Greg didn’t have any bad experiences either. No rejection, no hostility, no drama. Just like with me, the fear was so much worse than the reality.
During his whole coming out marathon, he had to make one really hard call, to his best friend from college. When Greg shared his news, his friend got quiet at first, and Greg started to panic. Then the friend cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and said, “It’s okay. I’m cool with it. Actually, I’ve kind of been going through the same thing.”
So this was Door Number Two. It wasn’t lonely or depressing like I’d feared. It was kind of hilarious. I wasn’t mourning my lost hypothetical family or my safe hypothetical life, just a past that was full of regrets. This wasn’t a death. It was a rebooting. With the help of a great support team, I’d hit control-alt-delete on my misery and was flickering back to life, starting over.
I was Jerry version 2.0, and for the first time I could remember, I was excited to see what the future held.
2
The Island of Misfit Gays
Coming out was excruciating, humbling, endless—and, ultimately, one of the easier things I had to do in my twenties. Once I’d shared my lifetime of shame with whatever close acquaintance I had arranged to meet at Denny’s for the occasion, that was it. It was over, and we could get back to our Grand Slam breakfasts and talking about last night’s Seinfeld. Decades of hiding culminated in little more than momentary discomfort, repeated dozens of times. The real agony, it turned out, lay outside of those encounters.
World, meet Sweet Talk!
My Porky’s-inspired alter ego had waited a long time to make his public debut. He was a little older, a little grayer, not quite as thin and sprightly, but hey, at least his Clearasil budget had gone down. At last, Sweet Talk was unleashed, free to ogle, flirt, and rack up some raucous conquests to share with the guys in the locker room—starting, of course, with the guys in the locker room. Yeehaw!
I finally felt thirteen at heart, only to learn the harsh truth that hits most people when they actually are thirteen: being thirteen sucks. It’s not puppy love, milkshakes with two straws, and commingled vomit streams over the railing of the Tilt-a-Whirl. It’s misery, rejection, and self-disgust. It’s Sylvia Plath and the Smiths, learning to judge yourself by the most hurtful criticisms you receive from others, to know with unflinching certainty that no one has ever felt a pain as profound as the one known as “Being You.” The only good thing about being thirteen is getting it over with when you’re thirteen.
Unless you’re me, goddamn it. I was stuck doing it at twenty-eight.
Add to that the twin boogeymen of gay dating in the late 1990s: AIDS and Jeffrey Dahmer. The only bright side was the bold new world of online dating, where I could hide behind words and the safety of a less-than-one-megapixel head shot. By reading profiles and checking the right boxes, I could even attempt to weed out the guys who were into random hookups and possibly eating their bedmates. Finally, I’d found somewhere I belonged.
It didn’t take me long to figure out the most obvious rule of romance in the cyber age: dating is marketing. If you had killer pecs, you posted a shirtless pic. If you had a twelve-inch wiener, you made that your user name. (And in the likely event that 12InchWiener was already taken, you got creative. FootLongggSalami or 12Inchez2ThrillU would make the point just fine.) You might have only a few seconds to snag the interest of a handsome stranger, so it was important you always put your best foot forward, a rule that went double for foot fetishists.
Lacking a killer gym bod, I settled on a strategy more within my reach: be funny. Everyone says they’re looking for a mate with a sense of humor, from ShyGayJedi1138 to PlugMyHungreeBottomNow!!!! Well, hey, I won the comedy award in my graduate screenwriting program. I could do this. I answered my essay questions with schtick, packed my profile with punch lines, and made a big joke of the whole thing.
Within hours, my in-box was bursting with responses.
“Your profile is hilarious! I’m sure you’ll get lots of dates!”
“Thanks for making me laugh. Good luck!”
“lol your funny. l8r!”
There was one thing missing from all these emails: any interest in hearing back from me. Everyone wanted to compliment my sense of humor, but no one wanted to date me. This being a dating site, it did seem like I was doing something wrong.
There was one exception. He didn’t mention my humor, but he said I was cute. His user name was Poohger, and his picture was a shot of his bare torso, shoulders to waist. It wasn’t a particularly impressive torso, but there it was, offered for inspection. Bony, hairless, and freckled, it could easily have belonged to a twelve-year-old girl or a Calvin Klein model. It seemed an odd choice for a photo, but maybe this man thought torsos were a major turn-on. Then again, what did I know? I was the newbie. Maybe the torso was a nice change of pace for guys on this site. Maybe Poohger’s in-box was full of emails that began, “Hey, nice torso!”
Still, a torso is better than nothing, so I wrote back. Over the course of a few emails, we discovered a mutual addiction to MTV’s candidly trashy docusoap The Real World. I’d started watching when I was still young enough to be one of the spoiled cast mates living in an IKEA-festooned palace and given a platform to tell the world about their feelings. Now I was too old to be on the show and probably too old to be tuning in. But Poohger didn’t see my point. After all, he was eight years older than I and just as hooked.
We set up a phone call. He didn’t want to share his number just yet, so I gave him mine. The call came in right on schedule, and the ID was blocked. This guy was so guarded with his identity that I was starting to wonder if he was a spy—or, better yet, Tom Cruise. But his voice suggested neither. It was thin and meek, like his torso. He sounded nervous, starstruck even, like a squealy tween thinking, “Omigod, it’s that guy from the Internet!” He stumbled for interesting things to say. “So you’re really from New Jersey, huh? Wow . . .”
“So why the screen name Poohger?” I asked. It seemed an appropriate icebreaker.
“I was just trying to think of something. You know, everything’s taken,” he said, and I, StinkyLilWeasel28, agreed. “But I have this Pooh doll on my desk . . .”
I felt the need to clarify. “Winnie the Pooh?”
“Yeah. So I started trying Pooh with different combinations of other characters. Eeyore, Piglet, finally Tigger. That’s how I got Poohger.”
“Okay. So it’s not really a Winnie the Pooh thing.”
“No, it was just the first thing I could think of that wasn’t already in use. Don’t get me wrong, though,” he added. “I love Pooh.”
I could suddenly see why he didn’t feel too old for The Real World.
We didn’t talk long because the reception, like his chest, was spotty. Instead, we agreed to meet for dinner.
He lived in Encino, a thirty-minute drive from my apartment in West Hollywood, but he offered to meet me in between, in Sherman Oaks, a twenty-five-minute drive from my apartment in West Hollywood. He picked a Mexican chain restaurant and gave me detailed directions how to get there, as if concerned I might not show up. He didn’t know he was my only offer.
I purposely arrived twenty minutes early and parked across the street. I sat in my car, eyes trained on the restaurant, dying for a sneak preview of the man I was about to date. Granted, I didn’t have much to go on. But I studied every torso that went in, unbuttoning each shirt in my mind to see if the mental picture might match the JPEG he provided. It wasn’t exactly a blind date, but it was blind from the neck up. And the waist down.
As early as I’d arrived, it turned out Poohger had been there even earlier, and when I walked in, he looked up at me instantly. His eyes flickered with a hopeful excitement that said, “Wow, it’s really him!” I have to admit, it was flattering.
My first glimpse of him was a relief, mostly. He wasn’t some hideous freak with
a tattooed forehead and a bullring-pierced septum. He was a regular guy, someone who, in any other circumstances, I would have walked right past without noticing. Average height, fair skin, slightly bumpy nose. He wasn’t gorgeous, but he wasn’t ugly either. His face was exactly as appealing as his torso, no more, no less.
The timing of our date was perfect. Earlier that week, a new season of The Real World had premiered with an extended one-hour episode. We had plenty to discuss.
“You know who I can’t stand?” he said. “Coral! What a bitch!”
“I love Coral,” I confessed.
“Well, I mean, she’s good TV,” he backtracked. “Nicole is the really annoying one. Coral’s okay.” It was a stunning revelation for me. I had the ability to make a man nervous.
Halfway through the date, Poohger’s cell phone rang. “Hello . . . ? Yeah, I’m here right now. No, it’s okay. It’s good. Yeah, he is. Thanks for calling.” He hung up.
Holy shit. It was a check-in call. It was so obvious. His friend was prepared to rescue him if he was having a miserable time—and I’d passed the test. This was a successful date!
“Sorry,” Poohger smiled. “He won’t bother us again.”
When we finished dinner, Poohger asked me if I wanted to see a movie. He went to his car to get a newspaper, but the only one he had was out of date. So we went directly to the theater, only to learn we had just missed most of the starting times. The only film we could see was the latest in the Scary Movie franchise.
“I kind of liked the last one,” he offered.
“Ugh,” I groaned.
“Shoot!” he swore. “I’m sorry. I should’ve had the right damn newspaper!”
I assured him that even if he’d had today’s paper, we still would have missed the movies. I checked my watch and realized that, if we wrapped things up fast, I might make it home in time for Saturday Night Live.
As we walked to our cars, Poohger invited me back to his place, but I said no. Saturday Night Live seemed like the better option.
“You’re really cute,” he said.
“Thanks.”
There was a long pause. “Now it’s your turn,” he prodded.
“Well, you’re . . . nice,” I said. I tried to sound coy, but the truth was I couldn’t pretend I had any physical attraction to him.
He moved in to kiss me, but I jumped in my car just as his eyelids began to droop. “It was really nice meeting you,” I said. It wasn’t a lie.
Should I have just kissed him? I wasn’t sure. Still, I was pretty confident that if I changed my mind, I’d get another chance.
Now we would play the waiting game. I’d seen straight people do it so many times in romantic comedies. You measure your interest against your date’s and figure out how long you should wait to call again so as not to seem too desperate. I figured a week was reasonable, but knowing how eager Poohger was, I guessed he’d crack at about the three-day mark.
As I opened the door to my apartment twenty-five minutes later, my phone was already ringing. I let my answering machine pick up.
“Hi, Jerry. I just wanted to say again what a great time I had tonight. You’re a terrific guy, and really—really cute. I just—I feel like I blew it. I’m sorry I didn’t have today’s newspaper. Really, really sorry.”
I wanted to cry for him. I also wanted to cheer for myself. This guy has a pretty serious case of the Jerries. Yay me. Who knew I had the power to turn a normal guy into a blathering fool? He was really beating himself up. It was kind of cool.
“It won’t happen again. I promise. I stopped on the way home and got a new paper—two papers actually, just to be safe.”
Now it was starting to get painful. It felt cruel to let him go on like this. I contemplated picking up the phone, but what would I say? I’d probably end up making a second date with him.
“I got the L.A. Times and the Daily News, so next time I’ll be prepared. We can check them both. I thought maybe we could see a movie tomorrow night. You pick. But not Scary Movie. I know you don’t like those.” Chuckle.
He didn’t stop. Why couldn’t he stop? He gave his phone number and his cell phone number. “Or you can email me,” he added. “If I don’t pick up, leave a voice mail. I’m probably just in the shower or something, and I’ll call you right back.”
OKAY. STOP. STOP. STOP!!!
It was too much to bear. I left the room and waited until he hung up, two minutes later.
I’d been so worried before meeting him that Poohger would be a nut job or an Elephant Man. What I’d found was a perfectly amiable guy who thought I was awesome. As it turned out, that wasn’t quite as appealing as I would have hoped.
I never called him back.
For quite a while afterwards, Poohger was one of my better dates.
One day my in-box lit up with an excited email from a guy who was quick to point out how much we had in common. “My name’s Jerry, too! LOL!!!!!” He loved that I was five feet five inches because he was five feet four, and “us short guys need to stick together LOL!!!!!!!!!!” We were both from New Jersey, “but different Turnpike exits LOL!!!”
We arranged to meet for Chinese food. I was waiting outside the restaurant when I heard him call my name. “Jerry! JERRY!” It was an eager bark, unnecessarily loud, like he’d just spotted his old college roommate on the opposite end of the Superdome. When I looked over, I saw a cluster of people crossing the street toward me. I scanned all the faces but couldn’t find the one from Jerry’s profile.
“Jerry?” Finally, as the crowd reached the corner, the masses dispersed, and one guy was left standing there. It then became clear why I hadn’t seen him—because he was nowhere near five feet four. Perhaps he meant to say four feet five.
He looked up at me and said how nice it was that I actually resembled my picture. “You know some guys . . . !” He then let rip a tremulous cackle that literally snapped my head back. It’s no wonder he ended every sentence of his emails with “LOL.” When this guy L’ed, it was majorly OL.
It turned out Jerry and I had more in common than just our names. We were the same age, practically had the same birthday. We both liked Ally McBeal but thought it was getting too wacky. We both drove black Nissan Altimas. We both ordered the lemon chicken.
If that had been enough, I don’t believe his height would have mattered. But not only was Jerry considerably shorter than I, he was also considerably gayer. He snapped his fingers for emphasis when he talked, something I thought gay guys only did in sketch comedy. When a finger snap didn’t add enough punch to his punch line, he lunged forward and stamped his foot, like a mule. And that laugh . . .
While we were seated, it was the laugh that made me self-conscious. But when we stood up again, it was the height. I didn’t have much experience being the tall one on a date, and I couldn’t help worrying that we looked ridiculous, like Abe Lincoln standing next to a poodle. I had to reach down to shake his hand, to bend over to hug him. I knew I had no right judging anyone based on their height, but at the same time, I was now more forgiving of people who judged me. So this is why so many guys would limit their matches to men five feet ten and up. To them, I was the poodle.
Jerry let me know he was leaving town that night for a wedding, so it would be a few days before we could hang out again. Already, he was better at the waiting game than Poohger.
The next day, he called from out of town. “I just saw another black Nissan Altima, and I thought of you. Maybe next time we go out, we can carpool!”
I never called Jerry back either.
This was my gay adolescence, a series of uncomfortable dates, each of them tragic in its own way. There was the lap band guy, the massive head injury guy, the guy with eight pet rats, the voice-over actor with the lazy eye, the professional paid audience member on infomercials. (He described his job to me as follows: “Sometimes, they want you to clap
. But you can’t just clap. You have to get really excited, like this . . . WOOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!”) No matter how adequate they seemed at first, there was a painful vulnerability lying just below the surface, waiting to be discovered. All of them were incredibly nice guys, but none of them was right for me.
The gay world wasn’t at all like I’d imagined when I’d grown up so in fear of it. The men I met weren’t the scantily clad party boys from gay pride floats, nor were they handsome and self-confident like the characters I saw on TV shows. They weren’t even like the creepy closeted Republicans who’d occasionally be featured on the news after getting caught in a sex sting. They weren’t media-friendly. They didn’t dress in the latest fashions or have five-hundred-dollar haircuts. They worked in banks, P.F. Chang’s, and H&R Blocks, where they ate microwaved Hot Pockets for lunch and tried to remember if tonight was the night for CSI: New York or CSI: Miami. Many of them were brand new to the dating scene. They were regular guys—timid, awkward, and frequently terrified—just like me.
There was nothing unique about my angst after all. With that realization, my postponed puberty began to wind down, and I started to relax.
I’d come across Drew’s profile many times, but he scared me more than anyone. Handsome, successful, smart—he was too perfect. Either he was a big phony, or his fatal flaw would turn out to be particularly lurid, like he’d done jail time or he liked to be barfed on during sex. He described himself as a “TV executive,” whatever that meant. He probably installed cable boxes for Comcast. There was another possibility, of course—that he really was as good as he seemed. That would be even worse. If that were true, there’s no way he’d have any interest in me. I didn’t bother writing.
Then, one day, the unthinkable happened. Drew wrote to me.
Mommy Man Page 3
