Sometimes the Hardest Part of Breaking Is Leaving Pieces Behind You

Kimbra — “Cameo Lover”

This is nonstop baby
You’ve got me going crazy
You’re heavier than i knew
But i don’t want no other
You’re my cameo love
Only here for a moment or two
You stay inside that bubble
With all of your trouble
In your black hole
You turn from the skies
You dance with your demise
I’ll be here when you come home

We’ve all gotta break down
Let me come and break down with you

Cause everyday’s like talking in your sleep!
Love is like a silhouette in dreams!
Open up your heart! Open up your heart
Open up your heart and let me pull you out
Everyday’s like talking in your sleep!
Love is like a silhouette in dreams!
Open up your heart! open up your heart
Open up your heart and let me pull you out of here

I’ve got high hopes baby
But all you do is take me down to depths that i never knew
You’ve got two arms baby
They’re all tangled in ladies of the black skies posing blue
Let go of your mother
And turn to your brother!
Not a long gone lover’s noose
Sometimes baby the hardest part of breaking is leaving pieces behind you

Oh we’ve all gotta get by
Let me come and hold you high, with you

I Like Boys Who Wear…

Abercrombie & Fitch. That’s the smell that awakens me, the smell of that cheap cologne they put in the air vents in all of their stores. The smell of a kinky teen boy hustler. I look around the room—kind of dark but I can see a pile of clothes on the floor. Oh yeah, I wore those jeans.

I look to the other side of the bed and see him sleeping shirtless on his chest right next to me. Handsome, rust-colored hair, some wrinkles but a warm skin tone. Ridged shoulders and a few freckles, firm back. Taking deep breathes.

I get out of bed, wearing only my black 2(x)ist boxer briefs (don’t judge), and notice that my forearms and thighs are sore. I walk to the bedside table separating the two beds, and check the hotel brochure. The Embassy Suites.

Great.

I grab my jeans and hear the animal in bed wake up. He tosses the sheets and yawns. Toronto! I’m starting to remember. He’s staying in Chicago with a work friend for the weekend; they work at some mechanical engineering lab. “So you, like, build robots?” I asked him when I thought he would fall for my “dumb boy” flirting routine. He did not.

I notice that the other bed is fully made. Where is his friend?

Knock, knock!

“Can I get into the fucking room now?” the friend says in a low groan. I finish putting on my jeans and open the door.

His 5 foot 4 Indian coworker stares at me and shakes his head. Last time I had seen this guy was at Tryst in Wrigleyville right before my friends left, and I left with Canadian Stallion.

I let his friend in the room and step out to the suite living area. I turn on the posh lamp on the table and look around the room for my stuff. My black v-neck is thrown on the couch, my shoes on the floor by the door, my belt underneath the coffee table. I grab my shirt and right as I’m about to put it on, I feel Canadian Stallion’s cold arms going around my warm, bare torso.

Last night was supposed to be chill, just a few close friends grabbing a few drinks and catching a soccer game. I had only three drinks, but they hit me hard. I think it was more than just the Grand Marnier that compelled me to grab and squeeze Canadian Stallion’s tough denim-covered leg just shortly after I had met him standing next to me at the bar.

It was the Fierce pheromone overdose that got me intoxicated.

And now, with him pressing so close to me, I can smell it again. The Indian guy makes some snarky remark from inside the bedroom. He’s still angry that his friend locked him out in the suite he helped pay for because he wanted to hook-up with “some guy.”

So that’s my queue. I thank Canadian Stallion for having me over and hand him one of my business cards I got at work the week before. Since they didn’t have a title printed on them, he believed me when I told him that I was an intrepid, young reporter, not some intern who is always arriving late.

He kisses the card and gives me a wink. I blow him a kiss, turn around and go out the front door trying to remember which side the elevators are on. On the way down to the lobby, I ride the elevator with an attractive blond couple, former Mr. and Ms. Midwest, and their 7-year-old daughter. They seem startled when I dash into the elevator right as the doors begin to close. But I’m not the most patient guy, especially the morning after.

On the 4th floor I look at the girl and give her an innocent, earnest kind of silly smile. She looks at me, then looks at her mom. “He smells funny,” she whines.

“I smell Fierce,” I want to say. But I just hold it in.

We finally get down to the lobby and shortly after stepping out, I realize something’s not right. There are all these people walking and gathering around with the family from the elevator joining in. But it’s 8 a.m. on a Saturday. Who at the Embassy Suites is up this early? Then I realize that it’s a bunch of families, all traveling and staying together, laughing and conversing in the lobby before registration. A conference! But what?

A Bible Conference… that’s what.

I have to make my way through all of that before being able to escape safely. I put my hand on my chest and suddenly feel as if though my v-neck runs all the way down to my knees. My Catholic guilt creeps up my back and spreads to the rest of my body. I feel naked. I smell funny. I’m an animal.

But at least,I’m free. Free to smell like Abercrombie & Fitch.

This Time I Need a Soldier

The first guy I ever took home happened the summer I turned 19. I was living in New York for the first time and going out every night to the grungy, dark bars in the East Village. I decide that the best way to celebrate Pride that summer was by, no, not going to catch the parade through the crowded streets of Chelsea, but at a boy club the night before. Oh yes, the gay dance den.

That night at the basement bar Mr. Black (on Bleecker and Broadway before it got shut down), I remember seeing some of the most beautiful boys I have ever laid eyes on. I knew as soon as I walked down the stairs into the loud dungeon that it was going to be a Redbull night.

As I make my way to the center of the dancefloor, right underneath the discoball is where you’ll usually find me, I keep bumping into all types of guys: LES hip, Brooklyn chic, Euro suave, rowdy i-banker boys, prep school boys and well-bred American boys. The one thing they all have in common is that they are stunningly confident. Pride, indeed.

Beyond the slow grooving and touching that’s happening right in front of me on the dancefloor, I can see him walking in the front door: tall, cream-colored lips, well-built, faded t-shirt and a green baseball cap. I pretend not to notice him but rather inconspicuously move throughout the dancefloor just to get closer. I remember exactly how it felt the moment he grabbed my hips and shoved his chest on my back. Underneath the discoball he confessed that he has recently been in the Army, served in Iraq for two year, had been kicked out. In his case, you didn’t have to ask and tell. His actions spoke louder than words.

After I’m done with my drink, all I want to do is throw Toy Soldier down on the nearest solid surface, but I’m having too much fun on Pride Eve with my friends so I decide to wait it out a little longer. We end up leaving the club right at dawn. I’ve never seen New York cleaner or quieter. He suggests we go to his hotel room in Gramercy. Toy Soldier is from out of town, upstate New York, going to school there, came down to the city with a couple of friends on a roadtrip for Pride weekend. So even though he is sharing a room with a friend, he insists we go to the hotel.

But in his dizzy state he doesn’t remember which hotel he is staying in, and having already lost his wallet and phone (before he met me), he has no way of contacting his friends. He did have his credit card, so after hitting the ATM at some random 24-hr. deli, we circle around midtown in a cab until he comes across familiar territory.

After 40 minutes, he finds his hotel. When we arrive at the lobby, I see a group of guys waiting around, tired and perhaps mildly irritated. These are his friends, I soon discover, and they’re getting ready to go back home. But apparently, they’ve encountered some complications: Toy Soldier has lost his wallet and his phone, another friend got a ticket for parking illegally, another one is not answering his phone and has the only key to one of the rooms and they are running short on cash to pay for the room service. And all this time, while they debate and discuss ways of trying a find a way out of their messy situation, to get away from the troubles of the big city and back to simple days of upstate, I’m just standing there—that guy—a random acquaintance with nothing to contribute to the conversation, just wanting some sexy time alone with their friend. This is how a random hook-up at The Real World house must feel like.

It doesn’t catch me by surprise when his friends raise some serious objections to Toy Soldier and I sharing a few moments alone upstairs. So back into another cab and to my place, we went. The sun is the brightest mid-morning and just at eye-level shining above the East River and making the financial district glimmer.

When we get to my apartment near Wall Street, the doorman doesn’t care enough to have me sign my “guest” in. And as soon as the elevator doors close, I slam my “guest” up against the wall and start making out with him, putting my tongue deep in his mouth while catching my reflection on the clean metallic mirror. His baseball cap falls off as he grabs my butt and then reaches up to place his arms all the way around my ribs. I feel the pressure rising as we escalate fast from floor to floor.

Finally the 28th floor, bing!

“We’re here,” I say catching my breath. I walk out casually and grab his belt to guide him to my door. Inside the apartment it’s cold, and my roommate isn’t home. I look around the kitchen, then ask him if he wants something to eat.

“Oh my god,” he lets out. “I’m starving!”

I make him waffles, and I have a bowl of Cheerios.

We finish and I toss the dishes in the sink. Immediately after, he grabs my shirt and pulls me into my bedroom, puts his big hands on my shoulders and presses. I peck him and then kiss him with my mouth open. His lips taste like syrup.

Taxicab Confessions

The music at Berlin nightclub is always louder on Saturdays. The sound mixes well with vodka and Redbull to help the body get a little more buzzed.

In this dark, cavernous place the disco lights are more like spotlights, and as I slowly scan across the dancefloor, body upon body upon another, I spot him—dark features, a light jacket, a clear drink and standing by the ATM. The only thing menacing about this stranger is his 11 o’clock shadow. Otherwise, he looks like a good boy who’d never kiss on the first date.

But the way I catch him looking at me tells me he’d kiss me tonight.

I tell my friends, my partners in crime, that I need to use the restroom, then make my way through the dancefloor, grasping onto strange shoulders, careful not to have any drinks spill on my jeans. I’m not sure what I’m going to say to this guy once I get to him, but I keep on going.

“Hey,” I say certainly not loud enough.

“Hi,” he responds and smiles, waiting for my brilliant second liner.

“Uh… are you a Scorpio?” “What?” “Zodiac sign. Scorpio. My horoscope today said I would meet a Scorpio…”

“I’m a Cancer.”

“Right, my horoscope said I would meet a Scorpio, but that it wouldn’t work out. A very handsome Cancer, on the other hand…”

“Haha, what about the handsome Cancer?”

“He would ask to buy me a drink and we would hit it off right away.”

“Oh really? And do you find that your horoscope is usually right?”

“Most of the time? No. But I believe in free will more than in destiny.”

“Good policy ’cause I’m afraid your horoscope is wrong yet again. I’m a Capricorn…”

“And a liar.”

“What are you drinking?”

After two drinks, we start dancing. He is about an inch taller than me with droopy gray eyes and a lazy smile. He tells me he’s 26, graduated from the University of Michigan and now works at a consulting firm downtown. It’s his first time coming to Berlin, and he has ditched his friends at another bar.

A remix of “Through a Keyhole” by Walter Meego comes on and I start kissing him, moving my lips and tongue to the rhythm of the pulsating beats.

By this time, my partners in crime are nowhere to be found, surely they’ve disbanded by now, and I have no desire to go find them. Guys are always more comfortable asking me to come over if they think I’ve been deserted by my friends.

We leave the club and get into a cab heading towards his apartment in River North. On the way there, we share a Parliament and continue gently making out in the back seat. He stops for a minute. It’s starting to rain, but he rolls down the window anyway to clear the cigarette smoke. He then looks at me and says, “By the way, I’m straight.”

“By the way,” as if it’s just some sidenote to the situation. I look at him and then out the window. No, not out the window, but at the window, at the rain droplets. I can either tell Straight Guy that there’s nothing straight about making out with another man and that he is delusional. That his friends probably know. That he is using me just as as he has used his girlfriends in the past. I can tell the cab driver to stop, kiss Straight Guy good night, get out the cab, find the nearest L stop and go home.

Or I can just sit there in silence and keep looking at the rain droplets accumulating on the window.

The next morning, Straight Guy wakes up early and goes to get bagels from across the street. He comes back and turns on the TV in the living room to CNN. I walk over to him wearing last night’s clothes, lean on him slightly and take a sip of his orange juice.

I didn’t bring up his confession that night before, not when he took off my belt and pushed me on to his bed, not when I ran my hands across his bare shoulder blades, not when he pinned me down and kissed my chin. And I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up now. Or ever.

For one minute I let myself get caught up in the moment: the good boy with the lazy smile making breakfast while watching the morning news. A moment he would never recognize, a moment I’m ready to own.