on average, i probably am introduced to 10-20 new people each week… be it a colleague visiting from the paris office, a friend’s new boyfriend-of-the-moment, or a sexy shirtless lad on the dancefloor at 613am. often, these introductions are immediately disposable—both parties know we’ll never cross paths again. but, sometimes you will see each other again.

i have no idea how many unique name/face combinations are stored in the neurons of my cerebellum, i really don’t. lately, though, i’ve noticed my mind playing a very devilish but crafty trick on me—it’s started to combine similar personality records into the same file in my brain.

—

hooman/steve m: steve m was the very outgoing, very charming president of my student house at caltech. always cool, always charming, self-deprecating and a good friend. half-egyptian. hooman dragged me to burning man for the first time in 2000. intelligent, insightful and iranian in background, our friendship has survived years of ups and downs.

when hooman came to visit me in london a few weeks ago, we spent hours catching up on old times, as long-lost friends do. rooting around in my dusty attic of a brain, i kept coming up with memories from both sets of friends—i wanted to remind hooman of those times we walked around campus late at night, of those ridiculous skits we had to do a frosh camp, i wanted to joke about judy and maria and laura.

—

mike/torsten: a year after i was an exchange student to germany when i was 15, my family decided to host someone in indiana, in return. tall, lanky, blond mike came from a fairly affluent background in kassel, but did his best to slum it in white trash suburbia [indiana]. over the years, we visited each other quite a bit, our last visit in 1999, when i visited him at med school in hamburg, when i finally came out to him. he laughed, saying he’s known for a while, and as we platonically crawled into bed together, he kept laughing, suddenly remembering all the times i’d flirt with him—sharing my bed at home when i was 16, that time we went camping in the netherlands.

not to toot my own horn [haven't been able to do that since i was 15], i do fancy myself as being in the elite gay mafia bloggerati. i sympathize, admire, adore and feel brotherly love towards certain gay bloggers around the world… boys who really do get it, comrades like jerwin and darian and ernie and of course kevin… younger, more brazen and still making their own mistakes as they unravel the mysteries of gay life, unlike the established guard of gay blog elders [sorry!], like joe, mike, andy and others. i can’t even recall how i first came in contact with torsten, but i remember our first frantic meeting quite well… two years ago, in front of the main stage at europride in manchester.

we had cyberstalked each other online, of course, and therefore knew a surprisingly lot about each other. but, even after just a few minutes, i found myself feeling way too familiar with torsten… this cute, lanky german lad was picking up the pieces of my severed friendship with long-lost mike. sounds a bit psycho, i know, but my mind works in mysterious ways. of course, torsten and my friendship has evolved over the years, but i do feel myself crushing on him in the same unattainable way as straight mike all those years ago.

—

mani/mario: passionate, possessive, romantic and really good in bed—what they say about latin lovers is absolutely true. dating mani [short for manuel] a year ago started out [as most relationships do] as pure bliss… romantic dinners overlooking the harbor next to his flat, fun strolls around town, hot hot sex. not to mention the look on my friend’s faces when they first met him—my god he’s handsome. but, things got very heavy, very weird, very quickly. probably more my fault than his, i just couldn’t handle the possessiveness, the pressure, the velocity that he was taking our relationship. after our second date, saying my mom wants to meet you and adopting a pet name for me in spanish, which i later found out meant fiancé.

mario, this hot portugese lad that i drunkenly text at 4am, feels very much like mani, the sequel. charming, romantic, quite the gentleman and dead sexy. a few weeks ago i spent an amazing sunday at his huge flat, chilling out in his hot tub, swimming in his pool, and sharing a blissful moment looking out over the thames, looking through the london eye at big ben, cuddling on an eerily high-resolution clear crisp night. in his eyes, in his embrace i can tell he wants more. which, for some reason, i can’t offer. it’s all good, it’s all casual, except for the occasional bitchy angry email/text from him, where he misinterprets my intentions or misunderstands my english sarcasm.

—

doug/ben: when i met doug just before valentines day, there was a unique spark about him that got more than just my heart racing… a geeky intellectualism that i rarely come across in london, a city filled with transients and foreigners and people more interested in getting pissed than getting into a debate about something nonsensical and intellectual. working towards his phd at the young age of 22, he’s a delicious combination of boyish good looks and an adult mentality. sweet as punch, sexy and very much into me.

from a distance, if you squint your eyes just so, you’d mistake him for ben, my last substantial boyfriend. not just in the looks department, but also in the way they both would stare across the table in a restaurant and make me blush, both in the way they don’t think twice about holding hands in public, both in the way they get a bit shy around my friends.

where things went wrong with ben, i don’t think i’ll ever know. but, as things evolve with doug, that bizarre filing system inside my head is already trying to push him into the same category as ben… trying, already, to create a checklist of all the reasons why it’s doomed to not work. guessing at ways in which i’ll muck it all up [cheat on him? be rude to him? start avoid him? force him to hate me?] even though there’s no logic behind any of it.

—

i reckon that all of our brains do this subconscious categorization. you’ve probably subconsciously categorized colleagues at the office and people on the bus and girls at dinner parties and guys at the gym. for me, though, these pairings seem to allow me to pick up, resume previously abandoned relationships. they allow me to relieve myself from the guilt, the openendedness of lost friendships, of unresolved relationships.

troy

[continued from part one]

troy was a truly adorable creature… a year younger than jennifer and i, having dated her for nine months. they were the ideal couple—so comfortable and casual and easy and electric. i loved them both, almost equally, and was absolutely convinced that they’d both make it big—in movies, on stage and in the studio.

my university started 5 weeks after jennifers, and i pondered how to fill this time before heading west to chase my own dreams. my answer came via a phone call, the same evening that jen drove off to college.

hey… what’s up?

not much…

what are you doing tonight?

nothing… why?

well, do you wanna go out tonight?

what, even though she’s gone?

yeah, well, i’ve got something important to tell you.

huh?

yeah, it’s really important. pick me up at 8?

i’m confused and intrigued, but unexcited and clueless.

i’m only weeks away from moving thousands of miles away to university, so i no longer worry about making curfew. i pick troy up, and as him, where to?.

wanna get some cheesecake?

umm, yeah, sounds good. and coffee?

yeah.

where?

halstead. boystown.

it’s different, without jennifer. troy is now in the passenger seat, as i race across the tollroads from suburban hell to downtown excitement. we talk about jennifer for most of the 90-minute ride, contemplating how she’s doing, saying how much we miss her.

then, as i’m changing lanes, troy starts running his fingers through my hair. i swerve across one and half lanes, a big rig blaring its horn behind me. i really like your new hair, he tells me as he continues to run his fingers through it. see, you were just waiting to make fun of my hair in the photo above. can’t now, can ya?

what.
the fuck.
is going on?

eventually we arrive in boystown, the nickname for the trendy gay neighborhood sandwiched between wrigley field [where i attended countless cubs games as a kid] and the dodgier parts of downtown chicago. it’s eric’s first time to the gayborhood, and all eyes are on us as we grab a table at the late-night café.

over countless cups of coffee and probably an entire lemon cheesecake, the boy tells me he thinks he might be gay. he tells me how he loves her—always has, and still does. i’m not even contemplating how this affects me—moreso i’m worrying about my friend jennifer, whom i had already hurt once. i come to some bland conclusions, and offer some mediocre advice.

on the way back home at 4am, he asks me if he can hold my hand. i can hear my heart pounding in my ears as he proceeds without my permission. it’s taking every ounce of concentration to stay on the road. nothing has been said at this point, and i have no idea what he thinks of me or if he’s just experimenting or if this is another trick or if i should only be thinking about jennifer. eventually, i can’t handle it any longer, and i find a spot to pull the car over.

he looks down, and tells me, i’m definitely gay.

the words hang there for 10 seconds, before he continues,

and i am definitely in love with you.

i look up at the ceiling of my car, i look off into the traffic whirring by.

i was hoping to tell you all this at that fucking dance, which is why i agreed to help out with that ‘trick’ in the first place…

my body is overcome with emotions i’ve never felt before… from head to toe my body is numb, on fire, tingling and shaking… what about her? i ask. what about her? is all i can say as i start sobbing. he moves in for a kiss.

a kiss that i’d been fantasizing about since the first time i met him. that i’d been dreaming about since the first time we hugged. that i’d been thinking dirty thoughts about since the first time i saw him shirtless.

but i push him away before the kiss can happen. what about her? i ask again.

after much deliberation, we both come to the clouded conclusion that his and her relationship is null and void. for all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist. he tells me he’s going to break up with her as soon as possible, probably waiting for a few weeks so she won’t have to deal with the added trauma of a break-up on top of adjusting to college life. hearts racing, we both agree that would be the best thing for her. guiltily, naughtily, we both knew, this was our way of rationalizing, of validating our own 22-minute-old romance.

finally, there, on the side of the highway, windows steamed up from sobbing and discussion and emotion, the kiss happened. it was, in a word, marvelous. my unrealistic wildest fantasy had somehow, miracously not only become possible—but also true. looking into his eyes as he pulled away, i melted. the straight boy i’d been lusting after for weeks was gay, and was in love with me.

the next few weeks were incredibly emotional. i quickly fell for him, but we both felt an incredible amount of guilt for cheating on jennifer [his girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend and best friend]. but, with raging hormones and a bit of logic it was quite easy to re-validate and re-rationalize our relationship as needed.

i enjoyed every magical moment with him, from the twinkle in his eyes, to the walks by the lake, the silent embraces we shared, even to the chicken rings with honey mustard sauce we devoured from white castle on a nightly basis, while parked at 506am, next to the drive thru, waiting for the sun to come up over the graveyard.

he would sing to me, love songs from musicals or ballads from madonna. you cannot imagine the emotional waterfall i experience even now, 10 years later, whenever i hear one of those songs… how it reminds me of his smile, his warm breath, and sadly, the tears running down both our faces as we went our separate ways for the last time.

my first love, the boy who set the scale for what love is, and changed my life, without second thought. the story ends with one last injury to her… six months after i bade farewell to him, i visited her at college. for months her and i had been talking on the phone, me trying to help her cope with their deteriorating relationship. he and i following a self-imposed silence.

i gave her the best advice i could, but my arms were tied,. as fate would have it, he [unknowingly] chose the evening of my visit to tell her. everything. there, over the phone at 3am, sat on her dorm room floor, watching her on the phone with troy, as he told her everything.

horrible… i felt horrible. for her, for me, for everyone. her two best friends, her two boyfriends, betrayed her, and as luck would have it, turned out to be gay. i’ve lost track of both of them—inevitably i’ll see them in a film or at the oscars or hosting the tony awards. and i’ll smile.