There were the men who’d just gotten off the train, men I’d think later I should have followed, men I hoped would come back, show me if they might want me, and then follow me off this train, at my stop.
I take the F to Bergen.
Some say they don’t usually do this, follow guys off the train, talk to guys like this, give guys their phone numbers, unlike the ones who must wander around there all day, around the stations, from one to another, ones I would sometimes begin following, next door to hotels, ones who seemed to have only me as a standard, ones who stand under their newspapers, smiling even in the rain, on the street out toward the ends of my neighborhood.
There are friends I run into, and MTA workers, on occasion, out here like this, where men pretend to be asking for change for the subway, or one pretends he has hurt his foot, and another walks over to the pay phone, making a gesture with his mouth I can’t mistake for anything else.
I follow one of these men into a bar.
Another asks politely if he can walk with me. Although I know I’ve somehow started all of this, I sometimes still say no. I know he might lose interest, but if he really wanted me, he’d follow me.
There are ones I lose, and then there’s one I follow for blocks and blocks, even out toward the underpass, where he finally, unexpectedly, runs into friends. There would be another one like him, another night. I’d follow him all the way out toward the other highway, past the police cruisers, the local neighborhood station, the garbage men on their rounds, late at night, just doing their jobs.
He’s been painting his apartment all day. It’s an excuse I’d use to change my mind, to get away, once I didn’t really want this anymore, after having had a little time to think, coming to my senses coming up the stairs, watching him walk up in front of me.
Maybe some other time. I think I might be allergic to the paint. Thanks, anyway.
I go back out into the night.
Another one of them finds me, takes me up the street, takes me up the stairs to his place. He doesn’t have roommates, or his roommates are away. He takes me in and wants to know if I want to watch a tape, if I want to piss on him. I haven’t done this, ever. He says I can do whatever I want, whatever. He wants to finish me off, says I have a good dick, spitting up behind me, on me, bending over the couch I don’t lower my face into, before he begins to move in his tongue, just a bit, just a bit more.
He is cleaning around me.
Whatever. Whatever I want to do.
I’ll leave them always and come back to my room. I’ll have to do it to myself again, before I can sleep. I’m trying not to think of them, not to think of the guy who some nights stands naked in his window, all the lights in the room on behind him, as he motions over himself, up above a fish store on one of the main streets. Whoever is passing should come up.
I’m trying not to go back out there.
There are other men out there, ones I only watch from outside their gates, men holding on in front and behind themselves, one man I’d walk back by again and again, outside his place, noticing then another man across the street watching him, watching me, watching us.
We’re being watched by the whole neighborhood.
There’s the man who says to me maybe some other time. I’ve told him I have nowhere to go. I have roommates. I tell them all this. Some of them say the same thing, then wander off drunk, then come running back, don’t want to lose me, ask if maybe they can just suck my dick, here in one alley I’ve started walking back by.
They follow me back there.
There are two more men by another alleyway I’d find another night. They hold me and kiss me. Something’s not quite right with me. I’m not quite here. Another night, one of them will say fuck you to me, when I don’t want him tonight, won’t instantly open my pants for him.
Another asks me if I have a problem.
There are the two or three who give me their phone numbers I’d never call, as they stand there talking to me, looking down at me below my waist to see, and then up at my face.
Some of them don’t see me the next days on their lunch breaks. I see them. I always see them. Wives must be back in the city by now. They’d push their strollers on Sunday afternoon, through our good neighborhood.
Tonight it would get dark again. Some of them want me again. I’ve seen them on the street, late at night, outside their real lives. There would be those who would turn around to follow me, when it looks like I might be lost. I must have lost someone.
There are the ones I’d like to forget, the ones with their odd tattoos over their pelvic bones, their symbols for men, and ones who must be costume designers, their apartments filled with mannequins, and ones who must be architects, their apartments filled with blueprints, ones who take me up to where the wives must be away, just for the night, or just for the day, or just off at work, who would maybe never suspect this, how their partners have been looking for someone just like me, on their lunch breaks.
There are the ones who pretend they are just going out for coffee, tell me again and again how this is a good neighborhood.
These might be just the ones on the street.
He picks me up off the street, one night in the rain. I am wearing my slick blue coat, like some slut might wear. Perhaps this is indication enough, the way I am dressed. He slows down, rolls down the window toward me. I try to ask him for money, but he doesn’t really give me any. He has to get gas, and I feel him, for a second, as we drive, feel him back, but that’s it, as he says how he’ll suck me, pulls up to the end of this dark street after the gas station.
He’ll have me looking for this again. Maybe I’m not yet admitting to myself it’s what I’m doing, not exactly. There’s this schoolyard, late at night, and another night, when I still haven’t found anyone, there’s a man from inside this convenience store who will follow me. I just have to look back.
They’ve been with friends, or out partying, just not quite ready to go home yet, to leave this neighborhood, where one circles around me in his wrecker, where I lean over him in the front seat.
There’s another one who says he knows where I live. He names the place. He does know. He’d take me there. Get in his car. Come on. He’ll give me a ride. I should come by his work, sometime around lunchtime. No one’s ever there. There’s this quiet backroom. He says he’ll mend things for me for free, if there’s ever anything I need mended.
He’s a tailor.
I know the place.
There are those ones on those nights in the rain, those who have been working late. There are those who follow me down the street in their cars, ones I lead on, was letting follow me, ones who would have already given up by the next time they see me. They know I have nowhere to go.
I think some nights if I just find the right one of them, they just might keep me from this.
There are those out alongside the highway, once two of them there. They want me. I know I should have gone with them. I’d spend forever, all my stops after then, looking for them. They are my age. We’re all still young. They’re driving a truck, these workers, must be day laborers of some sort, perhaps painters.
They followed me, in their truck, down the highway, followed me from one exit to another. Then followed me, back onto the highway, and one of them would drive. They’d drive up alongside me, as I slowed down alongside them in the passing lane, keeping them in my sight, then looking back at the road, as the one in the passenger seat would arch, hitch his hips up into the air, so I could see past the one driving, pointing over to him for me to see what he’s doing.
They motion toward another exit, simulating then, crudely, with large gestures that couldn’t be missed, their wet tongues tenting inside their mouths, pushing out against the inside of their cheeks, those ones turned toward me, and then their fists up against their lips, too.
There’s no mistaking what each one of them wants.
This was before I moved to the city and no longer had a car. There’s another I watch going from exit to exit, while I drive along behind him, all down the highway, after having somehow lost those first two in their truck. This must go on all over the country.
There’s one after I first graduated—it leads into that first long summer. There were all those times I went into those buildings for no other reason. I was never a boy when I was a boy.
I was looking for someone. I was looking for someone like him.
The first one I find is Asian, Japanese. It’s the first real time in one of those buildings that there is what can be considered more of a real exchange. I touch him as he touches me, just as much. It’s not like with the men in their cars, when sometimes I pretend to be looking for something else, money, and some of them would even humor me, give me a few bucks.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me this one night, the night I break down and just touch him, but he is waiting for me outside the door to my stall. He is waiting for me in front of a urinal, wants me to hit this specific target for him, come up high, there on the metal around the top, show him how I can control it, myself if I want, show him just how high I can shoot.
Then he wants me to watch him.
Watch.
Some of them wash their hands afterward.
The second is Asian, too, though I never see his face, just his movements, his back as he is leaving, after coming out of our separate stalls, the way his gait increased once upstairs. He reached under for me. He’s getting away now.
They’re the ones who stay around here, studying late into the night, these boys, these studious Asian boys.
He had some calls to return on his cell phone, and the lower level restroom goes all deserted. There were all those tentative, almost times. There were all those boys I wouldn’t open my door to, those ones I only watched through my door. I was trying to decide if I really wanted this, always. There were all those boys. There were those who must have known I was there. There’s one who has all of the shopping from the day still with him. We won’t go that far, either. Maybe I touch his leg, like the one who is not really hard, even though I touch him.
They follow me.
There is one I follow repeatedly, one boy, because just once he turns and looks at me, a boy I never see anymore. I followed him for blocks through the city. Once, near Christmas, I stood near to try and overhear him while he talked to someone on a pay phone. I just wanted to know if he might want me.
This was part of it at first, just the walking. There’s nothing in any of the stores for me. No men came by in cars.
Then it’s just being out in these nights.
I could try to approach it, remember it all, by all the different places.
There are the boys who only go inside their homes, after I’ve followed them, out in the city, where they must live.
I think it must have really started when I began working those long days, those seemingly endless days in the city. There was nothing to keep them all separate. That’s part of it. I’d see them some nights through their windows with others, that way. I am part of the night now.
They wouldn’t know I was there, what I was there for, how I was scared some nights that this place was just too lonely for me.
I could only let myself go so far right now. Nobody would ever come to my front door like this. They’d ask me to please open my stall door. There were other voices besides just mine. They’d watch me over the separations, some boys I’d never see again.
Some of them would ask me if I knew them, would say they want to know if I have some sort of problem, why I’m looking at them like I am then, what I want.
There are everywhere.
I’ll not look up again for a while. There are those boys who I’ll remember some days, how they’ve asked me if I’m lost, asked me if I need any help, asked me if I need any help with anything, anything.
There are those who somehow must have reassured me.
There are those who would come and watch me now with other boys there, how we were there, providing for each other and providing for ourselves. There are those I recognize by their arms, their hands, come to recognize by their shoes, those like me who are never whole, who always need more of ones like me.
There’s never just one way to do this.
There are the ones who have waited for me for what must have been hours, make me feel as if I’ve already given in, just for even looking for them, that there’s nothing else to do but just let myself go, let go of myself.
There are the ones whose backs to me are just enough, more than enough, all these I am now some part of, in all of this parting. There are the ones whose eyes I’m more curious about. I follow them because they sometimes look like someone else. Some speak to me, say how they saw me following them the other night. They bring back memories. Sometimes it’s like starting a motorcycle wrong, a good and bad flooding, that can make me forget from time to time that it isn’t my first try, the first grip, my mind blanking temporarily at present.
Before I’ve just started doing it anywhere, whenever, there was this one Christmas, one of those times I’ve felt left all alone. The house was a strange place I am staying.
Part of it is this. The landscape is so alien at this time. There are all these places open twenty-four hours for the occasion, for shopping. Two of the boys there in the store have noticed me. I still can’t do it yet, though it’s always a question of how I define this accomplishment, whether or not I’m really going to be able to let part of myself just go with them.
It’s the more-open one of the two, the less sensitive-looking, who finally speaks to me, as he holds me in the restroom. He describes his friend, the shy one, what he looks like without clothes, and then we scatter like birds whenever there is a noise, when someone is coming.
It’s one of those conversations that take place in a restroom.
This might be what it means to be curious.
I say sometimes, sometimes. I say it depends. I am answering everything like this, still. I’m not so sure, still, so I get lost when I could have just followed the two of them out, should have, wherever they may have been going, after finishing their shopping, this night. They might be the real reason I keep going back there all over this Christmas, despite the weather, the snow, initially.
The streets will be all wet. I still trudge into public. I don’t know if there is ever anyone there again, after this first time. I won’t really remember.
There will be those who don’t want me, because of the coat I am wearing, the way I am dressed, because of my shoes. Some nights they’d rather have each other, and I’ll just be there, watching. There are all those opportunities suddenly ended. There are the schools I couldn’t get into.
There are those houses I wish I could get into. There are those days and nights to kill still somehow. There are all these empty hours in this city, when one has no money, no real home. I don’t know if this is really a life or not.
There are these men and boys I’ll never know, once they go home, one I will just want to get away from now, sometimes, now that they are more and more onto me, possibly. They’ve stood around just as long as me, in all these places where we are all alone, not part of these couples going by two by two.
I could tell by his baseball cap one of them might have been from South Carolina, almost like me. It could be just him and me. There are these boys like me who find ourselves here, repeating repeatedly. There are those who must have thought there was nothing wrong with me, that I’m fine. They bring me to this lower level, again and again. I’m just there to see, until I begin to truly attain, after that first one. There are the ones I think might take me over even more, might teach me even more, might want to take me up to one of the higher floors, one of the quieter places in these buildings.
There are ones I think I might know. There are ones who won’t let me get away, back me up against a wall there, push me up into a corner.
There are those I’ll never want to touch again. There are those I’d feel guilty for not being more there for, following me, asking me if I have a place to go.
There are those who thank me, ones whose hands I’d just allow myself to fall on, ones I’d ask to meet me somewhere else, please, later, whispering, ones I’d later just like to erase, ones who nod their heads in a quick yes, ones who motion over to others to just forget about me, ones I know by the looks we exchange will come with me if only I looked a little more hungry, a little more pleading, a little more pleasing.
If only I looked a little more gifted, a little more giving.
I start taking them to the same place, this old church. Maybe it’s still used for its original purpose during the day. It’s not my destination, not at first, but I’ve just seen one, the clip of his walk, the direction he must have been coming from.
He’s dressed nice, nice coat, glasses, still youngish looking. He’s still probably in his late twenties. I don’t know what it is about this time of my life. I like them looking more distinguished these days, and almost always now I want them to be closer to my age. It means they are in their late twenties, but still trying to get somewhere, and they need what I seem to need. We end up out by this old church.
It’s toward the end of a street we have walked down for what must be about eight blocks. One can always go back and count. It’s doubtful I’ll ever see him there again, but I might see someone else.
Our walk slows with each other. He keeps looking at me, as much as I keep looking at him, over across from the other side of the street, every time I look at him.
He has one hand in his right pocket, is wearing tan slacks, these nice pants. I’m still dressed like no one special. He wears a long coat, like something I could never afford. There’s my theory that if I could, I wouldn’t be like this, almost always lost, so often, wandering around here.
Look where I’ve come.
It feels different, the way he kisses me there, in the middle of the street, there where the road ends, looking out of the corner of his eyes for any cars or passersby who might be coming down toward us, turning his head, looking to the side, while he begins feeling me through my pants. I don’t stop him. It’s not quite a smile, what he does, but something that means a feeling a little more relieved, a little released. Something thankful is being conveyed. He asks me my name. I can’t remember what I say. I must still be lying.
Mostly he just seems to want to kiss me. We embrace more than I ever have on some street like this, out in this open, the late of this dark.
I think I come before him.
A gate to the side of the church opens down to some stairs, going down a level.
I keep kissing him while he keeps looking out, to separate us whenever there are these sounds, so we may act more like just some casual walkers, just having a talking to each other.
Maybe it’s not until the end that he asks me my name.
Maybe I say the truth.
The next time I think I see him he tells me his name is something else, calls me partner, asks me if I have a name.
Maybe it’s him I’m looking for when there’s that other boy. He’s walking down my street, but I then turn away from home. We walk slowly across from each other for all those blocks. There’s another man we’ve lost in the process. I’m leading him to the old church. I know that then, of that place, if he will just follow me. Nothing is said, even when he stops off at the park, takes a seat on a bench, and I walk past him, walk down an alley. It opens out.
He’s then there behind me, all the way down to the end of the street, around the corner. I can feel him, and then I look.
He’s there.
The gate that leads to the metal stairs going down is open. I walk down and pee up against the wall of the church, and he comes down after me. I don’t know his name yet, but he has the most beautiful eyes. He pulls his pants down. Like that, we press up against the bricks of the building’s facade, lower. He turns around to me, talking to me now. We both talk to each other, tell each other. We both have roommates, but he seems reluctant to separate, to end this. It’s our story, both of us. He wants me to fuck him, won’t be surprised if I have something in my pocket. I don’t. I don’t have a condom.
I don’t like him looking up from his knees with those eyes. Back up against the wall, he says he wants to shoot, but we’re still prolonging this night together for more and more minutes. Neither of us objects. There were cars, but they couldn’t see us, not down here. There were people coming home in the dark across the street, but they don’t look back over their shoulders at the church, see us there that level below the ground of it, off to the side.