What I Loved

day and half the night, asking for Mark, Marky, and The Mark. In order to get any work done, I stopped answering the telephone and listened to the messages later in the day. On Tuesday, at around two o'clock in the morning, I was awakened from a deep sleep by the phone and heard a man's deep voice say, "M&M?" "No," I said, and then, "Do you mean Mark?" I heard a click and the line went dead. The steady calls, Mark's erratic comings and goings, his things scattered around the apartment had all started to confuse me. I wasn't used to living with another person anymore, and I found that I misplaced some things and lost others. My pen vanished for a couple of days and then I found it behind a sofa cushion. A kitchen knife disappeared. I couldn't find my silver letter opener, which had been a present from my mother. As I sat at my desk, I was often distracted by unfocused worry about Mark.
    One afternoon, I stood up from my desk and walked to Matt's room. Stacks of records and CDs rose from the floor. Flyers littered the shelves.
    Advertisements with names like Starlight Techno and Machine Paradise were plastered to the walls. Sneakers lay everywhere. He must have owned twenty pairs. Pants, sweaters, socks, and T-shirts had been strewn on the bed, over the chair, and in heaps on the floor. Some of them still had store tags clinging to their necks or waistlines. I walked into the room and picked up a videotape lying on the desk: Killers Unleashed. I had never seen the movie but had read about it. It was based on the true story of a boy and girl who first murder their parents and then cross the country on a rampage of theft and homicide. A respected director had filmed it, and the movie had caused some controversy. I put it down and noticed an unopened box of Legos lying only inches away. Its cover featured a merry little policeman, one stiff arm raised in a salute. On the desk I noticed gum wrappers, a green rabbit's foot, keys to somewhere, a curly straw, old Star Wars figures, stickers of a cartoon dog, and, oddly enough, several broken pieces of dollhouse furniture. I also found a xeroxed flyer, which I picked up and read. It had been typed entirely in capital letters:
    WHY ARE YOU AT THIS EVENT ? THE RAVE SCENE IS NOT JUST ABOUT TECHNO . IT ' S NOT JUST ABOUT DRUGS . THIS SCENE IS NOT JUST ABOUT FASHION . IT IS SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT UNITY AND HAPPINESS . IT IS ABOUT BEING YOURSELF AND BEING LOVED FOR IT . IT SHOULD BE A HARBOR FROM OUR SOCIETY . BUT OUR SCENE RIGHT NOW IS DISINTEGRATING . WE DON ' T NEED FRONTS AND ATTITUDES IN OUR SCENE . THE OUTSIDE WORLD IS TOUGH ENOUGH . OPEN YOUR HEARTS AND LET THE GOOD FEELINGS FLOW . LOOK AROUND YOU , PICK A PERSON , ASK THEM THEIR NAME , AND MAKE A FRIEND . ELIMINATE BOUNDARIES . OPEN YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS . RAVERS UNITE AND KEEP OUR SCENE ALIVE !
    Around the edges of the paper in hand-drawn letters the nameless author had written little slogans by hand: "You gotta be real!" "Be yourself!" "Be happy!" "Group hugs!" and "You're beautiful!"
    There was something pitiful about the flyer's crudely written idealism, but the sentiments expressed were nothing if not pure. The text made me think of the flower children who long ago had become adults.
    Even in the sixties, I had been too old to believe that "eliminating boundaries" was of much use in the world. After carefully replacing the flyer, I looked up from the desk and studied Matt's watercolor. It should be dusted, I thought. Then I looked through the window of Dave's apartment and examined the figure of the old man for a couple of minutes and wondered what Matthew would have been like at sixteen. Would he too have gone to raves and dyed his hair green or pink or blue? Hours after I had left the room, I remembered that I had planned to dust the watercolor. but by then I had lost the will to return to the chaotic room, with its litter, garish signs, and pathetic little manifesto.
    The last days of my cohabitation with Mark were marred by a clutching distress that came over me as soon as he left the apartment but was then instantly dispelled as soon as I saw him again. I had begun to feel that Mark's physical presence had an almost magical quality. While I was looking at him, I always believed him. The frank sincerity in his face instantly banished all my doubts, but once he was out of view, the dull anxiety would rise up again. On Friday evening he emerged from the bathroom, and I noticed green glitter on his white face and