I loved George Michael when he was a member of the 'eighties group, Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley back in the days when I thought all pretty boys were heterosexual and that frosted hair was chic. That was what I refer to as my New Wave era--a time when the electric whir of synthesizers and smooth-honey vocals roused me from violet slumber and sent me through the door to the series of Catholic schools that taught me how to be a virtuoso of pop art debauchery.

Every once and again, I visit George for nostalgia's sake. Although I will not admit it in sober company, Mr. Michael's music has a way of making me want to shake my tail like there is no tomorrow. He is a late night indulgence on evenings like this, when heavy storms have risen and fallen most of the hours I have been awake. The land needed the storms. I needed the nostalgia. The little means of subsistence sate more than nature realises.

Earlier, I lay on the hot concrete, smelling the thickness in the air and watching the pale hairs on my arms--so much like goose down--lift from the electricity swelling in the air. The windows gaped half-open in the silence that would have crushed the world had the rain not begun to pound at the moment when the quiet became unbearable. Moments like those make me wonder if I ever knew anticipation and its sister, impatience, as keenly as then.

The sky wetted me with droplets from its eyes. George Michael whispered through the screen, moving in the currents of the storm. I wished the thunder would crush me to the concrete, this half-dark creature with a belt of a denim skirt around my hips and miles of beads wound around my wrists, ankles, and throat that glittered against the strobe-flash of lightning. I wanted to be a poltergeist in other people's houses when the rain filled my pores. If I were a poltergeist, I would have been the ghost peering through muslin curtains and comforting the shivering animals against the tempest.

Rain and nostalgia were such seductive companions with their salt and heated persuasions, and all the helicopter seeds scattered along the sidewalk and plastered to the grass from the brunt of the wind's force.

My neighbours covered their windows and lit the low lights to ward off whatever it was in the storm that scared them. I stayed until the end, until sunlight ran its fingers across the black-bellied clouds. I liked feeling as if I had triumphed over the weather and the warring elements of earth and air, fire and water.

Once inside my house, I stripped my clothes off and bundled up in a huge terrycloth robe, padding around barefooted--an act of comfort. Strings of wet hair in my face and George Michael in my ear got me to thinking about a boy I once knew. His face has been absent from my life for several years now. The last I had heard from him, he was selling pianos for a living and playing keyboards on the weekend in a local band.

His name was Matt--a name said with a soft voice. The first time I saw Matt, he was sitting on the couch at a party, slouched low and drumming his fingers on his knees. He had the longest fingers I had ever seen, elegantly tapering between his knuckles and fanning out at the joints. Bruises purpled his fists, and abrasions marked his cheek, as if he had been in a recent fight. Cords of sinew pulled tightly across his jawline. His dark eyes shadowed with wariness, he looked like my favourite variety of boy: dangerous and poetic, sleek and casually aloof.

When he spoke to me, his seeming shyness intrigued me, as well as the fact that he was sitting alone in a dark room at a roaring party, where the rest of his friends were busy engaging in bubblegum games of kissing and drinking as much liquor as they could hold. Matt asked for my name, after telling me he liked how my skin glowed from the summer sun--across my collarbones and throat, along the bridge of my nose and cheekbones. His friends wove in and out of the room, treating him with respect, as if they admired something he did with his whipcord body and whiplash smile.

I found out later that Matt liked to get into scraps, and that he was as natural on the streets as he was playing his instrument of choice, the piano. We shared the piano as our obsession, despite the differences in our musical backgrounds. I played piano from the age of three-and-a-half, learning through the Suzuki Method commonly taught to child violinists. Every member of my family played an instrument; music was a constant part of the household. My mother told me she quieted my womb-thrashing when she was pregnant by playing all kinds of music for me: whispering jazz, bluegrass, weeping gospel, dignified Classical and Romantic instrumentals, and exquisitely fearless operas.

Matt was an unexpected baby, so there was no one to lull his kicking with music or a curved hand and murmured words. He taught himself to play on a secondhand upright piano he inherited when his grandmother died. His ear for pitch and tone was incredible, despite his nonexistent formal technique. Playing what he heard on the radio or composing songs of his own was Matt's specialty. When we first started spending time together--as platonic friends--he constantly asked me to play music for him. His particular zeal was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart inspired Matt even more when I told Matt that Mozart lived a short and sad life, full of tattered beginnings and endings.

During those times of getting to know one another, Matt and I functioned as friends, battling the attraction that lurked between us. The attraction was a third party to our conversations and outings. He recently broke up with a girl he had dated for a long time, and I ended a relationship under similar circumstances. I wanted a friend more than I wanted a companion. Matt coloured my summer with friendship and laughter. We spent afternoons browning our skin at the city pool, baking beneath layers of coconut oil and sweat until the sun was an orange sorbet blur above us.

He picked me clusters of jonquils with the stems wrapped in wet tissue and aluminum foil. I was touched that he tried to keep the flowers alive with his small mercies. Boys had given me flowers before, but never had a boy picked flowers with his own hands and preserved life with water and paper. Occasionally, Matt stole flowers from other people's lawns and wrapped them up the same way, tying the packages with strings from old post office packages. The petals were fragile as flesh when I touched them, sustained by the care he took in presenting them to me.

Matt called me on the telephone when we were not together, playing songs on the pushbuttons and asking me about music. Early in the morning, he requested that I stop by--wanting my face to be the first thing he saw. Often, he was still in bed when I arrived, so I crept into the unlocked door and awakened him with a warm hand on his face or by playing an aubade on the piano for him. The hour I turned up at his house became earlier and earlier until, I would show up in my pajamas, wild sidhe locks sticking up at all angles.

Sometimes, we talked quietly under quilts, tangled together but never kissing. Other times, we listened to his compact disc collection, which numbered in the thousands. That was when we adopted the ritual of dancing in our pajamas together, so early that the summer air had not yet been warmed by the sun. As we awakened, the air awakened around us, changing to the temperature of our skin. I liked a boy who drove as fast as he smoked, and yet, displayed such gentleness when he danced in the sunflower light.

The first time Matt played George Michael's Faith album for me, I teased him relentlessly. Matt's musical tastes--aside of his Classical, Baroque, and Romantic piano fascinations--were generally harder in nature. There was something about the album and the way we danced to it--soft-toed and fumbling over whether to touch hips--that made it our number one selection. Listening to Faith, I dared to trace my fingertips along his bruises; he pressed kisses to my brows, cheeks, chin, and nose--as if I was something precious he did not hope to lose.

"You're so soft," he told me one morning while we listened to our album of choice. "Everything about you, your mouth, your eyes, your hands, your voice. We need to do something about this."

And we did, becoming lovers as easily as we became friends. Matt was the first person I had been with sexually since my first lover who I had been monogamous with at the late-blooming age of eighteen. We twisted in animal positions, panting, and then, napping on the floor to take each other sleepily, smiling at the corners of our eyes. His habit of drawing me from sleep by parting my thighs and slipping inside of me entranced me. I felt as if I was dreaming the encounters that were anything but casual.

Mornings, we danced to George Michael, and stole secrets from each other in movements and whispers. When his ex-girlfriend began dropping by unexpectedly for visits, the dancing gradually dwindled until I decided it was time to stop hurting because I thought I was not what he needed (which was her). I sat down on the rickety old piano bench, and instead of telling him how I adored him, I ended things with him. I ran faster than I fell because of the hurt, because of the fear. He would not look at me; his jaw clenched open and shut, the same as his hands. As I left, I knew there would be no more morning dancing.

I did not see Matt for a long time after that. I heard through mutual friends that he resumed relations with his ex-girlfriend, but that he had lost his spark. Jealousy flashed green in my eyes, but mainly, I just wanted Matt to be happy. I wondered about his happiness a lot, wanting to visit his house, but knowing if I did, she would be there. Sometimes, I called his house and hung up because the sound of his voice on the answering machine reminded me of how far we had drifted apart.

One night, when I had been drinking plum wine with friends on the roof of my apartment building and heckling skateboarders in the parking lot, I called his answering machine and left a kiss for him, along with a confession: "It was always you. I love you." Those were words I had always wanted to say, and never dared because of pride and stubborn nature.

Matt came by my house at around three o'clock in the morning, disheveled and shuffling his feet. I did not even say anything to him; I enfolded him in my arms and he buried his face in my hair. We stayed up for more than twenty-four hours straight, kissing and speaking, and apologising for our misunderstanding. "Hand to Mouth" by George Michael came on, and we danced for what was to be the last time, although I was not aware of this at the time. He left as mysteriously as he had arrived, making me wonder whether it had all been a hallucination of longing.

There were other times that we saw each other, but I still think of that time as being the last time I truly saw Matt. After that, the familiar face faded into a remote distance, until he was an almost stranger. Seeing him at the clubs we both frequented reminded me that I once loved him, and now he was not mine and maybe never was. Missing him faded until thoughts of him were butterflies I brushed away or mounted and preserved.

I think of him at strange moments, and wonder whether he is happy. When no one is watching, I dance to George Michael for him and all we dreamed of being together. That is a Matt that I know and dream.