The Perils of Intimacy Read online

  “Oh, this.” I hold up my check from Becky’s Diner.

  Don comes over to my cube and snatches the greenish rectangle of paper out of my hand. He plops down in my guest chair and peers at it over the top of his glasses. He looks up at me, mystified. “What? You get a good deal on your breakfast?”

  “Below that.” I click my mouse to bring my keyboard to life and then key in a few strokes to establish that I am here and a part of the “family” at Panorama Health, Inc. I turn back to Don.

  He’s grinning. “Jimmy? Who’s Jimmy?”

  I laugh and feel a tiny bit of heat rise to my cheeks. I had thought I was too old for blushing. Apparently not. “A kid! He waited on me. He’s young enough to be my son.”

  Don chuckles. “Well, apparently he has no issue with the age difference, so why should you?”

  “I don’t know. All of our cultural references are different. And apart from that—we move in different worlds. He’s a waiter.”

  Don gives a mock shiver. “Heavens to Murgatroyd! God forbid we should consort with the hoi polloi!” He leans over to poke me in the chest. “Don’t be a fuckin’ snob. Just because he’s salt of the earth doesn’t mean he’s dumb.”

  “You’re right, you’re right. I guess it’s more the age thing that bothers me. I mean, I’m going to turn forty in a few months.”

  “And he’s what? Twelve?”

  I shake my head and roll my eyes. “No. But I’d put him in his early twenties.”

  “Go you! I am failing to see the issue here.”

  “He probably wants to call me Daddy.”

  “So? Rock your daddy status. Use it! Embrace it.”

  “Oh, Don, you’re incorrigible.”

  He pats the top of his balding head as though he’s fluffing a bouffant and does his best Mae West. “So I’ve been told.” The impression vanishes quickly. “Did you feel something?”

  I lean back. “What do you mean?”

  “A spark. Get your mind out of the gutter! Did you feel a spark? When he looked at you and you looked at him, were violins playing?”

  I scratch my goatee. “I think it was Demi Lovato.”

  “Whoever that is.”

  “Over the diner’s speaker system.”

  He gently kicks my shin. “You’re avoiding my question.”

  “Yeah,” I say, staring at my monitor and feeling sheepish. “I guess. I mean, he was cute, so cute. With a tight little bod, auburn hair, and these beautiful blue eyes under heavy brows.” I shake my head at the memory of him. “He just radiated something. I don’t know.”

  “I think you do know. He was a hottie and you liked what you saw. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Yeah, there was that. But there was something more. Like, I don’t know, I wanted to make him laugh. I wanted to see him smile. I wanted to….” My voice trails off as I try to take hold of exactly what I’d wanted when I saw Jimmy.

  “Fuck him?” Don wonders, twisting the ruby ring he always wears on his pinkie around and around.

  “You’re crude.”

  “I calls ’em as I see ’em. Honey, I’ve been gay since before you were born.” He pauses for a minute, calculating. “Well, maybe I’m not that old. But my point here is I know gay men. I know what we’re like. We love sex! And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

  He has a point. I don’t think of Don, pushing retirement age with a potbelly, as being a sexual being. But then I think that’s not fair. And even if he’s pretty celibate now, which I don’t know for sure, nor do I want to, I know he had some pretty wild times back in the seventies when he lived in the Castro. But now? I think poor Don leads a pretty solitary existence. I know he has a woman friend, Esther, that he occasionally goes out to see a movie with, usually some tearjerker. But I also know much of his nonwork time is spent by himself. I tell myself I should leave it alone and just be grateful that he likes me so much. Because he’s a hoot, and he brightens my otherwise dull and ordinary life.

  “Yes, Don, there’s that. In spite of the fact that he could be my son, if I started young. I just wonder what he sees in me, going to seed.”

  “Oh, cut it out! Do you know what I’d give to be forty again? Forty is young! And you are hardly going to seed. You’re the best-looking guy in this hellhole.” He looks around the office and then leans forward to whisper, “I’d fuck you myself if you ever showed a lick of interest in this old queen.” He snorts. “I’d make your head spin like Linda Blair in The Exorcist!”

  I clear my throat and feel a little embarrassed. “I think we established that. The first time we had too many margaritas at La Cocina.”

  He laughs with the memory of the very first time we went out to dinner together. He gets up. “I have work to do. Our fearless leader never stops e-mailing me with stuff to do. He keeps it up even over the weekend.” He starts out of my cube and then comes back to whisper in my ear, “He needs to get that stick out of his ass and get a life.”

  We both laugh. He starts toward his own cube again. “So you gonna….”

  “Call him?”

  He nods.

  “I don’t know. Should I?”

  “Honey, that’s up to you. But I don’t see any knights in shining armor exactly beating down your door. And you ain’t getting any younger!” He snorts.

  “Oh, I love you, Don. You build me up just to knock me down. At least you keep me on my toes.”

  “Oh, give him a buzz, for Christ’s sake. What have you got to lose? Maybe this guy will keep you off your toes and get you on your back.” He snickers as he walks away.

  See why I like him? Well, maybe you don’t. But there’s just something, I don’t know, bracing about Don that I find refreshing. It hits me suddenly—oddly—that this sixtysomething man, recovering alcoholic, potty mouth, sometimes drag queen, and cat lover is truly, deeply, madly—my best friend.

  I look at the check again, then set it aside and get to work. I have a web page to update—all about avoiding bedsores in the nursing home setting.

  Yay me.

  IT ISN’T until after lunch—and much goading from Don over bowls of pho—that I decide to man up and get in touch with Jimmy. I worry to Don that calling him this afternoon is too soon, that I would look too eager, desperate.

  “Yeah, yeah. A lot of comfort that will be if you get hit by a bus later today. Honey, didn’t I ever tell you? There’s no tomorrow. Only a string of todays.”

  Dear Don. Always putting things in perspective.

  I wrestle with my shyness for most of the afternoon, but at last, in that time between about three thirty and quitting—when my productivity plummets—I decide to take the plunge. Leap and the net will appear, as someone once said.

  I grab my phone and head outside so I can have a little privacy. I know for a fact that Don will eavesdrop over the partition.

  Not surprisingly, because it’s February in Seattle, it’s drizzling. The sky looks heavy, shades of charcoal and pearl gray. Traffic makes a hissing noise at it flows by on Seventh Avenue.

  I huddle under the awning at the front of the building and kind of feel sorry for the smokers nearby, trying to indulge their habit and stay dry at the same time. They’re not allowed to smoke within twenty-five—or is it fifty?—feet of the entrance to the building, so they can’t gather under the awning. All I can think is the need must be pretty powerful to want to stand in the rain and bone-chilling wind for a few puffs.

  I look down at my phone and take in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I press the Home button to wake it up. I bring up the keypad and punch in Jimmy’s number.

  And pause.

  Did I mention I was shy?

  Probably yes. It’s kind of an overriding theme for me. It’s why I use those hookup sites to meet guys. I never have to talk to them. We can just message each other, maybe text. Even when we get together, often we don’t have to say much of anything. It’s no wonder I’m single at almost forty. The art of conversation and being engaging still eludes m
e. Online meeting—well, okay, hooking up—was the best and worst thing to ever happen to a shy gay man.

  But that’s another story. A whole essay. Maybe a book.

  I realize I’m thinking to distract myself from the task at hand. Why is it so hard to actually talk to someone? I wish Jimmy had written an e-mail address on the check instead of a phone number.

  I could text him.

  No, don’t take the chicken’s way out.

  And speaking of chicken, do I need to remind myself how young Jimmy is? A boy, really. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t even of legal age for a drink.

  Stop it.

  I press the button to send the call out to Jimmy, out to the universe, out to putting thought into action.

  I close my eyes, exhale with relief, and an unprovoked smile comes to my face when I get his voice mail. Voice mail I can deal with. There’s no judgment there, no need to be clever or witty or charming. Just to-the-point. And that I can do.

  “Hey, Jimmy. This is Marc Kelly, although I don’t remember if I told you my name.” I pause. Whatever. My palms are getting sweaty. Yes, even though this is voice mail. “Anyway… I’m the guy you waited on at Becky’s this morning. You gave me your number?” I pause again, hoping I was not one of several guys he gave his number to. “So, uh….” What to say next? I hadn’t planned it out. Why didn’t I write down what I wanted to say?

  Beeeeeep.

  And the voice mail timed out. Now I have to call back. If I do, I sound like an idiot. If I don’t, I’m a moron.

  Just do it. I redial him and, without thinking, spit it out: “It’s Marc again. Got cut off.” I laugh in a silly manner, reminiscent of a teenage girl. “You want to, uh, meet up for a drink or maybe coffee sometime?” I say in a rush and then add, “Call me.”

  And then I hang up, quickly, like if I don’t, the phone will explode or something.

  On my way back up to my office in the elevator, I have a smack-my-head moment. I say aloud, “I never gave him my number.” The woman in front of me turns to look at me, eyebrows together in confusion.

  “Who?” she asks.

  “Jimmy,” I answer. I step off the elevator, feeling her eyes on me until the doors close.

  And because I am now in the habit of talking to myself aloud in public, I reassure myself with, “My number will show up on his Caller ID.”

  Back at my cube, I mumble, “Thank God for modern technology.”

  Don pops his head up over the cubicle wall. “What?”

  Chapter 3

  JIMMY

  I DON’T notice that I have voice mail until long after I get home.

  Home is a closet-sized bedroom in the downtown-adjacent neighborhood known as Belltown. It can be—and is—a pricey area, but not for me. I live in a building on Western Avenue, not far from the Puget Sound waterfront, but the building is old and decrepit, and most of the tenants are Section Eights. Lightbulbs are out in the hallways, which are stinky with old cooking smells. The floors in the hallways are carpeted with some kind of worn fabric I’ve never been able to make out the color of because it’s so dirty. The paint, in both the apartments and common areas, is a dingy yellowish-white that probably hasn’t been updated for at least a decade.

  It’s depressing.

  Still, it’s home. I can walk outside my building and see the Space Needle to the north, the Sound to the west, the Ferris wheel, all the touristy sites. I can walk uphill and be in the heart of downtown in a few minutes.

  A location like this—prime real estate, really—normally would command sky-high rents, but as I said, it’s a kind of charity-ward building—and I don’t say that unkindly—and I am the lowest of low—an under-the-table renter in the apartment of a guy I met through my Narcotics Anonymous twelve-step group.

  I’ve got my own little room and a shelf in the fridge and one in the kitchen cupboard. Bathroom privileges. That’s it. And when I say “little room,” I mean it. It’s eight-by-ten, barely enough space for my single bed, a dresser, and a tiny computer desk my laptop sits on.

  But for a mere $600 a month, it’s all mine. Do you know what rents are like in Seattle? This is the deal of the century, folks.

  I shrug and plop down on my bed, which squeaks loudly and once again feels in danger of collapse. I’ve tried to brighten up my cell—excuse me, room—with a few nice touches. My quilt, which I found at Goodwill, is bright red and yellow—some abstract pattern I find cheerful. I have a few posters tacked to the wall—mostly of vintage seventies and eighties album cover art that maybe my mom and dad once enjoyed. There’s Soft Cell and the Stones’ Some Girls, and a band called ABC, and an album called The Lexicon of Love. Someday I’ll get around to looking up what a lexicon is. For now, I just like these pictures.

  It’s late, past midnight. After my meeting, I wandered around Queen Anne before walking home. I do that a lot. Wander. And think. Once upon a time, the wandering was to prevent me from using.

  Using what? you might ask. And I would have gladly told you once upon a time, because if I thought there was a chance you might be using too, I’d be all over you, literally and figuratively, in the hopes that you had, as they say in the online ads, “favors to share.”

  I was once enraptured with, enfolded in the arms of, what we in the gay community call Tina, or Miss Tina if we’re feeling really queeny. For those of you not in the know, Tina is shorthand for a particularly destructive and paradoxically exhilarating drug called crystal methamphetamine. It has taken the gay community by storm, and I once thought there wasn’t a gay man alive who hadn’t been caressed by Tina’s toxic fingers. And when I say toxic, I mean it. That shit often contains a scary cocktail of things like battery acid, paint thinner, and other stuff you wouldn’t imagine could get you high, only kill you.

  Anyway, despite her nasty origins, I once conducted a long and irresistible love affair with Miss Tina, which I might tell you all about sometime. Or maybe I’ll just share my first step from when I started going to Narcotics Anonymous and saving my life. I have it around here somewhere, right in this room. I pull it out and read it from time to time to remind myself how far I’ve come and why I never, ever want to go back there.

  I did bad things.

  The apartment is still. My roommate, a guy named Kevin, is asleep. He was once a vice president at a huge tech company—you’ve heard of it—until Tina got her claws in him and he lost everything: husband, condo in South Lake Union, BMW, the works. He got HIV, bankruptcy, and a permanent tremor in his hands in exchange for all that. It allows him to get disability, so he calls it a fair trade.

  Kidding.

  But Kevin’s quiet, and our paths, despite the small size of our place, seldom cross. He works now at a homeless shelter, where he once ended up living, helping out with cooking and cleaning three days a week. He can’t work more than that or his disability amount will go down.

  Ah. My world. Welcome to it.

  I mention all of this only because when I at last lie back on my bed and pull my phone out of my pocket, I see I have voice mail.

  A part of me is hoping it will be Marc, from the diner this morning.

  Another part of me is terrified it will be him.

  And that he will have remembered me. Despite how different I look. Despite the passage of two years in which everything changed for me—drastically and so much for the better.

  Still, there’s that past. No undoing that.

  My finger hovers over the touch screen, not knowing if I want to bring the message to life or not. There’s a sick feeling in my gut that I can’t tell is anticipation or dread.

  Of course, I can’t stand it. I tap the screen to bring up the message. At this point I don’t even know if it’s him. It’s just a number, local. It could be anyone. Someone from my twelve-step group.

  The message plays. Ends abruptly. Then the next one rapidly follows. I smile. Running out of time on someone’s voice mail is a maneuver I’d make.

  Relief courses th
rough me. He wants to see me.

  And then the dread comes back. A stern little voice deep inside tells me, He’s gonna remember you eventually. And then he’s not gonna like you so much. Just go ahead and hit Delete. Leave this poor guy alone. You hurt him enough, once upon a time. He won’t forget that, even if you have changed.

  My fingers do hover over the red word Delete, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  I want to see him. I’m thrilled that he thought to call me and couldn’t even wait the space of one day to get in touch. I check the time on my phone. It’s just past 1:00 a.m. It’s too late to call back, even though I want to.

  I lay the phone down next to my head, imagining it’s Marc. He once lay next to me.

  “Hold me,” I’d said. The image turns my stomach, and I clear it quickly with a rough shake of the head.

  Do you believe in second chances?

  Yeah, it’s too late to call Marc back. But it’s not too late to call my sponsor. Her number is at the top of my favorites list. You might think—or maybe you don’t—it’s odd for me to have a woman as my NA sponsor. And she’s not even a friend of Dorothy! Just this suburban, rather straightlaced middle-aged woman from Bellevue, on the east side of town. A Republican. A fan of the books of Nicholas Sparks. A regular at the nail salon. A wife of a prominent attorney. A volunteer at a food bank in my neck of the woods.

  And a drug addict. Miriam’s dirty little secret—OxyContin—held her prisoner for years. She might have remained in that prison, refining her secrets and lies until her heart simply stopped, quieted finally by the drug. But fate intervened when she drove onto a crowded street corner in downtown Seattle. No one was killed. There were minor injuries.