5
The Impossibility of Love
I often wonder what I did in a past life for my love life to be as punishing as it is in this one. It must have been terrible, because it does feel like a punishment. An intentional, pointed punishment designed to really get my gander. The lack of romance in my life has been a source of such great pain that I just have to laugh at it…you know, to keep myself from crying.
I used to believe in True Love™ and Soulmates™ and all the things great pop songs are made of. I used to believe I could be the heroine of my own romantic comedy, a young Black boy imagining himself a grown-ass white woman.
My favorite rom-com has always been the greatest rom-com, The Philadelphia Story from 1940. The film that saved Katharine Hepburn’s faltering acting career was based on the play by Philip Barry, and in it Hepburn stars as the imperious, impossibly sophisticated, and thin socialite Tracy Lord. She’s a bitter divorcée careening her way toward a second marriage, this time with a “man of the people,” George Kittredge, played by John Howard. But her ex-husband, C. K. Dexter Haven (played by Cary Grant), sticks his gorgeous nose into the proceedings, trying to save Tracy’s father and family from a damaging tabloid story by giving the tabloids a different story, “The Philadelphia Story”: the inside scoop on Tracy’s wedding.
Tracy, deathly allergic to bullshit, catches on almost immediately but plays along with Dexter’s ruse to save her family’s reputation. Enter hardened, cynical writer Macaulay “Mike” Connor (played by Jimmy Stewart) to secretly document the wedding. Over the course of the film, Tracy’s taken down several notches, by Dexter, who accuses her of being distant and thus responsible for his turning to drink; by her father, who has the nerve to cite Tracy’s lack of affection as a reason for his flight to an affair with some jezebel dancer in New York; and by Mike, who calls her out on her patronizing, upper-class snobbery.
The usually puritanical Tracy, facing a crisis of identity, gets drunk on champagne, to the chagrin of her image-conscious and very proper fiancé, George. Then, in one of my favorite scenes in all of film, Tracy and Mike sneak away from her engagement party to dance and banter by the pool. Mike, despite the blue-collar everyman chip on his shoulder, sees a side of Tracy that she doesn’t allow many, if anyone, to see.
“You’re lit from within, Tracy,” he intones. “You’ve got fires banked down in you, hearth fires and holocausts!” Tracy, tears in her eyes, asks Mike, “I don’t seem to you made of bronze?” She had been compared to a statue, cold and unfeeling, by Dexter, by her father, and, as a compliment, by George. Her fiancé wanted to worship her like a goddess, while Dexter resented her and divorced her for being as distant as a goddess.
“I don’t want to be worshipped,” she tells George, embarrassed at her own candor. “I…I want to be loved.”
She’s not cold, distant, unfeeling, unalive in Mike’s eyes. She’s “full of life and warmth and delight.” Tracy, overcome with emotion, kisses Mike…on the eve of her wedding.
That’s what I thought love was. Transformative, poetic. Beautifully lit, written, and acted. I always felt like Tracy, cold and distant. Her father accused her of holding others to the same impossibly high standards to which she held herself. She has this hard exterior that keeps people at a distance as a means to protect herself. But everyone just thinks she’s a bitch.
Around middle school I stopped showing emotion. I had been made fun of for crying too many times. Bullies had targeted me for being effeminate. I didn’t want to get hurt anymore. I felt things so intensely sometimes my whole body would shut down.
I had discovered the deadpan heroine Daria on MTV, a depressed, bespectacled, deeply cynical, and sarcastic nerd who was never a victim. She was too smart and quick and cutting for that. I saw myself in her, and so I modeled myself after her. I would be emotionless, cold, distant.
I didn’t want to be that sensitive, that weak. So I built my cold, expressionless armor, and I learned just how easy it was to turn off my emotions, at least on the outside. Inside I still had fires, hearth fires, holocausts. And so I waited. Waited for someone to come along who would see me the way Mike saw Tracy. Someone who would recognize the warmth and delight beneath the bronze exterior.
I’m still waiting. I’ve built another set of armor, one of muscle and false confidence, and I can find men to worship me. But I don’t want to be worshipped. I want to be loved. Well, actually, I want both.
My junior year in high school, I took an acting class. We had to prepare a monologue from a play to perform in front of the class. The class was like six other kids, all girls, and me. Still, my acting teacher, an English teacher who taught this class as an elective, reserved the entire auditorium for us, so we could have the experience of acting on a real stage. For soft-spoken me, the real challenge was projecting my voice, but I loved performing. And with such a small class, and with all girls, I felt comfortable choosing my monologue and delivering it wrapped in sheets I had brought from home, dressed like a “goddess.”
It was the one Dexter gives to Tracy that sets her on her downward spiral of introspection: “I’m contemptuous of something inside of you you either can’t help or make no attempt to; your so-called strength, your prejudice against weakness, your blank intolerance.” He goes on to tell her she’ll never be “a first-class woman, or a first-class human” until she learns to have “some regard for human frailty.” Way harsh, Dex.
I was saying Dexter’s words, but I was talking to myself. I’ve had to hold myself to an impossibly high standard in order to just drag myself out of poverty, out of uncertainty, to forge a future of my own, and to live a life on my own terms. Because I’ve had to go through some pretty tough shit from a pretty young age, I grew intolerant of those who didn’t, those whose lives I perceived were easier or luckier than mine. My strength was forged in fire, and I resented any weakness that remained.
I resented wanting to be in love. I resented having feelings. I wanted to be a pillar of strength for myself, because I thought that all I ever had, or ever would have, was myself. So while I still longed for love, I built defenses against it. “This goddess must and shall remain intact!” Dexter mocks Tracy. I felt that way even in high school, which I spent in the shadow of my mother’s death. The fridge always empty, the threat of eviction always hanging over my brother’s and my heads. I always felt like an outsider, depressed and lonely, while I watched my friends fall violently in and out of love.
The only thing that kept me going was the promise of getting out of Poughkeepsie, going to New York City, finally getting the chance to be myself, and to fall, oh to finally fall!, in love. When I got into one of the most exclusive colleges in the country, I felt validated, positive that I could do anything I put my mind to. And I have made my own way. My eyes are always firmly set on the future; I rarely dwell on the past. I forget sometimes all that I’ve been able to accomplish when the circumstances seemed impossible.
Why, then, has love been so elusive? Well, to quote the great Janet Jackson, this is a story about control. I can’t control how someone else feels. Sadly. Also, I can’t control whom I find attractive. I can’t control the timing of meeting someone. Love is completely out of my control. And that freaks me the fuck out. People like me, the Tracy Lords of the world, thrive on control and resent anything and anyone that challenge that control.
I used to believe in love. But love is just dumb luck. It’s a chance meeting, a moment of shared eye contact, a happy accident that may or may not last. Some of us are lucky, and some of us are not. So far, I’ve been unlucky. The goddess has remained intact, and the flesh remains cold, unfeeling, but inside, the fires rage. It pains me to say that I want to be loved, to admit to that weakness. I don’t cry very often, but when I do, it’s usually over that want, that need. It’s been a source of such consternation and frustration that it’s easiest to just give up on the idea altogether.
But I was made a romantic before I had any choice in the matter, and I still believe in, to my own disappointment, love. That sort of reluctant optimism has, as much as my so-called strength, kept me going. If I didn’t believe in a better future, how could I build one for myself? If I didn’t believe in love, what was there to believe in? Really. What else is there?
Not being in love can sometimes blind me to the other loves in my life. I didn’t get myself out of the hardest times in my life, not single-handedly. I had friends whose love kept me buoyant so I didn’t drown in the darkness. I know I shouldn’t trade that for the world, but a part of me would to find romantic love. I’ve joined in mocking those who all but abandon their friends as soon as they find a boyfriend, but secretly I’ve thought, “Same.”
But what if it doesn’t work out? Who’s left in my corner? And will it have been worth it? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
I thought I was in love once. It felt like it was happening, that I had finally landed in my rom-com, but I couldn’t write my own ending. But I can try to write the story on my own terms now.
When Lester Met Dylan
Can two friends not sleep together but still fall in love in the morning?
Meet Lester. The wrong side of twenty-five. Cute, nerdy, body’s serving, Black boy with stars in his eyes. Lester’s a young writer in the Big City! He’s plucky, resourceful, a snazzy dresser, and has a small group of fun, stylish, professional friends. There’s Leon, a sassy but sweet casting agent with a taste for the finer couture in life; Leigh, a quirky romantic and model scout at a major agency; and Preston, a slut-on-wheels designer who keeps it real. Too real, some would say.
They treat brunch like a sport, go out dancing multiple nights a week, take annual vacations to Provincetown, where they reliably cause a stir. Life’s good, but then, one by one, Lester’s friends start finding boyfriends and settling down. They see less and less of one another. Lester is distraught, wanting to find a love of his own.
He knows! He’ll log on to the apps. Love’s bound to be found a few squares over, only x number of feet away, in a city as big and as gay as New York.
Cut to a montage of bad first dates. Turns out New York is a big city with a small dating pool. Lester is disappointed. Just as he’s about to give up, he sees a profile that catches his eye. Unlike the other profiles, this one has…pizzazz.
This guy, who’s not bad-looking, by the way—he’s actually smoking hot, which makes the find that much more appealing—talks about finding someone to duckwalk and death-drop down the street with. He’s making multiple references to Lester’s personal bible, Paris Is Burning. And he’s on Jack’d, so he’s into men of color. This guy sounds great. He sounds…perfect. Could it be, could he be…the One?
Lester shoots his shot—“Hey there!”—but doesn’t hear anything back. Usually one rejection is enough for him, but this guy seems worth another shot. So a week or two later, he sees him on the apps again and, utilizing those professional writing skills, sends the dream man a funny message. He compliments him on his profile, quotes Paris Is Burning, expresses his sincere wishes to get to know him, then holds his breath and presses send.
Lo and behold, the guy writes back. Lester knows that if he can make this guy laugh, he’ll be his, so he turns on the charm. They start talking regularly, exchanging phone numbers, texting day and night. The guy’s name is Dylan. He works in an office by day and dances on boxes by night. He reads a lot, which Lester finds as attractive as his abs, and doesn’t seem burdened by ideals of masculinity that plague other gays.
Lester can feel himself falling for Dylan. He had been waiting patiently, and then there he was. Lester suggests they meet up. Dylan agrees. He invites Dylan to his apartment in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, a small, unimpressive studio that is still all Lester’s. Dylan, thankfully, looks like his photos, clearing the first hurdle. For a while Lester feared he might be getting catfished. Again. Dylan could easily be too good to be true. But there he is, standing in Lester’s apartment, appraising it and Lester. Lester wonders if Dylan finds him attractive and nervously makes small talk. How he loathes small talk.
Dylan doesn’t drink, but he smokes weed, so Lester rolls a few blunts and they start chatting. Lester invites him to a Christmas party (classic!) where the gurls—Leon, Leigh, and Preston—will be. It’s one of their traditions, this Christmas party, thrown by this fabulous elder gay who pulls out all the stops. It will be full of attractive gays and model bartenders. Lester is excited to show off Dylan to his friends and to impress Dylan with all the gay fanciness, but when they get there, Dylan appears more uncomfortable than anything.
The gurls are sufficiently impressed, wondering who Dylan is and asking what is going on between them. Lester plays coy, saying they are just friends. But after about thirty minutes, Dylan is ready to leave. Lester wants to stay, but he decides to go with Dylan to Sugarland, a gay bar in Williamsburg, to see where the night will take them, hopefully back to Lester’s apartment for some sexytime.
At Sugarland, Dylan starts drinking. A lot. Lester thought he didn’t drink, as he had told him several times, but this night is an exception, it seems. Dylan’s parents both have alcohol problems, he had revealed during one of their marathon texting sessions, and he had inherited that trait, so he tried to avoid booze. Sometimes he failed.
Some other Black guy is starting to flirt with Dylan. Lester never wants to compete with another Black boy over a white boy—it feels degrading—so he just lets it happen. Dylan is making out with this other guy right in front of Lester, and Lester is getting very upset. He whips out his phone to find someone else on the apps to occupy his time. Dylan, now fully drunk, goes home with the other guy, and a sad Lester slumps home. Lester guesses they’re just friends after all.
The next morning, Lester, still sad but determined to not show how upset he truly is, texts Dylan, lying, telling him how nice it was to finally hang out the previous night. Dylan responds hours later. He enjoyed meeting Lester, too. And then he details his night after they parted ways. He was drunk, he says, and he apologizes for that, but not for going home with the other guy. They had sex, Dylan reveals. He was ready to fuck the guy, but he had, in Dylan’s words, a “shitty kitty,” so he ended up having to get fucked.
This is what friends share, Lester thinks, so we’re just friends. Got it. Lester tucks away his feelings and resigns himself to a platonic relationship with this boy for whom he had been waiting, it seems, all his life.
But Lester keeps getting mixed signals from Dylan. They spend a lot of time together, talk every day, Dylan starts referring to Lester as his best friend. One day, Dylan observes, “It’s like we’re dating without the sex,” and Lester’s ailing heart drops.
Lester goes over to Dylan’s apartment before going out to some club so Dylan can do Lester’s drag makeup. Dylan, who claims he was raised by drag queens, does some light drag burlesque along with his dancing because it’s Brooklyn so why not? He wants to use Lester’s face as a canvas to practice his technique. Lester agrees and sits dutifully for two hours as Dylan beats his face. The end result is sickening. They go to this party, which is really just a half-empty gay bar, but their looks are at least appreciated.
The bar starts to fill, and Dylan starts to drink. An hour or so in, and Dylan is all over Lester, kissing him and telling him how beautiful he is. Lester is flattered, but he knows this might not be the real Dylan, or at least not the Dylan that Lester wants him to be. But Lester also thinks back to The Philadelphia Story and how getting drunk revealed Tracy Lord’s inner feelings and desires. Maybe Dylan feels more for Lester than he originally thought.
Lester doesn’t make any moves on Dylan, who’s the worse for wear, and as Jimmy Stewart says in The Philadelphia Story, “There are rules about that sort of thing.” He may have kissed Katharine Hepburn, but he wasn’t going to go any further than that.
Like any neurotic New Yorker, Lester is in therapy. He brings up Dylan to his therapist, an older white gay man with a slightly whiter Van Dyke beard. Lester suspects he grew that beard to appear more therapist-like. Therapist drag.
Lester wants to tell Dylan how he feels, but he’s never declared his feelings for anyone. Ever. He’s had feelings before, and thought guys might share those feelings, but he could never bring himself to say his feelings out loud. His therapist, however, helps him realize that telling Dylan is something he should do—otherwise, he’ll always spend his time wondering what if?
Lester works up the courage, but he can’t say how he feels to Dylan’s face. Instead, he writes it. He writes him an email, pouring out his feelings, telling Dylan how much he admires him, how he’s waited for someone like him, and how he hopes they can still be friends after this bombshell. Dylan doesn’t respond immediately, but eventually he tells Lester that they need to talk.
That can’t be good, Lester thinks, or can it? He is positive that Dylan has feelings for him, too. It can’t all be in his head. Dylan has a date, but before that, he meets with Lester at a bar near Dylan’s apartment. Lester is filled with anxiety and fear and hope. Hope above all. But when he sees Dylan, he knows that hope is for naught.
Dylan thanks him for the email, saying it’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever sent him. But he doesn’t feel the same way. Lester is shattered. This is exactly what he feared would happen. Dylan’s sorry. “I know you’ve waited for me,” he says. There’s something between them, he continues, but he’s not sure what it is. Lester, however, is too sure. He calls Lester the girlfriend he’s always dreamed of. Then a conversation he and Dylan had earlier pops up in Lester’s mind.
Dylan had told the story then with some trepidation. He was friends with this go-go boy, and he found him very attractive. One thing led to another, and they found themselves on the fast track to fucking, but Dylan couldn’t go through with it. This go-go boy, who was so hot and all that, was also too effeminate for Dylan to find completely attractive. And so, they just remained friends. So much for Dylan’s supposed enlightenment.
It’s fine for him to vocally eschew traditional masculine ideals, but at the end of the day, he still wants a Man, with a capital M, and Lester is just…a girlfriend. Lester does not have anything to say. He wants to go home. He wants to crawl into a hole and die. He wants to never feel this way again. Dylan walks him home. Lester wishes he hadn’t, but he still thrills at his presence. When they get to Lester’s apartment, Lester says bye. Dylan wonders if they can still hang out. Lester says he needs some time. Dylan understands.
Weeks later, Dylan texts him. Lester tries to convince himself he’s over Dylan and agrees to resume their friendship. Dylan’s friendship does mean a lot to him, and he can’t just throw that away. They’re friends again, but something is different. Dylan tiptoes around the obvious, Lester’s longing. Dylan is dating, but he doesn’t share any of the details with Lester. Not that Lester wants to hear them. He’s still holding out hope that Dylan might change his mind.
They talk about it every now and then, this thing between them. Dylan compares them to Ross and Rachel on Friends. “Does that make me Ross?” Lester asks. Dylan nods silently. “Damn,” Lester says, defeated. No one wants to be a Ross. But Ross and Rachel did eventually end up together.
It’s summer now. Dylan helps Lester clean up his backyard, and to celebrate actually having a decent outdoor area (in New York!) for the first time since he moved in, Lester throws a party. It soon becomes Lester and Dylan’s party, as Dylan inserts himself in the planning. Lester invites all his friends, including his oldest friend, Diana, down from Poughkeepsie.
Everyone’s having a good time, and to their eyes, Lester and Dylan appear to be together. Diana, three shots in, takes Dylan aside and gives him the “You better not hurt my friend” speech she’s been waiting to make since high school. The next thing Lester knows, Dylan is leaving the party abruptly, seemingly without reason. When Diana tells Lester what she did, he understands why.
Dylan hadn’t seen what everyone else saw, what was so apparent to Diana. And to Lester. Lester and Dylan stop talking for a while.
And now we’re entering the final frames, where everything gets pleasantly resolved. In this version, Lester calls Dylan to a meeting and declares his undying love for him and Dylan realizes, finally, that he feels the same way, and they live happily ever after till the credits roll.
In real life, I professed my undying love to “Dylan,” and he blew up at me. He couldn’t keep going around in circles with me. He wasn’t in love with me; he never would be. And I had to accept that. And in order to accept that, we could no longer be friends.
I felt so pathetic after the incident with Dylan. I had followed around like some lovesick puppy a boy who had no idea what he wanted, until he kicked me to the side. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The goddess had stepped down from her pedestal to join the human race, show vulnerability, weakness, and she was punished for it.
But there are different rules with gay relationships. Our relationships are more complicated; our relationships can carry trauma or insecurity around the fact of one’s very gayness. I couldn’t even get out of the goddamn girlfriend zone. Then there are the racial implications. Dylan liked Black boys; he had been made fun of for dating Black boys and talking like a “wigger” in his native DC. So, like every white boy who likes Black boys, Dylan had preconceived expectations of a potential lover. He didn’t date the kind of Black guys who could be his girlfriend.
It was a real shitty experience. As shitty as that random guy’s kitty.
Still, I was glad I told the boy. I didn’t have to wonder what could have been. Moreover, I was proud of myself for being vulnerable. And I would continue to do so, because otherwise, I could never really fall in love. I had to keep trying.
My Best Friend’s Orgy
Can one fuck date lead to fucking forever?
Sequel time. Lester is back in the game after some massive heartbreak. He’s practicing that time-tested adage about getting over a man by getting under another one. Many ones. Heartbroken, Lester is out here being a heaux.
Though he’s ostensibly just trying to have some fun and repair his broken heart, he enters into each hookup with the hope that it’ll be something more, that this next guy might be the One. But they only end up being for one night. Lester insists on going on dates with guys instead of just dropping off some dick and leaving when he’s done. Lester knows that sometimes one date can lead to forever. Hence the tagline.
Lester’s good on dates, funny and friendly, if maybe a little stiff at first, unsure if the guy is feeling him as much as he’s feeling them. Since Dylan, he always fears his feelings won’t be reciprocated. And so far he hasn’t had any luck. He’s gone out with some hot guys here and there, tried out some plain old nice guys. He’ll go anywhere or try anything; he’s just game to meet someone.
The thing is, he’ll have a good date—a great date, even—but then nothing comes of it. The guy will lose interest or just disappear into the gay ether. Is it him? Is there something about him that makes guys run away?
He had had one of those great dates with this Eastern European ballet dancer he was crazy about. They got along well, and by the end of the date, they were making out, and cuddling, and holding hands. The ballet dancer had originally said he had no intention of sleeping with Lester; a kiss was barely on the table. But then he wanted to fuck. And so Lester took him back to his place and they fucked.
Lester would always wonder whether if he had just slowed down, demurred, made this beautiful Eastern European ballet dancer wait, things would’ve turned out differently. But his being a beautiful Eastern European ballet dancer and Lester being a sucker for muscular asses, Lester could not resist.
They had some good sex, but then he didn’t hear from the ballet dancer. He texted him after two weeks went by without a word, and the ballet dancer explained that Lester looked him in his eyes too much when they were fucking and it freaked him out. That was just one of the reasons the ballerino twirled away, but it made him question if his desperation was palpable. The dancer had just gotten out of a serious relationship and was hesitant to get into another. Lester had really liked him; he had really liked everyone. But he brushed himself off and kept going.
It’s Saturday night. Late Saturday night. Lester has a date. The guy was very mysterious about where they were going, but they aren’t meeting till one a.m. Lester figures it’s a sex party. He’s been to his fair share of sex parties, and he has nothing against them; they just aren’t his first choice for a first date. But the guy is hot (of course he is), and he’s always wanted to go to one of these things with somebody so he doesn’t feel the anxiety of going alone. What if no one wants to fuck him? What’s sadder than a wallflower at an orgy?
It’s raining, and Lester is in Midtown, hell on earth, on his way to meet this guy, Lexey, another Eastern European boy. He is a grad student studying nerdy-ass statistics, but he is built and kinda weird, so Lester is intrigued on numerous fronts. He would prove to this Lexey that he can hang, that he would be a good partner in crime. Wherever the night went, so would he.
Lester meets Lexey at a gay club in Hell’s Kitchen. He is instantly attracted to him, despite his warrior faggot uniform of a mesh tank top and camo cargo pants. Lexey is oddly serious. Even for an Eastern European. Maybe he isn’t into Lester? They get drinks and take to the dance floor. They’re playing that wordless techno crap he hates dancing to, but Lexey seems to love it. Lester puts his arms around Lexey’s shoulders, but Lexey promptly removes them.
Okay, Lester thinks. But then Lexey kisses him, dispelling the fears of unreciprocated affection. A few minutes later, he tries putting his arms around Lexey again, and again Lexey removes them. Lesson learned. This Lexey is a strange one, but he’s hot (of…course he is), and really, isn’t that all that matters?
They leave the club and go to a diner to meet Lexey’s friends. Meeting his friends already? Where is this night going? Lexey’s friends are quite nice, nicer than Lexey’s been, but he warms up a bit around them. After the diner, the night really starts. As Lester suspected, Lexey’s taking him to a sex party. On his dating profile, Lester had remarked that he was a “nice guy, perpetual last-place finisher,” and Lexey took that to mean that Lester was the last to finish in an orgy. Lester knew what he was getting into.
The sex party is in some warehouse in Hudson Yards, up a crowded flight of stairs that feels like a fire hazard. Lexey grabs Lester’s hand (Lester’s heart flutters) and leads him up the stairs, past the crowd, pushing past this Black guy who apparently likes what he sees in Lexey. Finally in the party, Lexey strips down and starts kissing Lester. And everyone else. He has never met someone with such a deranged sex drive. It is on one hand a turn-on, but on the other, Lester watches Lexey fuck and get fucked by strangers up and down that party. So much for a first date.
Yet Lexey always comes back to Lester and kisses on him before running off to continue getting his. Not wanting to be a wallflower, Lester decides to take part in some of the fun himself. Lexey is in heaven, surrounded by jacked Black guys. Lester overhears him say as much when Lexey is talking to one of his (white) friends. Lexey love Black boys, but is that the only reason he’s into Lester, since he doesn’t seem to have any interest in getting to know him?
Lester is having a decent time, he’s trying to be a good sport, but he wants Lexey to himself. If he just hangs in there, he knows he’ll be able to get him alone. But when it’s time to leave the sex party, at seven in the morning, they just head to some faggot’s apartment in the East Village. In fact, it’s the same faggot to whom Lexey had expressed his Black boy joy. Lester is getting tired, but he wants to prove to Lexey that he can hang. Lester and Lexey show up to the apartment—they’re among the first guests—but before long, other party attendees arrive and pick up where they left off.
That Black guy Lester pushed past on the stairs at the earlier party is at this apartment, too. Lester, delirious on drugs of all sorts and trying to enjoy the debauchery, smiles at him, but the guy rolls his eyes and looks at Lester with such disgust his stomach turns. Then Lexey sees the guy, who strips down almost as soon as he gets inside, and starts drooling over him and, of course, fucking him. Lester is no longer having fun. He feels like the lone gay out at the sex party and just hides in the kitchen, moping and feeling sad for himself. Why did he go along with this again?
Lexey doesn’t care about him. Suddenly, Lester realizes he’s naked, physically and emotionally, and it’s time to leave. It might have been time to bail hours ago. He gets dressed and says goodbye to the host, thanking him for having him. Lexey, who has been busy getting fucked, grabs his clothes and tells Lester he’ll walk him out. This comes as a surprise to Lester. He was sure Lexey wouldn’t care one way or another.
They end up at a diner across the street, having breakfast together. Finally, Lester thinks, we can have our date.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Lester and Lexey managed to finally have a real conversation and Lexey revealed himself to be a nice guy with real feelings for Lester? A date that leads to forever, instead of what it was: a date that felt like forever. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so nice, as that would hardly excuse all the fucking he did in front of our hero. But Lester knew what he was getting into and could’ve left at any time.
But instead I stayed. Holding out hope against hope that “Lexey” would pay attention to me for more than five minutes, and when he finally did, he was kind of a dick. He proved humorless and, despite all the wild sex, boring. He was all sex and no personality. It was really good sex, though. And of course it was.
Gay men find sex so much easier, and more appealing, than an actual date. Not that monogamous dates are even possible when half, if not like two-thirds, of the men on the apps are in open relationships. Being in a relationship does not preclude one from being a heaux.
So with men either taken or only interested in sex, I often find myself wondering where the hell all the eligible monogamous gays are, or even if they exist at all. Am I one of the last such faggots on earth?
And then I found one.
Bringing Up David
A screwball comedy about two star-crossed boys…crossing signals and an ocean
We’re gonna end this trilogy on a slightly more positive note. Lester is back, and this time—it’s personal. Still undaunted in his quest for love, Lester heads to an Oscars party at the apartment of returning favorite Leon. Their mutual friend Paul has invited someone named David, whom he describes as his very muscular British lawyer friend. Lester is intrigued. And annoyed. Where has Paul been hiding this specimen?
Lester spends the day in Jersey City getting his hair did and is the last to arrive at Leon’s, walking in yelling something or other. He sees David, and for Lester it’s love at first sight. Still, he plays it cool and says a friendly hello. But David is so handsome and, true to Paul’s words, very muscular. He doesn’t drink, which gives Lester echoes of Dylan, and he doesn’t smoke either. A square, Lester thinks. Perfect.
He’s always been attracted to guys who are the opposite of himself. Dylan and he were too much alike. That may have been one of the reasons they didn’t work out. But how perfect would it be for Lester, the wacky, free-spirited writer, to take up with teetotaling David, the human rights lawyer working on his PhD? It’s so Bringing Up Baby, with Lester as Kitty Hepburn, as usual, and David as his Cary Grant. He even has a dimple in his chin. Lester puts on his most charming pants and sits next to David. He had made his intentions clear before he even got to his seat that he wanted David for himself.
They strike up an easy conversation. David is brilliant but silly and doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s one of those gays, as is Lester, who restricts carbs but also finds it hard to say no to a good buttered roll. He is undoubtedly a square, but an incredibly attractive one, and there’s something between them, Lester thinks. Might as well go for it.
David is overjoyed when Spotlight wins Best Picture. Lester hasn’t seen it, but David assures him it is a deserved win. David leaves after the ceremony, but Lester stays behind to kiki with the gurls.
“You two seemed to be getting along nicely,” Leon says.
“I’m in love with him,” Lester says jokingly, but with a kernel of truth.
David is exactly what he wants in a partner. Smart, righteous, buff, kind of a goof. Where has he come from? And again, Paul, where were you keeping him?
Turns out David and Paul had gone on a date, had sex, and decided they’d be better as friends. Lester resents Paul for having tasted the fruit over which he’s been salivating, but he also brought David into his life, and they’re just friends now, so who cares. It’s time for the circle to get the square.
Lester asks Paul for David’s email address. The fact that David still has a Hotmail account endears him to Lester all the more. Lester emails David the following day, saying how nice it was to meet him and how interested he is in his work on human rights. And he asks him if he’d ever like to get together.
To his pleasant surprise, David responds that he would love to. They exchange phone numbers and start texting. Lester shares one of the articles he wrote with David, who then goes down a rabbit hole of Lester’s writing, coming out the other end effusive in his praise. To Lester’s joy and delight, he realizes the two of them have a lot in common.
Paul had said he thought David wasn’t very into pop culture, that he was a Luddite who carried a transistor radio, one would assume to pick up the latest news from sixty years ago. David is very much a Luddite, but also, to Lester’s pleasant surprise, David is actually a big pop culture junkie.
They could talk about anything, and do, sending voluminous texts back and forth. Lester had initially apologized for the length of his texts until David responded with several pages of his own. It’s time to meet again. Lester asks David if he’d like to work out together at his gym. David lives uptown, Lester has moved to Bushwick, but David agrees to make the trek. On a Saturday morning.
He must like me, Lester thinks. No faggot is making that trip out of the goodness of his heart.
They meet at his gym in Bushwick, but before he leaves his apartment, Lester cleans up his room just in case David wants to come back after the gym for a different kind of workout. Their conversation is so easy and David pays rapt attention to Lester, not even looking at the other boys in the gym. David further impresses Lester by not only having heard of his home country, Guyana, and not only knowing that it’s not in Africa, but having volunteered there a few years back.
Who is this boy? Lester thinks. Where did he come from? And how can I make him mine?
Lester is even more impressed by how blissfully unpretentious David is about his looks. He’s gorgeous but doesn’t seem to care one way or another, not like Dylan, and not like Lester himself. Lester has always been self-conscious about his looks, and to meet a hot white gay who isn’t, a true unicorn, feels almost magical. Lester tries to organize more time to hang out with David, who’s busy saving the world or whatever, and they meet up a couple times and constantly text.
Lester has fallen. He wants to tell him, but he’s afraid, afraid of a repeat of Dylan. But nothing ventured nothing gained; Lester fires off a long text to David, expressing his feelings. David responds shortly afterward. He, too, has feelings for Lester and would love a chance to explore them, but—there’s always a but—he’s leaving the country in a few months and doesn’t want to allow himself the chance to fall for someone knowing that.
Of course he’s leaving the country. Lester meets the man of his dreams—and he likes him back!—and he has to leave the country. Can our hero ever catch a goddamn break? David, being British, is in the country studying, but he has to go back after the semester. He loves America and is sad to go, but he knew this would happen. And he’s not in a position to start something he can’t finish.
Lester appreciates his honesty. And is glad he told David, glad that his feelings were validated, that he wasn’t crazy for thinking there was something between him and David.
Lester and David hang out one last time before he leaves. Lester dreams of a fairy-tale rom-com ending, of running through an airport to catch one last glimpse of David before he’s out of his life forever, but this isn’t a rom-com.
“David” left, and I haven’t seen him since. We still talk all the time. He’s a professor at some university in London. I’m still a madcap heiress, just without the money. I can’t leave the country because I’m not a United States citizen and I don’t have a passport from Guyana, nor can I get one. So I’ve had to turn down his frequent invitations to come to Europe. But one day I know I’ll make it there. And maybe I’ll see David again.
Maybe there’s a fourth part to this series, where Lester finally gets his man. I’m still crazy about David, but I’ve accepted that it is what it is. He doesn’t seem to be interested in a relationship with anyone; he’s content to be alone. I try to convince myself of the same, yet I can’t convince myself to move on and continue the search. What’s the point of wanting anyone else, when I’ve already found the person I want…and I can’t have him?
I keep telling myself it’s a big world, that I can find someone like David, someone who makes me feel the same way, someone who actually wants to be in a relationship, someone on the same continent. It just feels so…unfair. To be tempted with this guy I thought was perfect for me, only for him to be ripped away mere months later.
It feels unfair but also par for the course. Love is all about luck. My luck has never held out, so why would anything be different? But that kind of constant denial makes you bitter. It makes you angry. It makes it harder to love others, to love mankind, to love the world.
That bitterness is why I hate gay rom-coms. Okay, maybe not hate. I just can’t bring myself to watch any “sunny” gay love story. First of all, the lead guy is never Black and I’m tired of seeing hot white guys fall in love. I couldn’t even get into Fire Island, a gay retelling of Pride and Prejudice with South Korean Joel Kim Booster as an Elizabeth Bennet type and Filipino Conrad Ricamora as a Mr. Darcy type. Because the film takes place in a traditionally very white-gay hot spot.
Provincetown, my gaystination of choice, is also very white, but I’m fond of it mostly for its history as a haven for writers and artists. Ptown feels more like a town of weirdos and outsiders, whereas I’ve only been to Fire Island once and that was enough. Fire Island has a reputation for being a debauched playground for the white and privileged. My resentment of that world, and of the gay rom-com in general, made me lose all interest in seeing Fire Island. I prefer a movie like Weekend. Sure, it’s about two white gays, but at least it’s sad, which is how I feel about dating, and therefore it feels more honest.
In the 2011 film, which was written and directed by Andrew Haigh, who later created the divisive Looking for HBO, Russell (played by Tom Cullen) and Glen (played by Chris New) hook up one night. Their evening turns into a fateful weekend relationship right before…Glen leaves the country. There are no hijinks or shenanigans. No playful misunderstandings. Russell and Glen fall for each other but have to concede to the limits of reality. And rom-coms are all about defying reality.
At the end of their beautiful weekend, Glen leaves Russell and the country. And Russell is left with the memory of the weekend, manifested in the tape recorder Glen had been using to document their time together. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s not a tragic gay story either. It’s just heartbreaking, about the seeming impossibility of love among gay men. Which I relate to. I can relate to straight rom-coms because I know they’re fiction, I know they’re meant to be simple. Those films flatten the characters, their motivations, their complications.
When it’s gay characters, I know how messy and complicated and stupid dating other gay men can be. To simplify that is a betrayal of my experience. For which I have bled, literally and figuratively. Gays either loved or hated Looking because it attempted to show the messiness, the complexity, the stupidity of dating as a single gay man. Always looking, looking, looking. Though a few more Black characters wouldn’t have killed anyone.
The characters in Looking, led by Jonathan Groff’s Patrick, are self-sabotaging and self-loathing, which some gays found to be a negative representation. Or perhaps a representation too close to home. But I liked it. A lot. It’s impossible for the gays to universally like anything that centers them in the narrative, as much as we’re always bitching about seeking representation.
When comedian Billy Eichner’s rom-com Bros, the first gay rom-com from a major Hollywood studio, bombed at the box office, he blamed homophobia, though gay audiences avoided the film like a difficult conversation with their mother. Billed as a traditional rom-com with two gay guys—both white, both boring, neither stars—the film held no appeal for me. If I wanted a traditional rom-com, Clooney and Roberts were going down to Bali. I’ll hitch that dumb ride in a minute.
Though I grew up loving traditional rom-coms, I want more from my gay rom-coms. I want diversity, without it feeling like a chore. I want comedy, people, comedy. Comedy drawn from how shitty it is trying to date. Trying to form a real connection amid casual racism, internalized homophobia, one-night stands, occasional sex parties, drug use and abuse. I want to be able to laugh at the tragedy of my own love life.
It’s not fair that our art, rom-coms included, has to be judged by different standards, but we’re partly responsible for setting those standards for ourselves. Dating is a gay hell of our own making. Now go make it funny.