A Valid Question

Where is, well, I expected you to ask where. I mean why wouldn't you?

Let me try to explain:

I look at you and I see danger and excitement. I stare into your eyes and I want for more, and I'm a guy who's never wanted much of anything other than a decently made sandwich now and then.

I want to do things with you that I have never even considered doing--things so far-fetched that they seem practically fictitious. I want to explore the world with you. I want to go to the Netherlands and hang out by some windmills. I want to take you to Italy and take one of those goofy-looking photos where we're standing in front of the Tower of Pisa and we're leaning with it at the same angle. I always found those so irritating, but when I think of you I somehow find it a necessity to my life's completion. I want to go to the Tower of London and see the Crown Jewels, and maybe you'll try to steal one of the furry hats that the guards wear while I cause a diversion, and we'll meet at a pub afterward and take turns trying it on. I want to head to the middle of the Colosseum in Rome and have an epic tickle fight.

I want to ride elephants with you through India, and pretend that we're in The Temple of Doom the whole way. I'll even wear the bomber jacket and hat.

I want to find one of those ancient, overgrown temples in southeast Asia, like, one of those places in Cambodia that the jungle has been retaking for the last thousand years, and I want to sit next to a tree as the tiny arrows of light shine on us through the dense canopy of vegetation and we feel those little spots of warmth, and if we line it up just right we can have our lips meet inside of one and have our kiss seem that much more supernatural. I want to wake up seeing the stars of the Southern Hemisphere through the trees. Have you ever seen the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere? It's totally foreign! It's really amazing how these infinitesimal blips of light form these, I don't know, unnoticed patterns that we would never realize make up what we consider home until we look up and they're entirely reconfigured. But I digress, I want to play with monkeys on the temple steps and you'll comment on how they could be like our children and I'll roll my eyes, but I'll really be thinking one of those "maybe someday..." thoughts. I want to track our way back to civilization alone through the jungle and I want to save you from some kind of great beast, like a tiger or a panther or something.

I want to take you to the movies and miss half of it because we can't keep our hands off each other. I want to walk the streets of this town in the middle of the night in a heavy summer downpour and push you up against the security gate of some closed-down storefront and kiss you as the water slides our cheeks and those drops hang on our noses, refusing to fall and tickling intensely. I want to have lazy evenings with you where we cook dinner and talk about our days. We'll team up washing the dishes; I'll wash and you'll dry and we'll leave the water running and the sink half-full to run into the bedroom where we'll stay until we find it difficult to walk.

That's what I want. All of it, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen, and I understand that might seem strange to you. I know I just met you, so all of that probably seems way out of left field, but the way you were looking at me at the end of the bar, well, I was hoping you'd feel the same way. I want all this to happen, but none of this, not one bit of it, will ever take place if you don't get out of here with me right now. There's no rain-checks, or exchange of phone numbers or falsely serendipitous encounters at the same damn bar some other night. So when I asked you if you wanted to go somewhere and you asked "where?" I understood that you might have expected me to suggest another bar or a park or some equally asinine nonsense, but the only real answer I have is "Everywhere, to do everything." Does it really matter where we start?

Are you coming?