Blink (2 page)

It was magic.

And I cried like a baby as I watched her drive off in the rental car to Pittsburgh International Airport. I longed for her. I wanted her back. I loved her so much.

Weren’t those tears proof of my heterosexuality? Weren’t the days and nights lost in passion with a woman evidence that I
could not
be the thing I feared most—a gay man?

Of course they were. I couldn’t be gay. I was engaged to be married in just a few months. We would have a big wedding in the Catholic church in Lake Forest. Surely being a happy husband and maybe, one day, father would erase these urges that plagued me, would make me whole, would make me
normal
.

Surely.

I would be cured.

It wasn’t a stretch. I enjoyed the sex I had with Alison. I loved her with all my soul. Just to spot her walking across campus toward me lifted my heart.

My breathing returned to normal. While I had been lost in thought, we had made several stops on the Congress West line. I looked over. Carlos had gotten off at one of those stops.

The space left by where he had stood seemed to stand out to me, shimmering. Vacant. Part of me wanted to run to the window to see if I could see him making his way along the concrete platform running between lanes of traffic. But I stayed put and tried to tell myself I was glad this temptation was gone.

Chicago is a city of several million
, I reasoned.

You’ll never see him again
.

The thought was both a relief and a terror.

B
UT
I
did see him again. The next time was a couple of weeks later, maybe a little more. A morning that was a bit warmer but still gripped by winter’s persistent but dying fingers. This was a morning just like the last. Again I was lost in thought, my nose buried in another book. This time I think it was one of my guilty pleasures, Stephen King and his rabid dog story,
Cujo
. I don’t know if I was listening to music. I was probably thinking of the workday ahead and the copy that would need to be written for products like hair dryers and electric mixers. The crowd was undistinguished, a blur and press of humanity.

I had forgotten about Carlos and the morning a few weeks ago. Work, evenings with Alison, and plans for our wedding that coming summer consumed me, and I was grateful for the distraction.

But then I looked up from the horror of Mr. King and saw him, once again standing in the crowded space by the doors of the ‘L’ car. I think I glanced up because he was looking at me.

Our eyes met. All the forgetting I had done in the ensuing weeks since I had last seen him rushed away like water down a drain. Just a glimpse of him set my heart to racing, sent blood flowing elsewhere too—lower. He was every bit as handsome as I recalled, and his beauty struck me dumb. I think if he had asked what I was reading, I wouldn’t have known what to tell him. A rabid dog was no match for the electrifying eyes of the man across from me.

He smiled at me, just a glimmer, little more than a quick upturn of his full lips.

I turned away quickly to stare out the window. My face burned as my mind interpreted the smile. It was not, could not have been, a gesture of welcome or recognition. It was not a smile that said, “Hey, I think you’re cute too.”

No, it was an expression born of ridicule. It had to be. My self-loathing back then took that simple smile and twisted it into something ugly—a taunt. He was laughing at me. Laughing at the queer who dared to stare at him for just a little too long, giving his hopeless desire away. I burned with shame, and I dared not look back.

I attempted to return to my book, but I found myself reading the same sentence over and over, trying to make sense of it. I wanted to restore order in my world, to feel like I was the young man I wanted to be, the one the whole world believed I should be.

I got off the train at Cicero that morning feeling shaken, yet wondering which stop he had gotten off at.

T
HE
GUY
obviously has a thing for me. I’ve caught him staring now a couple of times, and hey, I’m flattered. He’s cute. No, maybe that’s not a strong enough word. He’s handsome, with green eyes and dark wavy hair that clues me in to some sort of Mediterranean heritage. Italian maybe? Greek? Whatever. Maybe the word I’m looking for is hot.

I can imagine kissing him and the feel of his dark, bushy moustache against mine.

I don’t ride the train to meet men. I don’t do much to meet men, period, to be perfectly honest. I ride the train in the mornings simply to get to St. Philomena elementary school on the West Side, where I teach fourth grade.

I’m okay with being gay. I wasn’t always, hence my stint in the seminary, where I studied to be a priest. I learned pretty quickly, by the grace of God and the hands and mouth of a fellow seminarian, that the priesthood was not work I was cut out for. Not if I wanted to live my life honestly, anyway.

So I left. I had already gotten my teaching degree, concurrent with my seminarian studies, so the job at St. Phil’s, low paying as it was, was a natural fit.

But I digress. I’m trying to sort out my feelings for this sweetheart on the train. I know he’s gay too. I know he’s attracted. But I also know nothing will ever come of it.

Why? Because I can see that, when our eyes meet, he’s filled with shame and guilt. I recognize his remorse because I cloaked myself in that dark, heavy fabric for many years.

And maybe still do, a little, to this day. The Church teaches us that same-sex feelings are to be avoided. They are not our natural order. We should turn our sights away from our own sex and devote them instead to loving and pleasing the Lord.

Yeah, good luck with that
.

The Lord created that cute guy who gives me the eye on the train, the one I feel this probably misplaced connection with. What is it about him that makes me think of him all the time? Why do I hope he’ll be in my train car every time I step onto it in the morning, even though most times he’s not? Why do I try and quickly scan the windows of the train as it rumbles into the station for a glimpse of him?

Is it just because he’s cute?

There are cute men, hunks, whatever, all around. I occasionally venture out to the intersection of Grand Avenue and Clark to the New Flight bar for happy hour and bring one of them home. Or I head up farther north to the Loading Zone on Oak, where I can watch free porn in the back or dance up front. Somebody usually brings me home.

I never make any lasting connections. I don’t even know if I want to. Shame lingers on me like the scent of cigarette smoke after leaving those places.

But there’s something about the guy on the train. He tugs at my heart as well as my loins. Even from the brief glances we exchange, he makes me think there’s the possibility of more than just sex. He makes me think, for the first time in my life, that maybe I could
love
another man.

And that terrifies me.

See, I thought this thing that I say I accept, this state of being gay, was just about sex. And sex I can deal with, maybe even embrace. It can be taken care of and dispatched with the same routine nonchalance as any other bodily function. Despite what my Church and other naysayers contend, it’s natural.

I don’t know if I ever believed being gay was any more than that—a couple of dicks calling to each other.

But the guy on the train makes me think differently.

Today I smiled at him, thinking I could let him know I was as interested in him as he obviously is in me. I thought my smile might reassure him that our little mutual admiration society was okay and not something we had to feel bad about.

But I saw the blush rise to his cheeks the minute I grinned at him. Disheartened, I watched as he looked away. I stared and stared, trying to communicate my interest and my reassurance telepathically, just to get him to look back.

But he wouldn’t. And when my stop at Racine came up, he still wasn’t looking. He had his nose buried in his book, though his face never became quite that lovely olive tone again but stayed red.

I know he knew I was looking.

I got off at Racine, casting glances over my shoulder as other early-morning commuters struggled to get off the train all around me.

But he refused to look.

Maybe next time—if there is a next time—I can somehow make him see it’s okay that our gazes meet.

Maybe we could even talk.

I
T
WASN
’
T
until spring that I saw Carlos again. It was May, and my wedding was only a couple of months away. My family’s flights had been booked, flowers, catering, and band arranged, my tuxedo picked out and rented, and the excitement was beginning to build among family and friends.

At the catalog house, we were busy preparing for the big Christmas book, which seemed weird, and I was thinking about the spread of Fisher-Price toys I would do and how I would direct the photographer to take one big shot that would splash across two pages with all the toys gathered under a Christmas tree. This was quite a step away from the usual individual blocks of copy and photographs we commonly did, and I was excited.

Carlos was but a dim memory in my head that morning. I think, after that one time when he smiled (laughed?) at me, I’d had my eyes peeled for him for days, maybe weeks, dread and desire commingling. But when I hadn’t seen him in a couple of months, my breathing grew easier on the train, even though my heart felt a little darker.

What I felt was like that strange creature I had seen in the movie
Doctor Dolittle
, the pushmi-pullyu. The animal was sort of a cross between a gazelle and a unicorn and had heads positioned on either end of its body, so they were constantly trying to go in opposite directions. Yeah, the pushmi-pullyu definitely summed up how I felt about seeing or not seeing Carlos. Part of me desperately wanted to, because to gaze on masculine beauty like that was, truly, rare and wondrous. And the other part was relieved, because if I didn’t see him, it didn’t stir up all sorts of feelings that disrupted my own personal world order.

But even those emotions faded after a couple three months had passed of not seeing him. If I thought of him at all, it was to think that maybe his schedule had changed. Or that coincidence simply had not thrown us together again. Sure, he could have boarded the same train but was in another car. How many cars did an ‘L’ train have, anyway? Ten? A dozen? More at rush hour? When I thought of it that way, it was amazing that we happened to be across from each other even more than once.

When I wasn’t reading or thinking about my workday or listening to Joan Jett, I would have to admit I liked to look around and study people. It was one of the things I did that reflected the real writer I longed to be someday. I hadn’t really ever dreamed of being an advertising copywriter, after all. But it paid the bills on my studio in Evanston better than a wannabe horror novelist.

And that’s what I was doing that day when I spotted him again. This time he wasn’t leaning against the closed doors of the car. He was up ahead, crowded into the space where the conductor might have sat had this been the first car. It was one of those blessed crazy-warm first days of spring, and even my lightweight windbreaker felt too hot.

The warmth and pulse of the day, the birds singing, all contributed to an electricity in the air that made the day feel special, especially after the brutal Chicago winter we had just survived.

In memory, it was almost like he had an aura that made him stand out from other passengers in the crowded car. I guess I would assign it something warm, a soft buttery yellow.

You know how you might read in poetry or hear in a song that someone took one’s breath away? The concept sounds silly, and we may accept it as metaphor. But the fact is, it’s real. When I saw him standing there, leaning over a woman in a bright red suit so he could surreptitiously read the magazine open on her lap, I caught my breath. I could hear the blood begin to thud, a dull roar, in my ears.

And I had the old pushmi-pullyu reaction—the wanting to look away, the desire to eat him up with my eyes. He was looking no less hot this morning in a plaid shirt, open enough to reveal the silkiness of his smooth brown chest, perhaps just a little of the cleft between his pecs. He wore a faded denim jacket that made him seem a bit of the bad boy. Pressed khakis and loafers contradicted this impression.

With my gaze still on him and probably communicating the million different thoughts racing through my head, he looked up.

I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t look away. I told you about those eyes, how they were like magnets. They caught and held me, helpless. I wanted to turn my gaze toward the window or anywhere but
at
him, but he compelled me not to with those damn dark eyes, so probing—and yes, so sexy.

He smiled, and this time I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his expression was not one of ridicule but one of recognition. It said “I’m happy to see you again.” My heart fluttered with relief, with a building current of desire. I hadn’t spoken even one word to him, but I felt like I had just reunited with a long-lost love.

I smiled back.

What am I doing
? the reasonable, wannabe straight boy inside asked me. I’d fought so hard against my feelings, even feeling ashamed when I awakened one morning with the insides of my briefs damp from scattered images of hairy chests, erect cocks, come spurting, deep tongue kisses pressed against faces that felt, even in dream, like sandpaper.

But I returned his grin, and our gazes held for a record amount of time. I heard, vaguely, the conductor announce the stop for Racine was coming up. Our gaze broke as Carlos sidled between two people and began moving toward the doors. Racine. That was his stop.