Cruising at university

I started seeing him around, walking down the steps of the old library tower usually, in cotton pants and a pastel golf shirt.  I noticed him before he took note of me.  We must have had some sort of symmetry in our class schedules that my memory of him involves this man descending steps in a pair of white runners.  And at the time I guessed correctly, I was lamentably to find out later, that he was straight.  Such is my luck, but as I have written before, the availability of a limp-wristed sure thing up north was as rare as spotting a bird of paradise in a boreal forest.  

Nonetheless, as I have elaborated on more than one occasion in these memoirs, I am that classic breed of homosexual manqué.  But in the desperation of isolation, I was always and ever hopeful.

It was his eyes that gave me hope.  I started to notice him.  He saw me.  I looked at him.  This seeming endless loop of staircase encounters between classes started to resemble the repeated scenes from Last Year at Marienbad.  I looked at him one day and held my glance.  He started to do the same.  He had green eyes, I remember, which dominated his face.  It started now to resemble a match, which was fitting, because I found out later that he was a wrestler.  We played chicken with our glances.  Some days I would win and some days he would win, but not a word was spoken between us.

Sandy-haired on top, he had a wide muscled chest, with a pelt of dark curly hair peaking out of his unbuttoned golf shirt.  Those green eyes I mentioned, like a deer's, sat above a stubbly dimpled chin.  The guy was totally adorable.  For once we were equal in height. He had the extremities that suited a wrestler.  He was compact, thick-limbed, stubby-fingered.  The crème de la crème, a gorgeous rounded ass, fixed on a pair of legs pressing the form of his ever-constant rotation of cotton pants.

The Marienbad stairs continued for some weeks it seemed.  We played with our glances.  Some days I was bold and he, coy.  Some days, the tables turned and I felt like the bottom, he the top.  Breakdown or pin, neither of us was winning and I was tiring of the game.

One day on the steps, I gathered up my courage.  I had to break this deadlock.  I did it disastrously, with a naivete only a farm boy could confabulate in his head. On one of his endless descents after our eyes met, I said, "What's going on?"  Unfortunately, this was said in an accusatory, not in a breezy "What's up?" fashion.  "Fuck off," he said to me.  A friend later laughed at me, "Oh my God, why didn't you just say hi?!"

Then something happened which I didn't expect and had not even been aware of.  Taking literature, I did have to rack up at least one science credit, Biology 101.  It was in a large auditorium that easily sat over 200 students and was often almost full.  One of my classes was close by so I usually got there before time and had the choice of seats.  He must have come from a bit further off and sat above me more often than not, because lo and behold, one day, there he was in that sea of faces.

Changed venue, but the game continued, and he seemed to be enjoying it more than I did.  Biology started to resemble more a classic experiment in psychology than the study of taxonomic rank.  Like a sadist he seemed to take pleasure in knowing that I would look around for him, and as I did, there he was looking at me. Always. Boldly.  He was asserting dominance.  I let him win, for I did like to look at him.

Then one day he came early and sat down right beside me in the almost empty auditorium.  This completely unnerved me.  All I could do was nod to him, I had lost my voice.  I think I was literally shaking.  I could feel my pen in my hand, quivering.  He nodded back, the Bro Code of an even playing field.  All was forgiven, we could rest.

Things moved quickly after that.  Carrying himself as he did (that is, handsomely), he was able to insinuate himself into the small group of friends that I knew.  Who of them he knew, or how he did it, I don't know.  I shortly found myself sitting across from him, he having lunch with my girls.

Then one day we were sitting alone together, the girls pairing to study, or absent, or hungover.  So there we sat.

"I know you like me that way," he said.  Headlock. Take down.
"Yes, I said, It's true."
"I like girls, " he said.
"I know that, " I said.
"I was playing with you," he said.

I can't remember his name.  For the life of me I wish I could.  There are a handful of men who I've stumbled across in my life, having not paid enough heed to recall their names.

We chatted after that and I explained myself, how I had seen him, how I found him so attractive that my eye contact turned into a sort of obsession - which only increased a tension that ended with him insulting me on those stairs.  He was ok with it, he said, but re-affirmed his preference in girls.

Emboldened, I let him know how I really felt.  "If I had my chance, I told him basso profundo, I'd eat you alive."

Those sweet green doe eyes widened into a sort of heterosexual fear.  I was pleased with myself.  I had won the match.