THE LAST FIVE ...

Closing up shop
- Wednesday, Aug. 02, 2006

It may be time for a change
- Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Entry in the air
- Friday, April 21, 2006

Still here
- Thursday, April 20, 2006

Music of the moment
- Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Or ... BE RANDOM!


GOOD READS

101 in 1001
American Road Trip, 1998


OTHER PEOPLE

Chupatintas
Dancing Brave
Fugging It Up
Kitty Sandwich
Mister Zero
Sideways Rain
Ultratart
Velcrometer


THE BASICS

My crew
Latest
Older
Notes
Our host
Profile

Sunday, Sept. 29, 2002 - 11:39 a.m.

Out on the town

"I'm dating Jim."

Those words replayed over and over in my head throughout the weekend, ever since Friday night. I couldn't figure out precisely why, either, because I'm not upset, I'm not jealous, I'm not offended. But it was one of those things that changes everything you know about a person, in a friendship. It's a big benchmark, a life-altering announcement because it came with the feeling that this could be for a while. In a way, it was as if an ex-girlfriend had told me she was seeing someone new.

"I'm dating Jim," Bryan said as we stood at the loud, smoky bar at Sweet and Vicious on Spring St. He told me in May he had something he wanted to tell me, something he'd rather do in person than over the phone or in e-mail, but yet something that wasn't urgent, wasn't life-threatening, didn't have to be done immediately. This, as I said, was in May, when I was still working at the newspaper and weekends were difficult to get away. He suggested we even perhaps meet for lunch somewhere between Boston and New York; unfortunately, that really only leaves Hartford. May became June, which ran into July and then melted into August. By the end of August, I knew I had a new job and it would only be a matter of time before I had weekends free; then we'd surely get together again.

It didn't happen until this weekend. Bryan said a few weeks ago he was coming to New York, would be staying with Mia as he usually does. We'd planned to have lunch on Friday -- he was taking the day off to drive down and I suggested he meet me at work and we could eat. He said he had to go into the city first to drop someone off. I thought it a little weird that he only mentioned two days before coming that someone else was hitching a ride.

But on Friday, traffic delayed his escape from Massachusetts, so that nixed lunch. Casey and I had to meet with the New Landlord after work, so we planned to get to Sweet and Vicious, a place suggested by one of Casey's friends who organized a meeting of her acquaintances, a little after 9 p.m. Casey found Molly out in the patio out back, and I sat down for a drink before returning to the bar to look for Bryan and Mia. I saw them at the end of the bar, near the door, and went over to say hello. At one point, Mia went off and came back with Jim, to whom I was introduced.

The four of us chatted, caught up a little, and then I asked Bryan, who had wanted the two of us to go somewhere to grab a drink and talk, "So can we do this here?"

"Sure," he said. "Do you still think you know what it is, considering who's here?" I had told him a week or so ago that I had an idea of what he wanted to tell me. My first option was that, because of his frequent trips to Chicago, that something was up with him and Cathy, a college acquaintance who graduated two years before we did. They'd always been good friends. In the back of my mind sat Option No. 2, and it had to do with his great fashion sense and love of musical theater.

"I'm dating Jim," he told me, and I said that was my second guess. "Cathy said you probably thought we were engaged."

I told him that was the line of thinking I had, but I knew that if he was engaged, he would not have waited four months to tell me after announcing he had something to discuss with me. I was thrown off by the fact that it was Jim who was the reason Bryan kept flying to Chicago.

We must've spent half an hour talking, mostly me asking questions and he answering them, while Mia and Jim chatted away next to us.

There were things I wanted to know: When did you first tell someone? (Two years ago, when he came out to Mia at a bar near my parents' house by saying "I have something to tell you ... " and she said, "Either you're gay or you're dying.") How did your family take it? (Pretty well, though dad was shocked at first. Relatives on mom's side took it pretty well, too; relatives on dad's side aren't going to be included in the disclosure.) How long has my sister known? (A few months, and she's dying to talk to me about it. Naturally, I'm going to act like I don't know when I go up there next weekend, just for fun.)

I wanted to ask if he's ever slept with a woman, but I didn't. I'm glad, too. He said he basically came to a final realization when we were in Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl on New Year's Day 2001. On the night of Jan. 2, when I went to the movies with our friend Courtenay, with whom we were staying, Bryan went to have dinner with a guy he knew from Notre Dame, someone who transfered after freshman year. I thought it weird that he was catching up with someone I'd never heard him speak of. After returning to Massachusetts, he broke up with Ali, a girl he'd been seeing for a few months. His father never understood that one, at least not until earlier this year.

Bryan told his mother first, and she was understanding. He told his brother on a drive back from skiing in Vermont, turning down the radio during a Dave Matthews song, something you just don't do with Patrick in the car. Bryan told him, Pat said, "OK," and turned the volume up again. "Wait a minute," Bryan said, turning down the radio again. "That's it?" "Yeah," Patrick said. But he's OK with it too. But his father. Bryan's mom pleaded with him to tell his father, in part because she >needed to be able to talk with him about it. So Bryan did, on a night after picking them up from the airport when they returned from a vacation. "I said, 'Dad, I need to tell you something,' and he just kind of stood there," Bryan said. "'I'm gay.' He just stood there and then made a sound like, 'Unh,' like he'd been punched in the stomach. My mom came in and started crying, and my dad didn't say anything. So I left, and he left a message on my phone saying, 'I can't talk about it now, but I love you.'"

When Bryan said the words -- "I'm gay" -- I had a feeling like that was the moment, the definitive instant when it became Official. I don't know why, but it must have been something as simple as hearing the two words come from his mouth.

Thinking back to various collegiate episodes, I found myself putting them into a new context. I asked how long he had a feeling he might be gay, and he said he's known for a while, even back into high school. He went through college in the closet, except, perhaps, to a handful of other gay students. He brought girls to all the dances, hooked up at parties. We talked about the ones we thought were hot and even hooked up with some of the same ones -- at completely different times, yes. And, like most adolescents and college students, we made jokes. All kinds of jokes, even gay jokes. There was never anything said with malice; it was as if we were joking about ourselves, our friends, those we make comments about without having to make a disclaimer that our words do not reflect our true feelings. But one of the jokes was how, at various random times, Bryan, either by himself or with any number of us alongside, would be mistaken for a gay man. Bryan brought up some of these instances himself. How hard that must have been.

I told Bryan, too, that this explained his occassional breakdowns and frustrations at Notre Dame. To say the least, it is not a kind place to homosexuals. As a private Catholic university, it does not have to adhere to some of the same guidelines that state institutions do. They refuse to talk about homosexual students, choosing instead to wish away what they see as a "problem" in the hopes that if they don't think about it, it will cease to exist. His mother once told me that he was thisclose to leaving the school during his freshman year.

I now, for the first time, have someone I can truly call a gay friend. I've known people who are gay and have a few acquaintances. I work with some, and have worked with others. I don't feel uncomfortable or "threatened" as some ignorant punks say. In a way, I feel bad because it took him so long to tell me. Most of that had to do with my former work schedule, when I missed parties and trips and even simple weekend get-togethers because I couldn't get the time off. In fact, Bryan said he wanted to tell me last December when he came to New York, but I didn't feel well that weekend and on the Friday night, Casey and I left the city rather early; on Saturday, when they came to New Jersey, I had no energy to return to the city with them. He laughed, too, relaying a conversation he had with Lori that Saturday night when we all had dinner here. "She complimented me on my clothes," he said, "and then went on to say, 'I always like it when people compliment me on my clothes, so I always try to do the same to others. It always happens in gay bars, though." With that, Bryan said, he and Mia had to hold back their laughter, and later joked, "Does she know?!?"

We stayed at Sweet and Vicious late on Friday. Casey eventually came to the front and talked with us at the bar. She and Jim got along great, talking about childhoods in central/western Pennsylvania (he's from State College) and living in Chicago (he's now in Boston; they've been together since March). I explained to Bryan how Casey doesn't like football (he feigned a look of panic and said, "Oh my God! What are you going to do?") or participating in anything athletic. "I know. Jim can't even ride a bike," Bryan said. So we decided that he and I will go off on hiking and biking expeditions, and Casey and Jim can hang out and have dinner waiting when we get back. "It's just like we'd always planned anyway!" Bryan exclaimed.

Sometime after midnight, maybe even after 1 a.m., we decided to stop at Cafe Lola on the Upper West Side. It's the coffee shop where Meg Ryan waits with a flower in her book to meet Tom Hanks in You've Got Mail and he recognizes her before walking in and stands her up (as her internet boyfriend, but not before badgering her as the president of Fox Books). We actually sit at a table in the general vicinity where she sat and it's 3:30 in the morning before we get back to Mia's and crash -- Bryan and Jim in her bed, Mia on her air mattress on the floor, Casey and me on the futon in the living room.

In the morning, as planned, Casey and I take a bus back to New Jersey to change and shower, since we didn't want to lug a bag of clothes with us all night. We return at 2 p.m., meet the three of them at Port Authority, and head to Chinatown for lunch. With the three of them heading off to some banquet last night, Casey and I wandered through SoHo a little before taking the bus back home.

Because of Edgewater's blue laws, which for some reason prevent the sale of clothing on Sundays, Target and similar stores are closed on Sunday. Needing various things (though not clothes) from the Tar-jhay, we decided to make a late-evening run. Apparently, everybody from Ft. Lee to Hoboken had the same idea. The place was packed. It looked like a supermarket the day before a hurricane is expected to hit land. The parking lot was a madhouse, the store was bustling, and the registers were crowded. I'd never seen anything like it at 8 p.m. on a Saturday, and I told Casey I was glad we did it, glad we experienced the Saturday Night Target Phenomenon.

It worked out well, too, because Monsters, Inc. was on sale for 17 bucks, and I figured I'd only save maybe a dollar or two buying it on half.com, so I added it as a checkout impulse buy, and we watched it last night before falling asleep.

We were exhausted, beat after walking so much yesterday. The walking actually felt good. In the two hours from when we woke up to when we went back into the city, I felt like shit, hung over and miserable. The afternoon was a big turnaround, almost as if it wasn't the same day. Walking around SoHo and NYU (and seeing Edward Hopper's former house) on a great fall afternoon was a great feeling.

After watching the movie and some of the extras, we turned out the lights and quickly fell asleep. But in those few minutes before I fell off (there was no drifting into slumber last night), I felt relieved, glad to be off my feet and ready for a comfortable, peaceful night's sleep.

I can only imagine how Bryan felt.

Previous page: Stale beer
Next page: There's a pizza monster about

� 1998-2004 DC Products. All rights reserved.

Yeah, sorry I have to be all legal on you here, but unless otherwise indicated, all that you read here is mine, mine, mine. But feel free to quote me or make fun of me or borrow what I write and send it out as an e-mail forward to all your friends, family and coworkers. Just don't say it's yours, you know?