He wasn’t wearing much, which probably helped a lot. Just a pair of spandex shorts, crimson in color, and a blindfold over his eyes. And wings. The audience could see that the wings weren’t real – somehow, the structure wrapped around his torso to hold them on – but I felt like he could have just flown away if he wanted to.

Everything about him was beautiful. His long legs, his sculpted chest, his strong arms, his striking features. I knew that most girls in the audience were drooling over his hotness, but I couldn’t even call him that. Beautiful was the only word that came to mind.

The narrator told the story as he, playing Eros, walked slowly around the stage, his soul acting as his eyes, since he had none. I watched him, wanting to reach out and touch him. He seemed strangely ethereal – evanescent, almost – but yet I knew he was real. He was too expressive to not be real. The way he carried himself – the way that he would thrust his shoulders back when he was proud and roll them forward when he was embarrassed, letting his wings fall around him like a curtain – made me realize that he couldn’t be anything but real. And when he looked out at the audience with his blindfolded eyes, I felt like he was looking right at me. I felt like he was reaching out to me, and he would take me into his arms and wrap his beautiful white wings around the two of us, shielding us from the injustices of the world that he couldn’t physically see but knew were there.

After the show, I went backstage to congratulate the cast members on their wonderful performance. I happened to bump into him. He wasn’t wearing wings anymore, and I found myself feeling strangely disillusioned. The undeniable reality I’d felt earlier was gone when my eyes fell upon the glaring stage makeup and his wingless shoulder blades. But when I congratulated him anyway, he smiled modestly and thanked me for coming, and I thought suddenly that he was still beautiful. I decided that he must be hiding his wings so that people wouldn’t stare at him, but they were definitely still there. Then I got in the car and went home.

I dreamed that night about a winged god coming through my window and taking me away to a kingdom in the sky, where he removed his blindfold because he wanted to see me. But he didn’t have the name Eros – he had his name. Now, he always tells me that he doesn’t really know when I clicked for him because for a long time he was unsure about me. But I think that that was when I knew.