Khayyam.
I was thirteen, he ten years older when he gave me the book. A slim volume printed on thick parchment paper, a poem written by a man with a name like a poem: ‘Omar Khayam’. Inside were verses in quatrains, and black and white line drawings that suggested rather than showed those lineaments of gratified desire more often sought than found by the very young. I wanted him to kiss me but he would not, instead he gave me the book.
‘You’re going to be a poet some day,’ he said.
‘But how can I ever become a poet if no one will kiss me?’
‘You’re like a Botticelli Madonna,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘You’ll find out…’
Reading it took my breath away, as much as any kiss ever could. ‘A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread -and Thou!’ This sort of thing works when you’re just thirteen. It gave me gold and purple dreams, it gave me words I could taste like butter and honey, it gave me the shivers.
Later he kissed me after all. Later, much later, I found out he’d been fucking my mother.
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