A letter unsent to David Hockney

01.09.2025 - On the Hockney exhibition in Paris

    "We two boys together clinging", reads the painting in front of me. And it nearly brings me to tears. This Love I have never known, and yet, if only for a moment, I feel as though I have lived it.

    Oh Hockney, how I long to know it. I know the paintings, and I know the poems, but I can only imagine the rest. "With the rest me intertwined". That I wish I was--- but I am not part of anything, of anyone.

    And sometimes I fear--- that is my confession--- I fear I never will.

    How dreadful a thought for someone like me! The headlines will tell of a young man whose Love no one would take, and how he finally imploded from it.

    But I ramble, forgive me. The point, for there is one, is: thank you, for giving me a glimpse of Love--- the carnal, fragile, and desperate kind. The kind I am not sure I will ever know.

    Thank you both, you and Whitman.

    12.20.