secrets

'if i tell you this you won't tell anybody else, ok? cuz i've never told this to anybody ever'. i promise when they ask, but why me? is it the Uncle Homo syndrome (he has to be discreet because he had to hide his 'nature' all those early years and will get it about secrecy)? do they unload because i have a rep? i leak and they want it told to others. they want the dead fish pried out of their gut and onto the street. these confessions remind me of the criminal who is driven to tell a girlfriend, a cell mate, a lawyer, a brother so that he or she will unlock him from the prison of his guilt. so yes, sometimes i break my promise. i slip a velvet whisper into a safe ear just because the secret is nasty, funny, or impossible to keep. i insinuate permission. on the other hand i hide a handful of privacies who's lock box has never ever been violated. some are mine, some belong to friends, or strangers. they live inside my head like a child hiding in the basement, safe but wary. secrets begin in childhood. they begin the first time you realize that mom and dad are not god and that they don't know everything there is to know about you. they don't see you walk out of a barber shop with a comic book that doesn't belong to you. they don't catch you flipping through dad's Playboy unmoved by Marilyn's juicy tits. they don't know what happened between you and your next door neighbor out in the barn. you are out of range from mom and dad's all-seeing eye of Saruman. this began for me when i realized that Santa Claus was a fiction. that he smelled of booze and had a voice like Uncle Karl. i didn't say anything about it because i hated the truth. i didn't bring it up with my sisters because they were younger and living the magic of Christmas. i kept doubt to myself until i met my first best friend. he was the first person i told things to i never told to anybody else and with whom i did things i never did with anybody else. things that were secret. secrecy is a part of love. my first best friend was the first person i ever fell in love with even if i couldn't use those sacred words. i thought about him when he wasn't around. i felt differently when i touched his arm and when he leaned against me. i was hurt when he criticized. my heart leapt when he laughed. it was the secret of how i was with him that changed me, made me feel new, re-invented, bursting with light. which is why, later on, a love affair gets it's charge from secrecy, from a dream world enshrined in a cathedral built, brick by brick, with the person you love. why, early on, i didn't want to use the 'l' word until i was sure. i didn't want to jinx the miracle with a silly verb. i didn't want my friends to be in on what was happening or to break love down into shards of demeaning transparency. if all secrets are known then magic evaporates in a torch light that exposes worms and rust and insects.