We sat in his car, in the back seat — a black Accord with paint peeling away – sort of a teenage high school car: loud music, recklessness and the kind of kisses that make you forget curfews. The ocean, low tide, shells thrown onto the shore, and a huge moon hanging over the red-and-white lighthouse. We looked into each other’s eyes, and it was so calm that speaking felt completely unnecessary. Lone cars passed along the spit, their headlights lighting up his face — a very beautiful, lean face with sharply defined features. I traced his cheekbones and jaw with my hands, but the most special thing — his lower jaw — was the first thing that caught my eye, the first thing I wanted to touch, to caress. If I were a sculptor, I’d be touching his jaw like this and transferring the feeling from my fingertips into clay. The shape of his face in general — it was the perfect sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. The one Michelangelo didn’t have time to make in marble. 

Why had they taken me, as a child, to see a copy of the naked David with the perfect body, the chiseled abs? That’s how unreachable ideals and subconscious images are created, the ones we later try to find in the features of real people.

And then he took off his T-shirt. And I realized they must have sculpted all those Italian beauties from this guy. He was perfect everywhere. That’s what happens — you walk through museums as a kid, and one day you fall in love with a body like David’s, with a jaw like the skull on my father’s desk. Only now it’s a warm body — not cold marble, but warm, hot, sweaty. Not a bare skull I was once left alone with as a child (my parents are doctors and we have some related to medicine artifacts) — oh, how I loved to touch its lower jaw.

Such soft skin, everything so finely drawn. Dark green eyes that turn lighter when light hits them… A car passes, headlights falling across his face — not entirely, just a strip of brightness, while the other half is in shadow. And it’s so subtle, so beautiful. We look into each other’s eyes, and he doesn’t smile, as if this is a very important, serious moment, almost tragic. And around us — a mystery, a secret, because we know almost nothing about each other. It’s just our second date! 

The headlights light up my face too, and then he smiles, pulls me close by the neck, whispers that I’m beautiful. I look into his eyes — we can’t look away from each other — and savor his beauty. I see myself reflected in his green eyes and feel even more beautiful.

Michelangelo’s sculptures you’re afraid to touch, afraid to rub away centuries of smoothness. People touch them wearing white gloves. But I’m touching carefully, with my fingertips — a marble body beginning to come alive. 

Another car drives past along the lagoon, its lights like the sunlight streaming through a museum window. Only now it touches not marble, but living skin. Such sculptures should never be kept behind glass!

I’m sitting on his lap, pulling back to look at his beautiful face. And I ground myself, I say:

 “You know, love is such a stretchable concept, such an all-encompassing one. What’s there in the early stages is actually passion — it’s hormones, it’s the desire for closeness, for pleasure. That state can last a few weeks, often a few months, sometimes a year, and then it fades, because relationships can’t survive on passion alone”. 

Why do I say this? I kiss him, then pull back to look at him again, trying to memorize him like you memorize a painting you’ll never see again and aren’t allowed to photograph. Something tugs inside — what if all this remains only in memory? All the beauty of this world — you must breathe it in before it disappears.

But he replies:

 “The most interesting thing is to really get to know a person — what they love, what please them  — and to build something together, something strong. That’s when the longest, deepest feeling breaks through.”

And in the morning he writes to me: I read something and wanted to share it with you — when you can’t physically let a person go, when you want to be with them all the time and miss them terribly when they leave, when you can’t take your eyes off them, when you just keep looking into their eyes — that’s how a deep connection begins. The kind you can only have once in a lifetime.

I write back: That’s passion, it’s a little blind, with emojis and all that silly stuff… I write it, but I myself want those teenage emojis, want to look into each other’s eyes without a word. And to love — exactly as I feel like! Without physiological and social explanations.

Love, taken apart into hormones

Passion and a wild craving for physical closeness — is that love? I think passion in that sense is just one part of love. When your head is spinning, your heart is leaping out, butterflies in your stomach, mouth going dry, and not in your mouth — the opposite — that’s passion.

How many hormones wake up when we fall in love! Especially in the early stages. More so at the start than later on. For that infatuation to last, you have to work hard: build a relationship not just on passion, but on trust and understanding. You need shared interests, shared friends, and topics to talk about. You also need your own interests, your own friends, your own conversations. You need personal space and time; each of you must still be interesting to the other and to yourselves — not losing yourself, not drowning in the other. To stay independent, yet be one whole. That’s how a big house is built. And it can be very tall, very strong.

Infatuation, though — yes! Nothing compares to its intensity. It lasts from a few weeks to a few months, maybe a year. It’s the sharpest, most saturated emotional period in a relationship. For me — usually just short of one week to two months. That’s why I used to think two months was the whole of love, and after that — it’s over. But now I’m older and wiser and I know you can extend those two months, because after them comes the most interesting stage, where emotional and practical intelligence join in — conversations, confessions, building trust. Sex in the second stage becomes different — exploratory, patient, focused on learning what else the other person enjoys.

For now, the first stage is the most exciting, and everything is predictable — pure hormones, fed by how much two people like each other physically, by the intrigue, the little mystery — something left unsaid sparks curiosity. Scents, clothes, music, the setting — it all creates the atmosphere and stirs the hormones. They were asleep, and now they’re awake.

***

And I’m curious — what happens if you let it all go, let yourself be silly, light, wander around a museum open-mouthed — marveling at a body shaped by Michelangelo — every firm curve of the perfect abs. Marveling at paintings without reading their captions, without knowing their history, knowing nothing of the era or the artist. To behold beauty, to admire the beautiful, and to feel — deeply, truly.

My marble David — alive, warm, real. The harmony of eternal beauty and the living spark in his eyes, like in a portrait where the viewer is forever a little in love. I could feel my pulse pounding — no museum masterpiece could compare to this warmth. The ocean roared, the moon climbed higher… 

Tomorrow I’ll wake up and the first thing I’ll do — is run straight back to my museum!