Eros // BIO
Eros had never been one to make friends easily. Whenever he did try to strike conversation, things never quite went as he hoped. He always seemed to want more out of the exchange than the other did; to merge thought in some intimate and unexplainable way. He soon learned that this was considered invasive to most. Perhaps even violating. And so slowly, unable to adapt to the ones around him, he began avoiding people. Then groups. Then crowds. Not because he was shy, necessarily. But because he was always slightly… elsewhere. And others didn’t care to find him there. Their feet firm on the ground where they liked them to be. Eros watched as he floated into the rest of his life instead. At seventeen, Eros left home without as much as a suitcase. A few belongings stuffed in his coat pockets, but more he found he didn’t need. He wasn’t much of a materialist. Eros chased feeling. Experience. Something grander than himself. Something such as love, in which he fell many, many times. Not with people, exactly. But a week in Vienna became a month. A quick stop at Florence turned into a summer. And Paris? Paris had been his most passionate lover of all. Night after night, he shed her surface. Following cigarette smoke down candle-lit staircases. There, below the city, where artists, drunks, and lovers came alive, Eros discovered a world where “too much” was to be embraced. For a while, he believed he had found what he had set out to search for. He had not. Eros remained lonely, even then. Even when pretty french boys traced the constellations across his back. Even when artists painted him like the muse they said they saw in him. Even when he was welcomed into apartments where the music never seemed to stop and nobody ever asked when he planned to leave. Eros remained an observer. Watched the intensity unfold while he forever reached right through it. Something he could feel but never quite seem to touch. Sleep became somewhat of an afterthought. He was convinced there must be another layer hidden underneath this one. And so there was always another conversation to overhear. Another staircase to descend. Another stranger to follow into the night. The circles beneath his eyes deepened throughout the years until they became a part of him as much as the long conversations with the moon, asking himself what it all meant. People often mistook him for exhausted. In truth, Eros just seemed to live a little too long in each day, still in search of more. And yet Paris revealed its bottom. Every hidden street, every secret cafe, suddenly familiar. And Eros simply let his feet take him... elsewhere again. He didn't end up at Le Troadec because he wanted a degree. He didn't end up there because he wanted a career. He ended up at the university much like he ended up any other place: by following a thread. The invitation was fleeting. Passed down in a far too crowded room for his liking, caught between music and laughter. Most people would have forgotten about it by morning. Eros did not. Louisiana, he had heard, was built on many layers indeed. Ghosts, secrets, the occult. Mysteries buried deep enough to keep someone digging for years. It sounded like exactly the type of place that might have answers. Or, at the very least, much better questions.
