hadn’t held up from 30 years ago.

Then came Track Five.

“This is the one,” Matt said, and turned the dial to the right. It sounded different from the rest of what I’d heard so far, slower, sweeter, more sincere.

“It’s from a movie,” I said, “right?”

“Just listen,” he said, and his hand lingered on my knee for a single second.

It was called “In Your Eyes”. It spoke to me, but even in that moment I knew it wasn’t talking about Matt. It was too real, too deep, too loyal to be talking about him. It was willing to go there. It wanted to see more than the surface.

There’s the difference between how I felt about Matt and how I feel about Paul: with Matt, I had to hang on to some sort of veil for protection. With Paul, protection isn’t an issue.