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Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Untitled Humanities

When he sat down at my table two days ago and smiled, iced tea in his hand, I thought for a solid minute that I was going to vomit. Those dark eyes were the same as they were last spring, when I looked at him while we kissed on his bed, and that smile – surrounded by a day-old beard — was the same as always, slow and sensitive, full of questions. He was wondering how I would respond to him, how I would talk to him, what I would say.

I wanted to vomit up all the pent-up emotions of the past five months. But I clenched my gut, met his eyes and smiled back. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

There was a moment of awkwardness after the initial hello. Neither of us knew where to begin. The last time we talked, the air was just beginning to ease after its winter freeze, but my voice was cold when I told him that I didn’t want to see him or talk to him anymore. That was Easter day, after we went to church and sang of Christ’s resurrection. I wanted to be resurrected as well, released from the pain and uncertainty of a strange, brief relationship. It was the first time I was hurt by another person to such a depth, and I wanted to roll away the stone of pain and disappear.

My voice was cold that Easter moment, but it broke not 20 minutes later when Dannie called from Chicago, and I tried to keep the car between the lines while I cried.

“Aaron, you shouldn’t cry like this over a boy.”

“I know it’s silly, but I hurt.”

Really, though, I didn’t think it was silly, or trite, or unreasonable. I thought it was very serious, and that my tears were validated by the pain that went at least as deep as my love, which – let me say – was deep. From the slush of winter to the first buds of spring, I had given myself to this person, this beautiful boy with the brown locks, creative bent, soft voice and kind heart. I had given more than I thought I had in me, drawing from depths hidden even from myself. I had done everything right, everything possible to make it work. But it wasn’t enough to earn reciprocity of all that I had given.

So I said goodbye, and then I cried. The tears of sadness mixed with the sobs and heaves of relief. After weeks of uncertainty and lost sleep and emotional pins and needles, I was ready to reach the bottom, to release all of him, even though it meant losing what I so loved.

It’s been five months, and I haven’t shed a tear since. Amid the hustle of summer, the softball games and bonfires and nights at the bar or the movies, amid lunchtime conversations with good friends, amid workdays and long weekends, my heart has gone dormant, withdrawing into itself to nurse its wounds and reflect. First dates have come and gone with no spark in my eye, no tingle along my spine.

“I’m sorry,” I told one guy. “I just don’t have it in me to date right now.”

Once, at the Twin Cities’ Pride festival in Loring Park, I wandered away from a volleyball match and saw him from a distance, his dark eyes concentrating on a sheet of music, a saxophone held to his lips. A shock went through my system, and I turned the other direction.

Still, though, I couldn’t cut him out of my life completely. When my phone number changed, he received an e-mail with the new information. But when he replied, I hit delete.

A week ago, though, I did reply. Five months is enough, I thought. I wanted to see him, to test my pulse and gauge how far I’ve come, and how far I have yet to go before taking off the Band-Aids and calling myself healed.

But when he joined me for coffee, I wanted to vomit. My emotions, though tucked away for the summer, remained. After I choked them down and said hello, my arms were shaking but my voice was steady. For the next hour, we talked awkwardly, sticking to safe subjects like work and vacations and family. Internally, I examined myself. Yes, the emotions were still there, but they had faded and shifted. Love and hurt remained to some degree, but anger was gone completely. Only once did we step onto shaky ground:

“I was angry at you for a long time,” I said.

“I know,” he said quietly. “Are you still?”

“No. I’m not angry… I don’t know what the word is.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“As am I.”

And then back to the surface, where it was easy to breathe and the ground sure.

This is what it is to be young and gay. It’s to explore another person and to love and to hurt and to heal and to wonder what in the hell is going on. Sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously. It’s exciting and frustrating and amazing and irritating. It’s to feel like you’re more alive and experienced than the frumpy woman sitting next to you at the movie theater, and at the same time, that you’re less of a person.

Wait! That is wrong – pompous and absolutely incorrect. The truth is that this love for another man, and the hurt that followed, and the tears that resulted, and the feeling of vomit that rose in my throat … They are not tied to my sexuality. They are, rather, part of my humanity. Millions of men and women have felt this, have wondered at the emotions that grow and fade with time and circumstance. To say it’s tied to my sexuality is to make it more than it is. To blame the wounds on being gay is to make an excuse, to revel in the circumstances of the day, to embrace the narrow social norms that I despise.

Yes, this experience is, above all, human. And that’s comforting.

When he took his iced tea – now empty – and left, promising to write in the coming week, I remained at the table by myself. I didn’t ask where he was going. Perhaps to his boyfriend’s apartment, perhaps to nap, perhaps for a run around the lake. I remained to read and write and revel in my humanity, conscious of my aloneness and of the man and woman flirting next to me, content with the Band-Aids that remained on my heart, but a little looser.

Posted by Aaron on August 31, 2004 12:13 AM