[Dear_Trent_#_13: The_Afterglow_Edition_Part _2]

 Dear Trent,

We need to talk about something that happened last week when you and I were together in London (let's just call it "The Nipple Incident"), because I'm feeling a little bit weird about it, and I need to get it off my chest and safely into words.

It's a strange thing you do, proffering your body to us, calling us "piggy," and then trusting us not to tear you to pieces. I wonder that you're not afraid. I wonder if it's that you enjoy the thrill, or if it's that you trust us a little, that you know we love you? I've seen the biggest, toughest, tattooed hard-man in the mosh pit reach up and lay his palm gently on your cheek. As for me, I quite literally could not stop myself from slipping my hand into your open shirt to lay it over your beating heart.

I wonder why you do it? Perhaps you know that it's only love that makes us want to pull you close and put our hands on you, or maybe you know that we need to be able to hope that we might touch you to keep paying for your proximity, so you have to come wallow in our sty to keep the dream alive for us. Which is it, Trent? Is it a little of both, or something else? I guess it's a question you'd probably never answer on the access section of your website, but I'd love to know, honestly, what goes through your mind when you're in our hands.

When you used your water bottle to come all over our upturned faces right afterwards, I thought I could see a mixture of defiance, mocking disdain, and triumph in yours, but I dreamt all the way back to my hotel. I felt like I was walking on air in the nighttime quiet of London's empty streets, your relentless intensity and dirty little grind still inside me, and the memory of you pure physicality burned into the flesh of my hand. I was full of joy, but also, full of a desire that I can only dream will ever be requited -- a bittersweet immersion in the conundrum of a bewilderingly strong feeling I can't deny for a far off creature who doesn't know I'm alive, but who has shown me his soul, and whose nipple hardened when I touched it.

Trent, I believe in your aesthetic authenticity. I believe that your work is pure and so absolutely the product of your true nature that in the context of your work, you couldn't possibly lie, even if you wanted to. I don't know if you're a swell guy, or an impossibly difficult prima donna with a Napoleon complex, but I know what's important to me: what you care about, what you love and hate, that you are an artist to the very bone. You've always spoken to me with special clarity, and every single little detail of you -- the way you speak and sing, your words, your violence and volume, your gentleness and grace -- has always gone straight into my heart.

It's a strange thing to feel like you know a man's true self, but know that you don't really know him. There's no mathematical equation that can prove what the heart knows, and logically, it seems like it should be a much stupider thing to love a man I don't know than it actually feels like it is in that secret place in my heart, where it's just me and me. In that place, the place that's backwards inside of me, it feels pure and clean, involuntary and absolutely authentic -- as real as anything. It feels as real as your chest under my palm: a perfectly natural response to being touched the way you touch me.

The other night, in London, when I put my hands on you, and your body responded in it's little automatic way, like any body would, all I felt was pure wonder -- wonder that the amazing creature right in front of me was so physical and real. It's that reality that aches me the hardest. It was just the kind of tiny, tantalizing experience of the animal that a girl could close her eyes and savor -- a delicious little taste of the everything I can never have from you. Since then, though, I've felt a little sorry for touching you like that. You give us so much, and maybe that little intimation of your pure, unmediated substance was something I had no right to take home with me.

One thing is certain, though: I'll never forget your textures. I'll never be able to forget your hard, slippery arms, the rough bristle of your cheek, and the wet softness of your chest. If it was wrong of me to touch you, I hope you can understand why I had to. If my hands were a violation, I hope you can forgive me.

And, Trent, I hope you felt it a little.

Love,
Dierdre