Dwelling Doesn't Really Help

On a date with the middle school teacher, he shared that whenever he talked to his best friend about a man he was with, they ask each other, “What song did you hear?” When my hand positioned itself on my birthday present’s hip and I tilted my head towards his, Beyoncé started singing “Smash into You.” I let her grace the soundtrack of my life. The rising tones of her voice matched the temperature of my body. He made me feel hot, from that first kiss to the way he slid his arms under my back to the feel of his breath on my neck when leaned toward me at a Chelsea bar. Still, as I try not to grieve his evident strike on calling me, the memory quickens by heartbeat, stalls my breath. I remind myself what comes easy, goes easy. He’s popular, he makes heads turn; I’m the jealous type, the hopeless romantic type. When he got the number of the promoter and I raised my eyebrow, he responded, “He’s the promoter. I got his number so we can go out again next year on your birthday.” Cynically, I asked him if he’d be around for that. He sipped his beer and peered over at me, “I’d like to be.” Kiss.

My real problem is that I’m a fourteen-year-old girl. After one date, I’m ready to write our names in hearts all over my proverbial marble notebook. Tragic, I know. I’m the only gay man who looks forward to U-Hauling it. I just get so caught up with infatuation. The sigh at memories of the night before, the skip of your heart when he calls, the pit in your stomach when you see him waiting for you across the street. I take the bait. I believe the lines. I fall fast, hard and, ultimately, when I land, I, like Amy Winehouse, “Wake Up Alone.”

“You had such bad year relationship-wise,” my friend says after I tell her about the gorgeous birthday present, “it looks like your luck is changing for this year.” I believed that line, too, just like I believe him when he says he hasn’t lost interest. Promises to see me this weekend prove empty. Texts go unanswered, phone calls sent straight to voicemail. Final tell-all: Facebook status, “Going to Paradise.” That’s in New Jersey and I live in the city. Looks like we won’t be getting together.

I think I come on too strong. I accept that about myself; it’s the boys who have a hard time with it. I thought my hearts with our names in them where locked in my secret diary. Apparently, they spill out every chance they get. Dwelling, however satisfying right now, doesn’t really help. Shower, shave, and, like Jay-Z, “On to the Next One”—complete with passive-aggressive Facebook status. I said I wasn’t dwelling, I made no mention about maturity.

More Than Just a Pretty Face

That boy’s messages about my sexual prowess, which I do not admit to having, traveled far. On a date with an adorable, mixed sports-lover—a date I thought went well and would lead to many more—he smiled at me and said, “I hear you’re good in bed.” True, I had already fooled around with him the night we met at a gay bar in Washington Heights—a major no-no I keep repeating; never go home with someone you want to see yourself with for more than a month the first time you meet them—and he admitted to me that he thought we’d “have really great sex.” But, imagine my surprise when he shared the semisweet secret that boy from my college days leaked to what seems like the whole island of Manhattan. Calls ended abruptly, texts dried out, his time ran short. Slumped in my couch watching TV dramas, I felt that I could stand no more heart-wrenching dating experiences.

Fearing and anticipating nothing would change and that I would wake up the next morning to watch TV dramas on my couch, I went out for my birthday. Certifiably tipsy from happy hour, I put on a deep V-neck and threw a cardigan over it. Skinny jeans and high-tops complete the look and I hopped on the train, bound for the relatively new party at which my friends were waiting for me. My arrival, late as usual, brought a lukewarm attitude. I wasn’t going to meet anyone. At the bar for a drink, I hit up a sure-fire pick-me-up: the go-go boy. I realize the sleaziness of backing up with some greased up, muscled, straight man at a gay club, but it was my birthday and if I wasn’t going to actually have sex, I might as well spend a few dollars making memories for later solitary activities.

I’m not exactly sure what I was doing when I saw him—talking to my friend from grad school, pinching the nipple of a go-go boy, or searching for the ten dollars I think he stole—but I experienced one of those clichéd scenes from a teen movie. Everything around him moved in real time, but his actions played out in slow motion. The Yankees fitted sat just off the back of his head, his skin shined a pale yellow against the flashing lights in the club, his lips—pursed and pink—stood out against his face, his white thermal clung to his muscles. My eyes whipped toward him as he turned the corner of the bar, his peered down at the floor as he moved past the crowd. My friend caught me staring, “Go for it!” He’ll always urge me to speak to someone he knows has caught my attention. I think he’s my only friend who knows my type. Everyone thinks I like black men. I deny this, flip it, and contest that all the men I like just happen to be black. The gorgeous face that caught my eye seemed out of my league, but my friend knows that’s how I like them. “Well, it’s my birthday,” I shrugged, “And everyone knows the best present is the one you get yourself.”

I would venture to say that exclaiming to friends, “Want to see my birthday present?” and showing them a post-coital (sidebar: can one call the time after gay sex “post-coital”?) is bad karma. Every time he doesn’t call when he says he would or does something that aggravates me slightly—like text during dinner—I point to my commodified celebration. Even now, as I live out Dorothy Parker’s “A Telephone Call,” staring at my iPhone with anticipation and bidding God to let it ring, I chastise myself for gleefully skipping around the brunch table singing, “Wanna see what I got for my birthday?”

He’s more than just a pretty face—and abs and arms and pecs and . . .umm, yeah . . . We danced the whole time at the club. In celebration of my birthday, he bought me breakfast at 5 am in a diner. After Denver omelets, he whisked me away to my first after-hours club. Sure, the music was that typical gay house-techno beat. And people were coked out, methed out, and e-ed out all around us. But, he took me there and made me feel like I was the only one in the place, the only one who mattered, the only one he wanted to look at. I love to dance, but he lives to dance. I’m not saying that he is one of those wannabes or even desires to be professional. He just feels the beats and rhythms so deeply. Currently, he’s in a shitty situation. He dissolved his business, got a DUI, lives with his unsupportive family, but when he’s dancing, his eyes turn from a dull, persistent knowledge that his life is not where it should be to a playful gleam, drawing you in.

Sunrise at the bar: he stands, leaning on the wood, holding his beer, staring at me. He shifts his weight when I step directly in front of him, unsure of my next move. The blaring house music subsided when I kissed his full lips. He tasted of tenderness and springtime. Response: “Wow!” I never heard that response to a kiss. He said it low and clear, almost a whisper. He told me he didn’t expect the kiss’s softness. I heard a click when our lips touched; it was quick and sharp, but soft and inviting.

A Fine Core of Innocence

Being with my ex for a year and a half changed me. Before him, my longest relationship was with my high school girlfriend, an ironic little factoid for a gay man. Before him, I never bottomed, I never swallowed, I never lived with someone, I never said “I love you.” He had eight years on me, something that grated on my nerves; I had to realize that he had several lives before me and I had college before him. I think he resented my youth. And as mature and well-situated as I was when I graduated with a Master’s degree at twenty-two, he always felt that I didn’t have a clue. He’d lived in different parts of the country, had had three different careers, fell in love, lived with partners, experimented with drugs, experimented with sex, partied until dawn. I couldn’t tell you the difference between weed and oregano. I couldn’t—and still can’t—keep from crying when a man thrusts himself inside me, however gentle. I couldn’t always pick a good restaurant at which we could dine comfortably. For all my learnedness, for all my job security, for all my self-control, I still seemed a child.

While I realize how the ex changed me and how I changed with him, I think much of the personal growth I’ve had has happened after him. I mourned the explosion of our relationship and its casualties quickly. I left him and our brownstone apartment in Harlem on a Friday. I had a new place to live on Sunday. I met a man and went on a date that Wednesday. While I checked his Facebook regularly in February, I began to enjoy my singlehood. I happily weaned myself off the comforts of online dating, moving toward meeting men in real time. I salaciously slipped into two foursomes, stupidly smoked something much more potent than tobacco, stayed out dancing until nearly noon, set dates and hook ups to my liking, sent some boys into my bed and some out of my life.

Still, on the inside, I maintain a fine core of innocence. All I really want, all I’ve ever wanted, is to love and be loved. My twenty-fourth year came with much hardship. My abusive ex-boyfriend toyed with my feelings, my body, and my mind to elevate his own sinking self-esteem. I moved home for two weeks that the A-train monopolized. I found the emotionally stiltedness, the aloofness, and the selfishness of men repulsive. I woke with the sharp sense of sorrow after having been played, ditched, or betrayed by a man I invested so much more in than he ever planned to invest in me.

There have been great sparks of romance between me and other men this past year. Right after I left my ex, I met a passionate Dominican with a beautiful Hamilton Heights apartment. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, but the fiery passion fizzled. The out of work Jamaican actor fell for me, but I lost my desires for him as his once stable and successful career began to peter out. High hopes heightened my faith with a middle school teacher I met. Sadly, when a week of unanswered texts and unreturned phone calls followed a month of dating, I got the “Sorry, I’ve met someone who fits more of what I’m looking for.” In other words, he met someone just as good looking, equally as steamy in bed, almost as intelligent, but not quite as outspoken. Summer sizzled and my love life froze. The boy who always looks good in pictures snubbed me. I’m loosely attached to his circle of friends, so when I confronted him, stating that we are both looking for same thing, he shied away, finally admitting that he couldn’t date someone who has had sexual relations with so many of his friends. There goes my college philandering biting me in the ass. The circle of well-educated gay men is small, so when I sleep with two, one of whom is unable to shut his mouth for any tactful amount of time, it seems as if I fucked them all.

Twenty-Six Cents

Last night, in my usual procrastinating fashion, I decided to be the responsible young adult and do my budget for these first two weeks of November. Since my birthday, I’ve spent so much time recovering well sacrificed sleep and working ungodly hours that I haven’t kept up to date with my spending—ignorance is bliss, my checking account, like a fat woman eating ice cream, is not in good shape. For a good eleven months now, I’ve been allocating zilch for my savings account. “Life must change,” I declared to myself. At twenty-five, I now need to save for a house, a vacation, a rainy day, a whatever . . . When I logged into my formerly active savings account, the last vestige of my former relationship hit me—“AandR House Fund.”

Twenty-six cents never felt so costly. I stared at my computer screen, unblinking. Suddenly, I ducked and peered out all the windows. Could he see me? I felt conscious and vulnerable. The sensitive topic of my finances compounded itself with the harshness of our break up this past January. I’m very slow to act on logistical and administrative details. I still pay $92 for my gym membership when I get a teacher discount I still haven’t employed. Some unknown amount charges itself to my Amex every month for “credit protection.” My certification is passed due and I haven’t taken all the steps to make sure I’ll still receive a pay check next September. All of these have simple solutions, yet I let them drag out because I’m strangely frightened of the paperwork. “AandR House Fund” and its unwanted nostalgic power falls into the administrivia that I hadn’t found the time to change.

My own personal savings account acquired twenty-six cents right before I dialed the bank—thank God for 24-hour banking—to dissolve the account. I wonder if they sent an email to him to let him know that I dissolved the account. This prompted a quick look at his picture on Facebook. He unfriended me and all of my friends after our break up—petty in my opinion—and set his profile to private sometime after I stopped checking it on a regular basis. Checking his online “dating” account, the same one where I am ashamed to say we met, often yields more information. In May, the last time I saw him, he wore a hat because he was trying to grow out his hair. When I checked the account last, he had his hair in twists, which made him look like the Afrocentric Hellraiser. This seemed appropriate as my most potent memories are of the hell he raised in my life. This last check up showed older pictures. I suddenly refused to care, became the responsible twenty-something-year-old, and set up my savings account.

I waffle on whether or not I miss him. As a person, I can confidently say that he has few redeeming qualities. I’m not being bitter: he has a temper, a strong inclination toward manipulating others, selfish tendencies. I guess I possess these qualities, too. The things you resent in others are the things you dislike most about yourself. But, his jaded pessimism drained the life out of me. His bouts of depression proved too much to handle for an individual without the ability to prescribe psychotropic drugs.

Yet, in spite of this, I still wear pairs of his underwear—cute Paul Frank, glow-in-the-dark boxers—that wound up in my suitcase when I moved out of our apartment. Noticing that he did not wish me a happy birthday also brought ambivalent feelings. “Good,” I thought, “he’s over me and will stop trying to contact me.” He made three dates to see me, which I accepted. The last came too close to the instances of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse that caused me to leave hurriedly in the middle of the night one Friday last January. In spite of everything, I thought the meeting a success; I told him he needed help of the professional kind, which I’m sure he didn’t seek out. I finally stood up for myself in a way that a year and a half with him taught me not to. So when he made a fourth date in August, I declined, letting him know that every time I see him, I’m reminded of why I told him I never wanted to see him again.