Annie on My Mind

There’s a Greek legend—no, it’s in something Plato wrote—about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That’s why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male.

The thing about mountains is that you have to keep on climbing them, and that it's always hard, but there's a view from top every time when you finally get there.

Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins?

The 1st day, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching Annie feed the cats, and I knew I wanted to do that forever.

I went downstairs to Dad’s encyclopedia and looked up HOMOSEXUALITY, but that didn’t tell me much about any of the things I felt. What struck me most, though, was that, in the whole long article, the word “love” wasn’t used even once. That made me mad; it was as if whoever wrote the article didn’t know that gay people actually love each other. The encyclopedia writers ought to talk to me, I thought as I went back to bed; I could tell them something about love.

Don't punish yourselves for people's ignorant reactions to what we all are. Don't let ignorance win. Let love.

It's Annie and me they're all sitting around here like cardboard people judging; It's Annie and me. And what we did that they think is wrong, when you pare it all down, was fall in love.

But what really is immorality? And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?

And Annie showed me how ailanthus trees grow under subway and sewer gratings, stretching toward the sun, making shelter in the summer, she said, laughing, for the small dragons that live under the streets.

The first day, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching Annie feed the cats, and I knew I wanted to be able to do that forever: stand in kitchens watching Annie feed cats. Our kitchens. Our cats.

Liza-don't let it make any difference. It won't, will it? With us, I mean." "Of course it won't," I told her. But I was wrong. Six months of not writing-that's a difference. And so I lied to Annie. On top of everything else, I lied to Annie, too.

Ugh! Young girls, they should laugh. Life's bad enough when you're grown, you might as well laugh when you're young.

I am happy, I tried to tell him with my eyes. I'm happy with Annie; she and my work are all I'll ever need; she's happy, too-we both were till this happened...

And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?

It was like a war inside me; I couldn’t even recognize all the sides. There was one that said, ‘No, this is wrong; you know it’s wrong and bad and sinful,’ and there was another that said, ‘Nothing has ever felt so right and natural and true and good,’ and another that said it was happening too fast, and another that just wanted to stop thinking altogether and fling my arms around Annie and hold her forever. There were other sides, too, but I couldn’t sort them out.

And that's like my world." Annie pointed up to the stars again."Inaccecible.

And that's like my world." Annie pointed up to the stars again. "Inaccessible." "Not," I said to her softly, "to unicorns. Nothing's inaccessible to unicorns. Not even--not even white birds.

Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins? I think it was Sunday when that feeling began.

It felt a little as if we'd found a script that had been written just for us, and we were reading through the beginning quickly [...] hurrying so we could get to the part that mattered, whatever that was to be.

Chad kept kidding me that I was in love, and asking with whom, and then Sally and Walt did, too, and after a while I didn’t even mind, because even if they had the wrong idea about it, they were right. Soon it wasn’t hard any more to say it—to myself, I mean, as well as over and over again to Annie—and to accept her saying it to me.