It's the first time I've been in a conservative sex shop, I thought to myself. But that's Washington.
I've been once again in Raleigh, on business, for two weeks. On Friday morning, I was working out in my hotel gym, listening to one of my all time favorite songs, Left to my Own Devices, by the Pet Shop Boys. As music is wont to do, it whipped me through a time wormhole, taking me back to the summer of 1989. I'm on a gay dance club on a Sunday afternoon; the daylight is streaming in from open doors, and I'm lost in the music - the long remixed version of "Devices". Half of my heart though is wrapped up in the man beside me, Shaun, my first love - the man I'd abruptly fallen for the previous year, at the tender age of twenty three. Unlike me, he's a great dancer, and he's hunky. He has his shirt off, and I stare greedily at his torso on each revolution of the dance floor. I'm far too skinny to take my shirt off, and am probably wearing a paisley shirt (my memory isn't clear on this important point.) But it's a shaft of light in my memories that always sinks me into tenderness when I recall it.
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| Lord, I'd forgotten how handsome Shaun was. Oh ... and still is! I'm 23, and Shaun 27. I think the look on my face speaks volumes. |
Shaun lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania about two hours away by Amtrak from my apartment in Center City, Philadelphia. One of us would make that trip most weekends. On my turns, each time I settled into my seat on the Keystone line out of 30th Street Station, with a hot chicken-breast croissant and a cheese danish (both surprisingly and consistently good) from the restaurant car, I'd be in a state of anticipation not unlike what I used to feel on the night of Christmas Eve as a kid, when my brother Neil and I would lie awake, breathlessly, late at night, hearing my dad getting our Christmas presents out of his wardrobe and arraying them (always unwrapped) in the living room. (I'd better state for the benefit of Americans that my dad was not plucking toys from his sports coat: a wardrobe in England is a big, free-standing closet for clothes. I'd use the word "armoir", but my spell- checker insists on saying there's no such word, even if I add an "e" at the end.)
Shaun worked on an army base as a helicopter technician, and would frequently have to work for part of the weekend. I'd stay in his apartment and listen to music. Then, when it was time for him to come home, I'd go "take a nap". I was so in need of affection, that I'd strip naked, bury myself in his bed, and pretend to be asleep, waiting for the sound of the front-door unlocking, and the feel of Shaun creeping on top of me in bed, wrapping me in his long, muscular arms, kissing me on the back of my neck. He's actually the only person who's ever been able to cocoon me in that way. At the time, although I was 6'6, I was painfully - concentration camp like - skinny (see photo). Since starting to work out in my late twenties, it's gradually become infeasible for me to be anything other than the cocooner rather than cocoonee. Now, at 225 lbs, it's me that wraps Ben protectively in my arms. It subtly changes the nature of your relationships. But you know, us big guys sometimes want to be protected too, sigh.
The next summer, we took our first weekend away together, in Rehoboth Beach, Maryland, the 3rd most popular gay beach destination in the North East, after Provincetown and Fire Island. Actually, I suppose it was really the gay destination for people from secondary cities who didn't feel they measured up to the tonier destinations of the more chic urbanites from New York and Boston. And this is where that moment occurred in the dance club, the moment that I was now reliving, in the month where I'm turning 47, in the basement of a Raleigh Marriott hotel in 2011. I look at myself in the gym mirror and smile remembering how young I was. The face that stares back at me is no longer young. But the naive, romantic young man of deep feelings is still deep inside, and unashamed.
Why not, I suddenly thought to myself, thinking of Shaun? The prospect of another weekend in sleepy Raleigh offers little excitement. What if I can get to DC for the weekend, and see Shaun (who moved to Maryland many years ago now.) I immediately texted him to find out if he was around this weekend. This was probably my first communication with Shaun in two years. But it never matters how rarely we speak. Ever since I "grew up", and dispensed with my intense neediness, I've been able to relax into myself, be myself with Shaun, and he and I have become very close friends over the years. We both acknowledge having a special and rare affection for each other (a feeling different, obviously, than what I feel for Ben, but still different from how I feel about anyone else), and I smile again, as I write this blog, sitting in a Starbucks in Dupont Circle, knowing that I'll be seeing him in a couple of hours.
Because: on Friday morning, after texting him, I realized that - Shaun being Shaun - I was unlikely to hear from him in time to book travel. So I decided, what the hell, I'll escape to DC anyway, even if I don't get to see Shaun. I got a steal on hotel, airfare, and rental car, packed light, and headed to Raleigh-Durham airport early Friday evening with such a feeling of freedom and adventure. I've not been able to do spontaneous travel by myself much in the last few years.
Everything worked like a dream. I'd planned on spending a couple of hours in the Admirals Club waiting for my flight around 9.00 when I noticed there was a 7.45 flight boarding immediately. I've never flown standby before, because there's no guarantee I'll get a seat I can fit my enormous frame into. But I literally waltzed on board, and got the only comfortable seat in the tiny plane - the front row single seat abaft the entry door. In the terminal's book store, I'd bought this great new book on dark matter and energy which, according to the sales clerk, they'd put on the shelves for the first time not half an hour ago. On the flight, the Nigerian stewardess was sociability and smiles, the flight took off on time, landing at Reagan 43 minutes later, an airport which is amongst the most convenient of any large city anywhere in its proximity to the center. Everything seemed to be going perfectly.
I said I traveled light. And my tough, carbon fiber rolling mini suit-case was indeed lacking in heft, and eminently stowable as carry-on. But I had way too many fluids for that to be possible; not just the array of sprays and gels to keep "the hair" respectable, but also my medium-sized travel night medicine (otherwise known as a bottle of vodka.) Having never traveled standby before, the thought that "hey, my checked baggage will not accompany me" on the flight I'd so airily boarded after arriving at the airport, had never occurred to me. So it was after 10.00 before I finally left the airport with my luggage, in a huge, surprisingly ancient, black Grand Victoria - which looked like a senior police detective's wagon from 00's - from Avis. (Still, with my Priceline deal, it was only $20 a night.) My good spirits returned, though, as I coasted to the immaculate, stylish Washington Hilton, just a few blocks up Connecticut Avenue from Dupont Circle. I'd gotten my room, at the same time as the car, for $79 a night, and it turned out to be classy, luxurious even, especially compared to the bland, identical Marriotts I've been used to in the last few years on business trips.
I'd finally heard from Shaun, in the afternoon, and it looked like we'd be able to get together for a few hours either Saturday or Sunday to catch up. He invited me to a piano recital of a friend of a friend, no doubt in one of the beautiful restored mansions in the Dupont neighborhood. I was very disappointed that I'd not be able to go, because of the timing of my return flight. But it got me thinking about how much had changed in Shaun's life since his days in Harrisburg. When we knew each other back then, I had the more culture-filled life, and was more experienced in high art and music. But Shaun took up acting a few years ago, and is becoming quite successful at it. Every time I see postings of his on Facebook, it sounds like he's hanging out with arty types, in the sort of cultural milieu I've always longed to be a part of. Once again, not for the first time in recent months, I thought sadly of Los Angeles. There, everything revolves so much around "the industry", that there's really very little in the way of high culture that isn't based on the ambition to ascend into the realm of klieg lights, rather than in the love of the life of the mind. I'm beginning to feel, with increasing fervour, a distaste for my adopted home, and a desire to get the hell out of there.
This feeling was confirmed today, as I walked about the neighborhood, or listened to conversations in Starbucks. So close to Embassy Row, you see and hear people from all over the world; they're far less concerned about their appearances, and they're having conversation - real conversation. You get the vivid sense of being amongst curious minds, something that's next to impossible to imagining sensing in Los Angeles.
Every city has its oddities, though, and this is the city which is so starchily conservative that many of the things you wouldn't even cast a second eye at in cities like San Francisco, and, yes, Los Angeles, raise eyebrows of surprise and disdain here. You see scarcely a single person who's prepared to stand out with iconoclasm of dress. However, you do see people who've taken conservatism to such a surprisingly determined length that they really would stand out, and draw comment even in Los Angeles. For instance, a man in his mid-thirties I saw last night, in a long belted rain-coat, gloves, scarf and trilby. And he clearly wasn't so dressed in an attempt at irony. (The man seated next to me in Starbucks is wearing felt wing-tips.)
It was on my way down Connecticut Avenue to this Starbucks, earlier, that I stepped into the sex shop. No, I wasn't looking for dildos. I have an affectation for a big leather watch-strap with metal studs. The one I stole from Ben years ago, finally wore out a few months ago, and I recently bought another one on Melrose Avenue (a street which at least has the merit of being funky.) But it's quirky. It's this very long thing you sort of have to double wrap about your wrist and secure with a stud. And it's driving me crazy because it keeps coming unraveled.
The sex shop looked like the sort of store you see on Hollywood Boulevard which might sell things like studded watch straps, along with lace panties, and sequined halter tops. So I stepped in, and asked the dignified, stiff postured,, black owner if he sold watch straps. He pointed me across the street to a jeweler's store. So I showed him my problematic watch strap as an example of what I was looking for, and asked if he knew where I could get something like that. His lips pursed, and he shook his head. saying "Not around here". I asked him if there was anywhere in DC where I could get something like that, and before I'd even finished asking, he was shaking his head again, this time dismissively.
I'm positive the guy in the sex shop was wrong: even here, there must be a "funky" neighborhood; but that a guy working in a sex shop couldn't imagine it, speaks a lot. In this city, you're just not encouraged to stand out. I thought of the John Galliano shirt I'd brought with me that I was going to wear if I went clubbing tonight, and realized I'd probably look like a freak in the eyes of the locals. Not that I care, but it just feels odd that something that would be seen as fun and adventurous in LA would be a black mark here. (Incidentally, I just asked the young Starbucks barista, who looked vaguely "alternative", if there was a funky neighborhood, and he came up blank too.)
I realize, of course, that my seven years in Los Angeles have changed me. I've seen this in myself on many occasions when I've traveled. My style of dress, the concern for superficialities like what kind of car you drive, the brash self-assertiveness, even flogging my book on this blog: things that seem like virtues in LA, just don't fit in elsewhere. My blond highlights probably don't help either. Now I wonder how much Shaun has changed since his life took a diversion into art and theater, in the penumbra of Washington. He was always somebody who determinedly had his own look (even if it included a Grace Jones flattop haircut in the 80s.) The single quality of his that always most endeared him to me was an unaffected air of innocence and wonder at anything that was new or different to him. I hope he hasn't lost that, and gone all conservative on me. I'll find out in an hour or so when we meet at JRs, and old-time gay bar in Dupont. (He's off to rehearsals right after that.)
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