Song for Valentin

To have and not to hold
So hot, yet so cold
My heart is in your hand
And yet you never stand
Close enough for me to have my way

To love but not to keep
To laugh, not to weep
Your eyes, they go right through
And yet you never do
Anything to make me want to stay

Chorus:

Like a moth to a flame
Only I am to blame
Ba ba da ba ba ba
What can I do?
Ba ba da ba ba ba
I go straight to you
Ba ba da ba ba ba
Ive been told
You're to have, not to hold

To look but not to see
To kiss but never be
The object of your desire
I'm walking on a wire
And there's no one at all
To break my fall

(chorus)

You're to have, not to hold
You're to have, not to hold

(chorus)

You're to have, not to hold
You're to have, not to hold
You're to have, not to hold
To break my heart


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copyright @Madonna
album: Ray of Light

In the beginning...

Perhaps I should introduce myself, although it seems a little peculiar to be introducing myself to my own private journal. No one else will ever get to read these words. In truth, isn't that the whole point of a secret journal? Perhaps in a hundred years or so when I am dead and gone, my ancestors will read these confessions and understand me better than those in my own time. Perhaps they will understand me better than I understand myself.

I'm Valentin Edward Nikolai Sokorvsy. The Russian influence on my name comes from my deceased mother and further back, from my father's side of the family. My surname is derived from the Russian nobility, although my father is an English Marquess in his own right. As his heir, I'm entitled to used the title of Viscount, but I don't use it. What good would it do? I am who I am. No fancy title can change that.

You might think my life has been boring and ordinary, but it hasn't. At the age of eleven, on a sea voyage to Russia with my father, I was kidnapped by pirates and ended up enslaved in a Turkish brothel along with another English boy who was on board the ship too. Peter and I survived and were rescued but at what cost? How am I ever going to settle down again in England and become the perfect aristocrat my father requires? How can I ever tell him that the sexual excesses of my youth have distorted and changed me in so many ways, I cannot begin to count them.

I cannot tell him.
I cannot tell anyone except Peter and I cannot even do that. Peter has his own burdens to bear. His own scars from our shared past are far too fragile and complex to bear the weight of mine.
And he is in love with me and that is the hardest burden of all...