A Minor Slip-Up

Well, I’ve done something I didn’t think – post-SF consciousness-raising, that is – I’d ever do again. I pulled a regular “bitch fest” in front of, and directed toward, one of the boys I “dated” during my recent six months of escapist endeavors…

This one is 27. A vegetarian hippy with parents from Santa Cruz or some such Berkeley-esque Northern CA environment. We spent exactly one passionate, coke-inspired night (and subsequent day) together two months ago, during which time we professed our uncanny mutual attraction. I can’t speak for him, but I meant everything I said, even if the coke did make it easier to say. Not only was I genuinely attracted to him, but I was also relieved to run into somebody else with Northern CA consciousness. I thought I’d found a new friend. But he never called me, even after I went through the trouble of looking him up at his trendy Manhattan restaurant job one Saturday night so that I might slip him my number. (He had left me his, but it had been disconnected. Should that have been my first warning? I remember thinking so. So I got busy with my life, and forgot about him.)

But then I saw him tonight on the way home from the Met, quite unexpectedly, as I was walking along Lorimer on my way toward Grand and beyond. Saw him dead-on, with no potential for looking away as if I hadn’t noticed him. Ditto for him. I saw it in his eyes. I saw him, and he saw me, plain and simple. It was startling for both of us. For me, because I’d just shaken off some other boy who wanted me to take him home and fuck him, and for him, well, just because, I guess. We weren’t passing each other, we were walking in the same direction. I had felt his presence and turned around. That’s how I saw him. I wonder if I’d have turned around if it had been anyone else?

“How ya doin’?” he asked as he approached me. He didn’t take the time to stop, and I didn’t take the time to stand still. Suddenly we were walking together. He was on his way to get cigarettes.

“Me?,” I asked, “I’m doin’ fine. Always have, always will.” I waited a few beats. We kept walking. The store was still a few yards away. I felt no need to hold back. I blurted, “Sorry I didn’t return your calls, but I DIDN’T GET ANY.”

He looked at me sheepishly. “I just got a new phone,” he said. “I haven’t had one all this time.”

“Mmm,” I grunted. And I stepped in front of him, and turned to face him – stopping him in his tracks.

I lifted my middle finger to my nose and sniffed it. Then I stuck it under his nose. He didn’t know what to make of the gesture, but he took a whiff anyway.

“Smell it?,” I asked.

“Smell what?”

“That’s someone else’s ass,” I assured him. It was no lie. I had been fingering the boy who wanted me to take him home and fuck him for close to an hour before I worked up the excuse of needing to walk the dog.

He became visibly disgusted. He resumed walking.

I followed him into the corner store. He bought some cigs, quite uncomfortable all the while. When he had completed his transaction he tried to brush me off with a “Well, it was good to see you,” but I confronted him once more.

“You don’t get it, do you?” I asked. “I wasn’t faking when I said I wanted to see you again. How come no call? I went out of my way to give you my number. The ball was in your court. You knew it.”

“I told you, I didn’t have a phone, and I’ve been real busy…”

“Bullshit. I’ve been busy, too. But if it’d been up to me to call you, then you could’ve been sure I’d a’ found a pay phone. Or something. I don’t mean to come across as some needy faggot whining, ‘Why did’t you call?,’ but I need you to know – I wanted to see you again. And I rarely feel that way. I told you that.”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted, “but when we parted I felt like you left it as ‘just friends’ and I thought we’d talked extensively about how I’m the marrying kind.”

“You mentioned it,” I told him, “but there was hardly anything extensive about it.”

He disagreed.

“So THAT’s why you did’t call,” I said.

“Well, yeah.”

“Then that’s what you should’ve had the balls to say a few minutes ago.”

I saw the whites of his eyes. He had no way out, and he knew it.

“Look,” he said, “I adore you. But there’s obviously not gonna be any way we can make it work.”

I asked, “Because you want monogamy?”

“Well, yeah.”

“That’s all I was trying to get you to say. That’s fine with me. I’ll be alright. Always have been.”

And with that, I turned on my heel and walked away from him, never once looking back. I walked home, thinking the entire time about how weird it had been to see him, right out of the blue, after I’d mentally put the entire scenario regarding him to rest. I couldn’t help but repeat – over and over – my mantra, “Gay male monogamy is not only impossible, it’s superfluous,” but at the same time, part of me was wishing him luck. Christ knows he’ll need it.