i’ve been thinking a lot about how my four years in london have changed me… the confidence, the mojo, the snarkiness it implanted into my frontal lobe, that it brought out from the murky depths. i don’t blame the city itself… if anything, i used my monumental move to london in 2001 as an excuse to finally let myself be the outrageous self that i’d been suffocating over the years.
i arrived in london on july 3, 2001—a tuesday. wednesday, i unpacked, and thursday was my first day of work at scient, the same dot-com consulting company i’d worked for in san francisco.
that thursday, i met my new team of 20, and my new project manager, mark. i immediately sussed mark out to be a no-nonsense, no-bullshit expense-account-loving, frequent-flier-miles-hording, wrinkle-free-khakis-wearing traveling consultant. he was nice enough to me, but generally had a pissed-off demeanor as he scurried from meeting to meeting around the client’s offices.
friday, my gay colleagues took me out to lunch… i had known them from conference calls and mailing lists, as i was pretty active in setting up the gay employee network from san francisco the year previous. one of my gay colleagues, andreas, was having a birthday party at a posh bar in soho that evening. was i free, he asked? ummm… yeah… i don’t really have any plans for friday.
so, on my 3rd full day in london, i excitedly went to my first party, my first social engagement, my first brouhaha.
i remember showing up, and thinking how out-of-place i looked. how baggy my clothes were. how stylish everyone else was dressed. a cocktail remedied that in no time flat, and i laughed as holly and micha explained to me what a mojito was.
still horribly jetlagged [remember, this is the old, innocent, fresh-off-the-boat eric], i decided just before last call it was time for me to go. as i was saying my goodbyes, this very handsome latin boy comes up to me, introducing himself as gabriel.
he’s dashing, 30, handsome and quite the casanova. he’s buying me drinks, he’s touching my arm, touching my shoulder, winking… definitely putting the moves on innocent old me. i’m strangely intrigued by this guy.
i should point out that i’m only 24 at this point, and, to this day i’ve only been with 2 or 3 guys more than a year older than me. i’m attracted to innocence, to youthfulness. but, something about 30yo gabriel convinces me he’s exactly who i need to fall for, this, my 3rd day in london.
out of nowhere, my boss mark shows up, wearing a tight valour shirt and looking a bit tipsy. he comes up to gabriel, saying i’ve been looking everywhere for you! and nods my way, saying, oh, eric, you’ve met gabriel!
the three of us make smalltalk for a while before mark excuses himself again, saying he was getting his coat. gabriel leans in for a kiss, and, after the fireworks disperse, asks me if i’d like to go home. i blush, and suggest, maybe we can get some coffee?
sitting outside old compton café staring at our boiling-hot mochas at 1130pm on a friday night, i’m attempting to make smalltalk as casanova keeps putting the moves on me—flirtatously, and phsyically. his mobile keeps ringing, and he keeps ignoring it.
just before last tube, we’re standing in a doorway of the cambridge theatre [where les mis played], and we kiss. quite possibly the manliest kiss i’ve ever experienced. with that, casanova convinces me to go home with him.
in the taxi ride back to his place in hammersmith, i try to piece together why he was at the party. well, i know everyone through mark… he looks down at his phone, and then out the window of the black cab, his hand on my knee.
mark’s sort of, well, my boyfriend… he grimaces as he tells me.
oh, great, i’m going home with my boss’s boyfriend. on my third day in my new home country, after my second day of work.
the next morning, standing naked on his balcony overlooking the thames, he phones up mark, apologizing for ditching him at the bar, and making up an elaborate story as to why he didn’t answer his phone the 34 times mark called. i drag the pillow over my head to block out his lies, the sunlight and the reality of what’s just happened.
i would say that monday morning was awkward—but it wasn’t. i sat in meetings all day with mark, and it was obvious he had no idea what had happened.
awkward would be a few weeks later asking my boss for time off to go to ibiza, where his boyfriend was secretly meeting up with my buddy duane and i.
yeah—that was awkward. but fun. and naughty.
i’d say that’s precisely where the shift occurred. when i went from nice, sweet, innocent eric to the egomaniacal creature i am now.
