I, Maurice

I was never Clive, at all.

So, I'll stay around for a chance encounter with my own Alec, whoever that may be. Somebody willing to climb the ladder from the outside. I may be pingeonholing myself, but this is the manner in which I see it and you should not adopt it for your own. I'm everybody's Risley; you should know this by now. Not even I take myself too seriously.

I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort. But more importantly, I construct life from archetypes. "Life imitates Art," said an old friend of mine, and I believe him. If it means I have been driven to make a poor man's Maurice, then so be it. I am that which I am: only I could change myself.

I don't think Maus could be my Alec.

I do, however, hope that the person who I thought to be Maurice - but was, in reality, some sort of Clive - does not end in any way unhappy. (The world is rife with sad marriages as is.) I do think that each of us had a bit of either character. I was Clive in how I ended things, firstly, for which I should be ashamed. And then there were all those awful boys and that horrible woman I was friends with for a while.

I am not Patroclus.