“When did you know you were gay?” Miles asked.
So we were having that conversation. I hadn’t had it since I was 27, with Albert. It seemed so important back in the 90s. For me it was always a substitute for “What was your relationship with your mother like?”
which I knew, from therapy, was certainly important, but also that it was never to be asked as a direct question. One needed to look for clues in the answer—a mother couldn’t be too supportive when you finally came out, or you had a momma’s boy on your hands; or too estranged, or that’s all you’d ever talk about. Albert, it turned out, was a momma’s boy. James never got over his mother’s rejection. I think I’d given up on the question by the time I met William, though by God if anyone should have been asked that question, it was William.
“Back at Georgetown, I guess.”
“Really, you went to Georgetown?”
“That surprises you?”
“It just seems so…conservative, I guess.”
“You’re aware it’s run by Jesuits?”
“Don’t smart-ass me!” His smile lit up the room. He pulled me on top of him and I settled right into the nook formed by his chest, shoulder, and top of his veiny bicep. He curled his forearm across my torso.
“Aldrich Ames, summer of 1989.”
“Was that your first boyfriend?”
“No, Harvard boy. Remember? Israeli spy?”
“You fucked an Israeli spy?”
“No. It’s actually worse than that.”
“What’s worse?”
“Uh…a Republican.”
Miles sat straight up. “What!?”
“Well, back in the late 80s the Georgetown gym was a notorious place for Republican staffers to pick up guys who they could feel reasonably sure could keep a secret. It was the first summer I didn’t go back home, and one day in June I come to the attention of a guy named…Well, let’s call him Mitchell.”
“Mitchell? You still keeping secrets?”
“You can take the boy out of Georgetown…Anyhow, Mitchell is very hot, scion of some oil family from Tulsa—“
“Oh, God!”
“Which was hilarious, because the girlfriend I wasn’t fucking at the time was also from Tulsa—“
“Oh, God!”
“No, it gets even better…So Mitchell asks me to his house on a Saturday night to watch a movie—“
“How old are you?”
“20. Well, really 19 still. You gonna let me tell this story?”
“Sorry, go on.”
“So I go to his house. He orders some pizza. We watch it shirtless on his bed. The movie is Shane.”
“Really?”
“Totally, Shane! So after the movie, he pulls me over onto him—kind of like you did just now, only this was awkward and a little creepy—and he starts kissing me. This sort of turns me on a little, but mostly it just felt weird. I thought, no, I don’t think so. But I don’t protest. I’m still a bit curious. Then he undresses me, then himself. Nice dick—very nice, actually—but still I’m not really getting into it. Then he sticks a finger in his mouth and—“
“Oh, my God, you are so predictable, Kevin Callahan!”
“No, no! I mean, yes, of course, but that’s not actually how I knew!”
Miles furrowed his brow, smiled. “Go on…”
“So he ignores me for two weeks after that at the gym. No big deal to me, I guess, though I wondered if I’d done something wrong. But then he calls on a Thursday and asks if I want to go see the Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Corcoran. Sure, why not? So first we meet at a hotel in Logan Circle and we have what I think must have been my first nooner. Very hot, none of the awkwardness that followed Shane. Then, we head over to the gallery. And we’re really enjoying ourselves, and it feels like a real date. And then, Aldrich Ames walks in. So, he’s just been accused of passing secrets to the Soviets via his Israeli girlfriend. And so he strolls into the gallery, followed by CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS cameras—he is of course trying to be very publicly gay. I’m completely amused by this, but I look at Mitchell and he’s sweating bullets. He’s terrified. He won’t even look at me when he says, ‘We have to get out of here.’ So I follow him out. He is practically running. I tried to catch up with him but he says, looking over his shoulder, just loud enough for only me to hear him plead, ‘Stay behind a few steps, please!’ and I’m like, what, should I don a chador too? And he hails a cab, gets in and as I look towards the curb he shuts the door, looks at me through the window and mouths, ‘I’ll phone you,’ with his thumb in his ear and pinky on his lips, and off he goes.”
“Did he phone you?” Miles asked.
“Yeah, about two weeks later, he phones and says he can’t see me for a while and hopes I won’t be upset. I’m totally not upset. But I did decide right then and there that I am never going to be in a position where I am afraid of being seen for who I am.”
Miles grabbled me by the chin, looked directly into my eyes, smiled. “I’m proud of you”
I shook it off. “Please. It was 20 years ago and I was a know-it-all. I actually have a lot of sympathy for him now.”
Miles pushed me off of him “Really, sympathy? For a closeted gay Republican in 1989?”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“And Kevin?”
“Miles?”
His face grew stern. “You don’t have to compliment me back. But don’t take it for granted that I find you charming,” he said. Then got out of bed. He bent over, looking for his underwear on the floor near the window. There was a little moonlight illuminating the fog to a faint gray. The curtains were billowing in vain, attempting to drape a body that insisted on remaining unadorned. A Mapplethorpe still come to life. I thought this might be the gayest moment of my life. Then he slid his legs into his shorts, grabbed his tank top off the desk chair. “I’m going now.” And he left.
I lay in that bed. Not my bed, it was a vacation bed. Someone else’s last week, someone else’s next week. I began to dissect the Vacation Romance. The Thursday night more-than-a-fuck, where we get close. Too close. That ends in one or both of us feeling repelled. Frees both of us up for new, separate Friday nights. The familiar Ptown script. This was, truly, the gayest moment of my life.
