He was in a pure state of pleasure, completely unaware that he was holding his breath, as if nothing else mattered at that moment, in awe, but old enough to be able to allow some capacity to reason, to maintain a certain distance from whatever he was experiencing when talking about his mother. I kept looking at his self-indulged face, only listening; and decided that I could not date a man like that: a fifty year old baby. While he was telling me about how much he loved her, the music at the bar became louder and the laughs from the patrons near us intensified, making me uncomfortable and giving me an excuse to tell him that I had to leave. Walking home, i recalled so many different moments in my life, in which I was in a similar state or had seen people going thru an equivalent experience; extending my thoughts to research on the subject and my readings, including the classic by Bruno Bettelheim on children's literature and the ages of enchantment. As I tried to describe to myself the sensation I had perceived -his facial radiance, the euphoria in the background at the bar, and my opposite reaction to his unadulterated joy-, the Spanish word “lúdico” came to mind. Once at home, I looked for the translation, “playful”, but it did not do the job: the English word could not describe the same emotional state that the Spanish word does. It became quite clear that a certain type of gay bar or man who reminded me -not that I ever dated them- of the movie Psycho would not serve my own “lúdico” needs.
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