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Memoir: New York City

The first time I kissed a man, I was living in New York.

Straight people--many straight people, at least--go through this awkwardness in adolescence. They take their baby steps when they are still in high school. That's a big part of what was moving about the film "Beginners"--seeing the gay Christopher Plummer character start to become an actual person in his late seventies. His seventies!

Another thing about many gay people: They have these shadow-lives, former lives, that get re-cast, re-appraised, after the big coming-out. Today's liberal Manhattan kids--proudly un-closeted before they finish middle school--may not understand this. It's like studying the dinosaurs, or the Big Bang. (Or maybe that's an exaggeration.)

Anyway, I was not an intrepid explorer, in my early twenties. You would have to say to me, gently: "The light is green. We can cross the street now." And then you would need to hold my hand. I would arrange dates with men, then I would seem to "lose" the address of the bar while en route to the bar. I once arrived fifty minutes late for no reason--really, literally no reason--only to discover a text message on my phone: "I'm sorry. I don't wait longer than half an hour." I had a very kind, non-gay roommate who made an observation while another date of mine was in the bathroom, in our apartment: "Did you notice when he asked if he could leave his backpack here? That means he wants to return--to your home--when the movie is over." There was much meaningful raising-of-eyebrows. I told my date he could take his backpack to the movie theater, and my roommate covertly rolled his eyes.

This same roommate and I owned a Zagat Guide to New York. Tucked among the restaurant reviews was a sidebar: "Go East, Young Man!" This was a short piece arguing that the center of New York's "gay night life" had shifted from the West (Chelsea) to the East Village. I imagine it alluded to the Cock--a bar where men were rumored to have actual sex on dance floors, under bright lights--and the Cock's neighbor, the Hole. (At some point, apparently, the Cock bought the Hole, and the bars became united: The Cock in the Hole.) There was also a reference to the Eastern Bloc, a bar I actually once visited. Many forbiddingly handsome young men gathered in a very small space, and loud music made conversation impossible, and various screens showed footage of Soviet speeches, or porn, or a mixture of both. That's what I recall--at least. The image is hazy.

Reading my Zagat Guide, I decided to act. I wasn't going to go into Manhattan, but I would at least visit the local Park Slope gay bar--"Excelsior." This name seems, to me, to be a reference to the phallic sword-in-the-stone. (More cocks, more holes.) But we might also want to make a translation: "Excelsior" is Latin for "higher." Some kind of allusion to the acquisition of new civil rights, the ever-growing fight for equality? Who's to say?

You're asking: Can you get to the good stuff? Was there awful, random, anonymous bar sex? There was. He taught Latin at Brearley. He was significantly older than I; clearly, he sensed an easy target. He smoked cigarettes and bought me many beers, and he talked about Pixar's "The Incredibles," and how he wanted to take his mentally-impaired brother to see it. We kissed on the sidewalk--and it really was like hitting a light-switch, as in: "Right. This is what I am designed to be doing in my life." I stumbled back to his apartment--and, hey, three cheers for this bold, impetuous version of me, whose existence I hadn't known about!--and I quickly became bored and puzzled with oral sex, and offered to "escalate matters." And this is the lesson I want to impart to young readers: If the thing in bed isn't working, don't offer something more dramatic and potentially uncomfortable, as a kind of shiny distraction. This never works. You have to address the root cause. Or take a break and maybe play a video game. And try again later.

This man's engorged member waved itself around; it crept up to my most private orifice, and right before anything painful could occur, I cried UNCLE! The evening was over. I slammed on the brakes. He finished himself off; I quietly shoved myself into my clothing; and he walked me to the door. He gave me his number and said, "Maybe we could hang out. We could go and see 'The Incredibles.'" (But I'd had my adventure. I never took him up on his offer, and he never called.)

There is something Philip Lopate says about personal essays. He says, "You have to think on the page. You have to risk generalization. If you don't reach anything profound, there's still something inherently noble in the attempt." And I'd say the same about my evening at Excelsior--a disaster, from one angle, but also something I'm weirdly proud of.

I have always tried to solve problems by reading books. And I wish that a story like this had existed, for me, in print somewhere, when I was twenty-one. So here it is. An absolutely true diary, in the tradition of Lena Dunham. The young man was a fool and a mess, and he kept going. He had other "dates," eventually, and some were even smoother than the night I've just described. He wasn't a terrible person, and he did OK, despite many flaws. I'm sort of fond of him.

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