We are for the dark

I can still see his face.  He stands there, in my mind, nameless and gorgeous.  He was wearing a pale t-shirt and a pair of jeans, standing with two friends.  He spoke conspiratorially with his mates, three heads talking in counterpoint.  And he was dark, the way I like my men - and why do I think he was Portuguese?  Just a guess.  An amalgamation of a look in the eye or the cut of a jawline, I suppose.

An old friend told me years ago that when he was young and going to the clubs, he would often muse about the future and know that he would still enjoy the adventures of dressing up and going out - and those selfsame clubs would still be standing - and he could enjoy them just as he always had.  Are we so naive to believe that some things will last forever?  I suppose it is a fault of the young to think that time does not concern them, for they have so much of it that any hint of looking back is crowded out by the present flooding them with new experiences.

Chaps, Colby's, The Barn, gone, gone, gone.

You must enter my mind at that moment, reader.  Of the boy I mean, at the bar.  He came before my great loves, and so he was an undifferentiated presence.  Completely new, and seemingly, as hungry I was for sex and love - for connection.

To steal a line from Andrew Holleran, what was that 'ragged jagged craziness', the thrill of seeing someone and knowing they wanted you - your personality, your body, or even just your semen - that thrilled me so when I was not even thirty?  The jungle drums, that erotic tension that seemed to suffuse every visit to a bar I made before I fell in love, hammered in my head.

He was standing there talking, but looking directly at me, and I kept meeting his eyes, talking with my mates about nothing, the prattle of being social at a bar with a beer in my hand.  And then he came over, pushing himself into our trio and saying hello.  I was speechless.  It was as if he had broken the fourth wall.  I had no idea what to make of him.  I can't even recall if I said hello in return, or merely nodded (I am so white and distant).  What I found hilarious is that my bar friends (and that's who they were, I never saw them except there) took it completely in stride.  Neither an eye batted nor a word was stumbled over.  Meanwhile, knowing he had intruded in his dark and beefy way for me, I was left without the ability to respond.

Finding I was mute, seemingly, he then stepped away after some minutes.

The upstairs at Chaps was walkable in a circle.  Why was I so confident that having disappeared, I would see him again?  I circled.  I circled again.  I circled again.  I checked the dance floor.

I turned to the pocket gay I had been conversing with when my boy initially approached.  "Have you seen the dark-haired boy who was in our conversation?" I asked.  He sneered at me.  "I don't fucking know where he went."  The innocence of fumbled attraction came headlong against that gay male competitiveness to score - and Mr. Pocket held me in contempt.

He was as gone as if he never existed.  But he still lives in my head.


"Ever since I had my nervous breakdown, I've been extremely psychic!"

Everley Gregg as Mrs. Gladys Martin
The Ghost Goes West