I didn’t ogle girls. I noticed pretty ones and thought of how I would look in this or that outfit and had fun in trips to the Mall with friends and my Mom, trying on stuff and thumbs-upping/thumbs-downing what they tried on. But, you know, I never ached to be with a woman either.
I was hopeless but I did not feel incomplete. I was busy with other things, real things. There’d be time enough once my career was blooming to take the long view. And my Mom never pushed me. She well knew the pitfalls of a rocky marriage. I mean, she told me that it had not always been bad but that it was a gradual thing and suddenly the both of them realized that it had become bad and would never get better. So, the booze was their shared pain-killer until she was faced with using it alone and decided she wouldn’t, couldn’t do that.
She hadn’t completely recovered. Her social interactions were non-existent, at least until she met Mary and Betty and started coming out of her self-imposed exile. But social interaction opportunities were few and far between for a forty-eight-year-old widow in the suburbs.
I knew I loved Suze with all my heart the moment my foot crossed the doorway in January after she threw me out of her apartment and I knew that I had loved her long before. And when she ignored my efforts at apologizing, my stubbornness overcame my heart and I thought I could get on with my life. It was a miserable seven months and every single social-interaction I had during that dark period was empty.
I figured that she had thought long and hard about what she would say to me today, and I had done the same. She batted away my “I’m sorry” before I could even get it out, and that was a relief because my saying it would mean nothing if she did not feel my regret without me uttering a word about it, if she did not get that how she heard what I said was not what I meant or what I was. I knew I did not have to say it.
Now it was my turn and try as I might the words had not crystallized. I am going to be a lawyer but the words wouldn’t crystallize. And I needed them to.
Except I did not.
As I sat there watching that family walk away on the path that circled the lake I understood that I did not have to explain anything to this woman. I just had to tell her that she was everything to me and I knew I could say that because that’s what she was. Everything.
When I lifted her left hand I felt her tense, fearing I might be pulling away. But her shoulders relaxed—I still had not looked at her—when I pulled the hand to my lips and gave it a gentle kiss. I then put her palm against the right side of my neck and bent my head over it, nuzzling her.
Needing to free my head to speak, I moved it back and gave her hand another kiss. I finished:
“I love you. I probably fell in love with you when you touched me to introduce yourself, a year ago. I did not understand it and I’m not going to try to. It just is. That’s what matters.”
Now I was looking at her and she at me. She took my cup from me and put it, with hers, on the ground. She stood and I did too, never releasing her hand. I melted as she reached around to grab my now empty right hand with her left and pulled squarely in front of her.
Suze: First Kiss
Just after New Year’s, I told her I was gay. Now I was afraid to tell her that I had never kissed a girl. I mean, I knew I was gay because I’d always wanted to kiss a girl but had never had the chance or inclination. But I knew that I never wanted to kiss a boy.
So, I knew I was gay, and the never-been-kissed thing just popped out.
“That makes two of us,” she smiled. And that was the last moment when it would be true of either of us.
Kerry: Bombshell
Since we were standing right by the path that circled the lake, our first kiss was brief and somewhat chaste but it was immensely satisfying, even if it triggered a desire for more in every nook and cranny of my being. But it was left as brief-and-chaste as we held hands and began to walk back to the station to pick up my car. We had the wherewithal to bring the cups and throw the now-cold coffee away as we left the lake.
“I dropped out of school.” She said it quietly.
I was stunned, and before I could say anything she continued,
“And I’m giving up the Apartment.”
We stopped and I looked at her. My jaw must have dropped to the street because she touched my cheek and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving New York.”
We resumed our walk.
“I couldn’t take their money anymore. The school said I could come back next Fall if I want, and that’s what I plan to do. But I need to get certain things in order before I do.”
This was too much, and we found another bench.
I explained how I came to the decision. How I felt the way Aunt Mary had been treated was unforgivable, without even considering how their attitude toward her would be their attitude toward me.