There’s something to be said for a love you can’t attain. I was going to say “unrequited” but that doesn’t really pierce the bullseye. The taste lingers, wanting more. Out of reach or not sustainable can be more addictive than wanting not to be lonely. I don’t think this is a subject that rallies empathy. In fact, I expect to face a certain amount of eye rolling judgment ranging from “you should have known better” and “what did you expect?” to “don’t ask for a sympathetic ear.” I’m not looking for sympathy, but I know I’m not alone in this. Far from it.
Tuesdays, for more than 2 decades now, I fight the urge to call Anthony. Once I did give in, five years after I’d last seen his face. There’s no such thing as closure, at least for me.
====
I met Anthony in the hysteria of a concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City, in the free American era, a couple of years before 9/11 changed everything. Addressing the physical, he was by my taste, gorgeous. Drunk and swaying to the music a row in front of me, he kept turning around to look at me. He was with a woman in her mid to late forties. They weren’t a couple. I came to that conclusion not because he was much prettier than she, but because they didn’t behave as anything beyond cohorts. And because, herself drunk, she was overtly flirting with me. Being sober, I said her friend was more my type. Without showing wounds from my rejection, she pulled him over. Age appropriate with a killer smile, we stood face to face, talking with lips too close for men who are just being friendly. He gave me his cell phone number.
An hour after the concert ended, I called. He was on a train heading home and was glad I phoned him. I already felt a masochistic desperation I sometimes embrace and couldn’t deny.
By this time, I had been single for a while. My last relationship was doomed by emotional hurtles dragging me back to a behavior like a teen’s first heart-break. I decided I would never get seriously involved again. I had mistaken that man’s untethered need for my time and to be heard with his being in love with me. There’s a seductive power in trying to be someone’s safe space and hero. And when he left me, I finally saw that everything had been about him, which was my fault as much as his. What was there for him to fall in love with? He didn’t know me. I was his therapist and father: but practically a stranger. There was no foundation to build upon. When it ended, I felt broken.
A number of years passed. At a non-intimate concert, a handsome man stared at me as if we were the only two persons in the arena. I wasn’t looking for love. Other than thinking he was beautiful, I hadn’t wished for him. Not consciously anyway.
When I reached Tony on his cell phone the next day he seemed sober and uncomfortable and asked if he could call me later. For whatever reason, this didn’t electrify my insecurities. When he called back he explained he had been driving in his car with one of his two teenage daughters and was afraid he’d give himself away. Whatever that meant. Turns out he was married to a woman but separated. And I was the first man he’d ever approached. He was sure I knew he was living a straight man’s life. That hadn’t occurred to me. Not by the way he stared at me during the concert. And not with that nose job.
I believed him when he told me he had never been with a man before. He lived in an insular suburban neighborhood with in-laws living down the street and generations of family living door to door. He didn’t know anyone gay. He didn’t really understand what AIDS was let alone how it was passed. On a path towards divorce, he claimed his wife was now living in a house next door to him. Still, he was petrified he would get caught.
For me there is something irresistible about keeping this kind of a secret. I’m not saying it’s healthy. But because of my self-deluded image that most boyfriends I’ve committed to don’t realize I am “the right one,” I arrogantly believed I could be enough for him.
Like comparing a rainstorm to a river, I loved the feeling but mistook the source. The first time Anthony and I met in person after a week or so of phone calls, he came to my home on a weekday afternoon. He was more beautiful than I had remembered. His eyes alone stole my breath. Not just the black lashes highlighting the Connemara green marble eyes in-between. It was how he looked at me. I was 40. Still handsome, I had my share of attention. But the way he looked at me was different. However hardened, I felt weak and vulnerable. Beyond charm: more like rose colored honesty.
Depending on the location and politics, I would be considered very experienced. There had been times when I went without any sexual contact for months. And there were occasions when I had multiple partners in one weekend. What I wasn’t at all prepared for was having this man make love to me with his eyes staring straight into mine, seeing me in daylight, wanting to see me, flawed and turned on, and completely overpowered by his desire to be with me. Trite as this rings, I had fucked a great deal over the years but it had been eons since I had made love. Erotic and strange. Emotionally painful and completely perfect.
There were no long phone conversations when we were separated. The fantasies I had were grounded in the unexpected. Never knowing if or when I would see him. Each time he showed up at my door, always a weekday, always early afternoon, I was surprised by how beautiful I found him to be. I didn’t question if there was a true longevity for us. I wasn’t sure we would be able to sustain the regularity of a day-after-day life together, with the casual speak necessary beyond passionate desire. Our meetings were few and somewhat far in between, so it was easy for me to invent imagining a future of two older gentlemen lounging on beach chairs side-by-side, hand in hand in the shadows between. Becoming best friends and if you know how to look closer, seeing the lingering air of an amorous connection.
====
Of course it fizzled out. Maybe not the desire, but the actuality. The last time Anthony and I saw each other, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood, making love before and after. That was the day I understood for sure that he would never allow himself to find something concrete with me. I suggested that once his two children were adults and left home, he could free himself to be who he really is. That was not an option he was willing to consider.
This kind of relationship is safe. Though I didn’t go searching for him, I certainly framed us once it took root. I did genuinely like him and liked how he made me feel. But somewhere in my consciousness, I also knew it couldn’t work out in the long run, allowing me to act the victim and feel, in real time, abandoned once again when it was done.
====
The day, five years later, that I contacted him without any agenda or forethought, fulfilled the movie-like ending. I dialed his cell phone. He picked up. He was in a hotel room in a Midwest city, away on business. He heard my voice as I said my name. After the pause it took for him to comprehend who I was, he started crying. We talked for about half an hour. He apologized for not being able to love me as he would have liked to. At 17, his oldest daughter had gotten pregnant, making him a grandfather at 45. His new reasoning for staying with his wife and family.
This really was the end. I was putting the dramatic cap onto the storyline. I asked him if I could call him every once in a while. He said yes, but to please call his office number, and leave a message, if he didn’t pick up. This way his wife would never know. I said okay.
I never called again.
I don’t know his last name. I don’t know the town in which he lives. And his real name isn’t Anthony. I don’t know what I’d do if, out of nowhere, he showed up at my house today. One thing I do know. That won’t happen.