Giuseppe and Me

by Robin Reardon

waves. Lots of times, I've seen him go into Stonewall. Sometimes I've been there long enough to see him come out again, and if he's with someone it's often someone different from the last time I saw him. Sometimes it looks like he's with a friend, and maybe they're going someplace else to have a drink and look for more opportunities. Other times I know he's headed for that three-flights-up-to-heaven climb. Don't get me wrong. I don't want him. I want to be him.

  After I've made a few circuits of my favorite blocks, I'm still not ready to go home, but I know I'll be in trouble if I'm out too late, and I'm just about back at Stonewall when I see my guy. He's talking with someone, not paying much attention, and he practically runs into me.

  "Sorry." He looks like he might be going to say something else, but then he takes a closer look at me. Then, "I've seen you before."

  No doubt he's seen me enough to think I'm stalking him. I have no voice. I have no words. But I can't take my eyes off his face.

  "It's kind of late for you to be here, isn't it?" Again, that hesitation. Is he about to tell me to go home, or something? Or is it that he's trying not to say that? "Are you okay?"

  I nod and start walking around him. "Yeah. Fine."

  I don't turn around. I don't want him to see the tears in my eyes, the ones I refuse to shed, let alone show. Right there. He was right there, and I couldn't speak. I couldn't ask his name, tell him mine. I couldn't even say that meaningless phrase, How's it going? I couldn't say a fucking thing!

  See, this is the downside of never revealing anything, never letting anyone see what I'm thinking or feeling. It might help protect me from bad things, but it also means I can't respond to the good things. 'Cause you can't filter like that, you know? You either block out everything, or you let everything in.

  . . . . . . . . . . .

  Today, Sunday, is one of those days when I can't wait to get out of the apartment. It's not just that the place feels more crowded on weekends, either. It's that today is one of those sunny spring days when you can almost bring yourself to believe that good things happen.

  My crouching walk, designed to protect me from-whatever, is a little less hunched today, and by the time I get to Washington Square Park (a.k.a., WSP), maybe I'm not actually skipping, but I can't help feeling at least a little up. Lots of trees have those flowers with delicate white or pink petals, and it's just that part of the season when enough flowers are still on the branches that walking under a tree practically lifts you off the ground. And when you get past the tree, you have petals in your hair and on your shoulders.

  It's a perfect day to find a good bench to sit on and have one of my silent conversations with a famous Italian, Giuseppe Garibaldi. I was initially attracted to this statue because he's Italian, like me. And then for a while I felt a little disloyal to him, because I couldn't help thinking he was kind of funny-looking, with a face almost like one of the seven dwarves. And he's in this weird posture, legs at an odd angle, right hand on the hilt of his sword, and the blade is sort of half in, half out of the scabbard. Then one day something just clicked. Some mystical connection between us. It happened not long after I'd been sent to the Dunlaps, between the two HIV tests, and I was feeling particularly frightened. I looked up at him and wondered if my sword would ever have a chance to really come out. And this applied to my courage as well as my dick.

  These days I like to stare up at him and try to imagine what his life was like. Because just like I've moved around from home to home, his life, too, was all over the place. Seriously. I looked it up. He spent the 1800s going from France to Italy, to Brazil, he went to Uruguay-anyplace some country was fighting for independence. At one point he lived on Staten Island, having arrived there by way of Switzerland. Eventually he went home, still fighting the good fight, and ended up helping to unify Italy. So he died a hero. And, in any event, he was no coward. Kind of gives me hope.

  Giuseppe. Joseph. Joe. His mother wanted him to be a priest, but instead he ended up fighting the Pope over how Italy would be governed. So we have that in common, too, at least as far as some kind of split with our mothers.

  So, under the flowering trees, I sit for a while, communing with Giuseppe, and then wander around the park. The guy who wheels his baby grand piano into the park is here today. And all alone, on a bench nearby, is this Greek god. Okay, so that's a little dramatic, but he does have a full head of curly blond hair, and he is gorgeous. He looks like one of those statues you see-Adonis? He's my age, or pretty close to it, anyway. When I notice him, he's watching the piano guy, who's playing one of his typical classical pieces.

  Like I usually do with something that catches my attention, I walk past and pretend not to notice the god, but when I'm sure I'm far enough past, I half-turn, pretending to be looking at something off to the side but really gauging whether he's looking toward me. He isn't; why would he? So I turn fully around, now walking backward. As soon as I'm looking right at him, he looks at me.

  I wheel around again, hands deep in my pockets, and keep going. When I get to the fountain I start a trip around it, past some guy kissing the pigeon on his shoulder, past people selling smelly food, past some college singing group sounding awful, past a mime, and a juggler, and an artist sketching some little girl while her parents watch and make cooing noises. When I've made a full circuit, there he is again. He's sitting on the edge of the pool around the fountain, jeans rolled up, feet in the water, leaning back on his arms, and watching me.

  My mind bounces back and forth between It's not exactly warm enough to go wading and Is he really looking at me, or at someone behind me? I stand stock still. And then he smiles. At me.

  Holy crap. My first impulse is to go back the way I had come, past the piano, past Giuseppe. But I don't. Maybe feeling so ashamed at not being able to speak to that guy last night is still haunting me. In any case, when the god tilts his head away from me, like, "Come on over," I do.

  Cross-legged, hands still in my jacket pockets, I sit just close enough to him so that we can hear each other talk, though for several minutes we don't. We sort of stare at different things around us, all the people doing wacky things, just sitting together like old friends hanging out, friends who would talk when something occurs to us but otherwise don't need to fill the air with chatter.

  Then he looks at me. "I'm Ron."

  "Alex."

  "You live near here?"

  "St. Marks. You?"

  He nods in the direction across the fountain, through the arch, up Fifth Avenue. I take another look at his clothes. Yeah, he lives in one of those posh places with a doorman and an elevator and maybe even a balcony or a rooftop garden. Before I have time to figure out what I think of that, he makes a suggestion.

  "Wanna go to the dog run?"

  "Large or small dogs?" Like it matters; I'd have followed him anywhere. But there are two different runs.

  "Large."

  "Sure."

  I watch while he brushes water off his feet and puts on athletic shoes that probably cost as much as my whole wardrobe, and we head toward the south side of the park. Neither of us says anything until we're inside the fenced area, watching dogs run and jump and pant and generally make merry. Ron gestures toward a bench, and we sit down.

  He doesn't say anything, so I get things started. "Do you have a dog?"

  He shakes his head. "I had one. She died."

  "Oh." Way to step in it, Alex.

  "Her name was Bella. She was a Yorkie. My parents got her about a year after I was born, and she died last year."

  I spend a couple of seconds wondering why he hadn't suggested the small dog run and get about as far as thinking maybe he didn't want to be reminded about Bella dying. "Bella's Italian," I offer.

  "So?"

  "I'm Italian. My last name means 'wolf.'"

  "Really."

  I can't quite tell whether he's interested or not, and he doesn't ask what the Italian word for wolf might be. And he doesn't give me his last name. That's okay with me, really. Maybe we
aren't going to fall in love and get married, but it would be nice if he could get to like me before he finds out any more about how different our lives are.

  We sit silently for a bit, watching the dogs, when out of nowhere he says, "Wanna go make out?"

  I keep watching the dogs, like what he said was the most normal thing in the world. Calm, Alex. Breathe. Breathe again. OMG. Did he really just ask me that? Don't panic! Right. Like not panicking is an option. But-it's not like he's another Mr. Ellis. And, really, how far can we go, here in the park? Maybe I should just test those waters first. So I say, "Where?"

  He doesn't answer. Doesn't even look at me. He gets up, and given that my only options at this point are to follow him or lose this chance to find out if I can tolerate having someone touch me even a little, I follow.

  He doesn't head in the direction of the arch, which would lead up Fifth Avenue to where he lives. He's staying in the park, then? There's not really anyplace secluded in WSP. It was renovated a few years ago, and part of the goal, I think, was to be sure there weren't any good places for things like drug buys to happen.

  Finally he steps off the path onto the grass near a large tree and sits on the ground on the side away from the walkway. I stand in front of him, not quite knowing what comes next, until he reaches up and pulls me by the hand until we're both fully down on the grass. Holding my eyes with his, he