Dear Eric, I was just enough bigger that I could wrestle you into the clean straw of the mow. I remember the way I pushed my weight and muscle against yours, and the mixed feeling of straw, soft as a couch but able to scratch, or even to stab. The smell of straw, and barns with the living sounds of animals, and heavy cotton clothes, and high-raftered spaces with shadows big as a tent were parts of a world familiar to me. I was my natural self there, beyond denying. It was a boy's fire that burned in me then, to subdue you. We twisted and rolled, and my shoulders clashed with yours. My hands got free, and I groped to get hold of the thing in you that made your eyes dark. That was what I was wrestling for, maybe, all along: your enigma, the part of you that retreated and slid away, or when cornered said no no no. You Know Who