Two Soldiers’ Love for One Another Survives War And Time
A love story told by three people who yearned for what those men had
The title of this painting is ‘T. E. Lawrence as a cadet at Newport Beach, near Falmouth’. Even though the original T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) was very interesting, I didn’t want to write fiction about him, but about many other men who (maybe like him?) were queer through time and managed to find a quiet happiness even though the world set out to hurt them.
They were in their twenties when I first saw them from the window of my beach home. It’s not that I was a gossip, but there was just too much time in my life at an old age, and nothing better to do than people-watching.
I met them a few times and got to know their names: Paul and Willie. They would come to the beach in their army uniforms before throwing each piece of garment away as they ran to the sea and splashed on the water.
The vision of youth so alive right before my eyes was an invitation to not blink, and I didn’t want to. It was like reminiscing about my own childhood on the other side of the coast.
I knew there was something about them that awakened a warm feeling in my chest. Maybe I couldn’t understand it completely, after all I was a woman of my time. But their smiles…
