IT’S LIKE MY FAVORITE SAYING, “Where God closes a door, He opens a window,” but in this particular case the window was on the fifth floor and the house was on fire.
The man to my right—he looks like he is ready to jump from a burning building.
I sit listening to this awkward couple next to me as I wait for a friend at a Burmese place on Telegraph Avenue. I like listening to other people’s conversations the same way I like looking at the text messages of friends who leave their phones unlocked. I lurk so hard I almost get whiplash. I lurk so hard I should wear a cape and fangs. I lurk so hard … you get the picture.
I am often convinced I care more about these conversations than the participants themselves do. In the case of the burning-building-jumper-man next to me, I know for a fact this is true. The man is on a date—a very awkward date—with a boy too young for him. The man looks fifty (or maybe he’s just in his thirties and had a hard life?); the younger man looks like he’s twelve, but has to be at least twenty-one because he’s drinking a mason jar full of some cocktail—he’s lit as fuck. He’s red in the face and gesticulating through his speech intensely.
My dinner partner is thirty minutes late. I have heard the man say absolutely nothing while the boy stammers on about how his younger brother can’t find the right college, in fact REFUSES to find the right college, and how it’s making the boys’ white-ass mom sad—like, suuuuuuuper sad. Like, so sad she got the boy’s younger brother a trip to Yosemite for his birthday to clear his head.
The older man looks as if he wishes to God this interaction had just been a blow job, but I can’t imagine how one would get a dick in this young man’s mouth: he talks too fucking much.
Back when I was a young and easily corruptible homosexual, all the Daddies loved me because I knew how to shut the fuck up and take some dick.
An older guy would take me to dinner and I would study him like a cat watching an object it was, at any moment, about to pounce on; i.e., “THIS PUSSY KILLS.”
I would answer every question but keep content to a minimum. “I’m studying art,” I would respond, or, “I graduate the year after next,” or “I was quoted by The New York Times”—just enough to let them know that they were about to stick their dick in a young man who had self-worth and a locatable dignity, even though I have to say I wasn’t altogether interested in it (the dignity, that is).
My good-boy routine was for the Daddy’s relief, not mine. I just wanted to get fucked good—winning the older gentleman’s respect was for his peace of mind.
And then I would sucker punch him.
Right as dinner was over and he signed the check, I would stretch and yawn and casually say to my host (in one breath), “Y’know, sir, I would let you cum in me.”
Now, most of the men would be immediately disgusted. They’d give me a look of disapproval and I would never see them again, but that was well and fine because they were exactly the ones I wanted to weed out.
It was the Daddies whose hearts you could see skip a beat and a look of exactitude would crawl across their faces.
“Really?” they would say, standing up quickly. These Daddies would take me home, bend me in half like a pretzel, fuck me so hard that I would forget the person I was before they fucked me.
But back to the dinner itself. During the dinner, when the Daddy would be sizing me up, I had the dual occupation of being present enough for him to assess, and also being able to sink into the background enough so as not to take up too much space at the table. I had to treat myself like I was something on the menu he had ordered. Like I was on the menu.
And then a joint lit in my head. I was forgetting something. I had to stop all this thinking and go back. Horny Daddies … I’m on the menu … Food … Where is my food??
I’m looking at the waitress and she is motioning as if to say, “One second, please,” and I look at the couple that I had just ripped apart for no reason and I think I am being this level of bitch ’cause my sugar is dropping.
I don’t know why I got so addicted to the narrative of these men. I need not notice them at all.
It’s kind of like that tree-falling-in-the-woods question. Do they exist if no one’s watching? I think not, yet still, I can’t help wanting some kind of restorative justice blow job for the victim of the date, and, truthfully, one for myself.
Earlier that day my newest HIV counselor saw my chart and noticed I had contracted syphilis three times in one year. She was an older gray-haired straight woman—she hugged me and asked, “Have you ever considered having a boyfriend?” I started crying. Like really, really loud, ugly crying. I had to catch my breath at times I was crying-so-hard crying. Not out of sadness, or loneliness, but out of sheer exhaustion. I was just cocaine hungover and cranky, to be honest, but the echo chamber of the STD clinic was feeling like a coffin I had been submerged in, one I kept reemerging from like a tomb. I was my own personal Jesus.
I cried so hard that she referred me to a mental health counselor who then referred me to HR who then informed me that I should have the first counselor fired for triggering me so hard. The thought of swift justice filled me with an immediate sense of purpose that faded in all of ten seconds. One thing I can truly say I love about myself is that I’m too sketch to lead a moral campaign against anybody. Also, leading a moral campaign against anything just seemed like a lot of work and I was stoned.
Still, I remember her hugging me when I was upset and how nice it felt. Like someone actually fucking cared. No one I was fucking cared for me or hugged me, so in the end I really was a hit dog hollering. It all struck a nerve.
The waitress comes back with three different fried items, coconut rice, and a hot tea, and I’m sitting there looking at the color palette of the food and, for what I’m sure are very specific reasons, I’m thinking about that Frida Kahlo painting where she’s in a tub and seeing, like, visions of her life or whatever. I’m thinking of this as I see the food but it’s not as poetic, beautiful, or elegant as it sounds—in fact, what I see isn’t even a vision but rather a scene, jackhammering its way into my brain, one I can see even when my eyes are closed.
I think back to the interaction with the HIV counselor and the linger of the hug, the humanness, the warmth, the depth, and then my mind falls a little further to the smell of the old lady herself, and then kind of wishing she had a dick and had instead been a creepy old doctor dude who tried to finger me.
I know it’s a bad thing to think, but it’s ok to think it as long as you don’t say it out loud, so I keep it to myself and don’t blurt out “I AM HAVING A FANTASY ABOUT PAINTING A DIFFERENT GENDER ON MY HIV COUNSELOR AND HAVING THEM SEXUALLY ASSAULT ME” to the people to my right who are having a terrible date.
I also play the scene in my head of me picturing myself as a for real for real shady bitch and actually going to HR and trying to explain all of this.
“But if I had to think about it, what’s REALLY getting my goat about the situation isn’t the fact that the doctor didn’t finger me, it’s more that she emotionally fingered me. She emotionally fingered me without my consent!”
My dick is hard and I stare around the restaurant.
No one here cares that my dick is hard.
I don’t care that my dick is hard.
I’m back to being just stoned and hungry. I go full force into all the food. I’m eating so fast that I can’t even really taste what I’m eating, it’s literally just sliding down my throat.
The couple next to me grabs the check and leaves, and with no one left to watch I find I have a strange sense of aloneness—the person I’m waiting for is clearly not coming at this point. But I sink inside myself and remember that I am not alone. I am in a restaurant, full of people.