January 7th, 1981
I arrive at Jerry’s apartment with flowers; tulips I had bought on the way. He opens the door, dear God, a vision of maleness. That broad, confident grin, that swarthy mustache, those bulging biceps stretching against his rolled-up red flannel shirt– a god in blue jeans. I feel like an overweight Wally Cox standing in the hallway. He pulls me into the apartment and gives me a big hug. “How are you?” “Fine, how are you?” “Fine, how… oh, I’ve already asked you that already…” “I am uptight. I haven’t had a drink since Sunday night when I last saw him. Deliberately. So I lack that easy charm endowed by a few fast beers. We chat about his new job. His voice is deep, husky and happy. He has just started a new job and he is enthusiastic and buoyant about it. His telephone rings, a long distance call from Colorado. I go into the living room and light a cigarette, pretending to be interested in a book on the coffee table about Seattle. As he talks on the telephone, I stare at his face in mirror that line the opposite wall. “My, my, my, Laredo: you can have a field day with this one…” His conversation is animated and bright, he laughs frequently: a deep genuine laugh that makes me smile. As I sit in the dim lit living room I am conscious of a growing sense of… deja vu? Some memory presents itself to me but I cannot bring the image into focus. I stare at his hands in the mirror: strong, thick fingers holding the phone. There is a sturdy vitality to his very presence: the way he speaks, laughs, holds the telephone. His masculinity has that unconscious quality of having never been questioned. it is more than his reflection that I stare at the mirror: it is an image wrought from my own imagination, from that inner room where my final fantasies dwell protected and safe from the real world. Does his voice come from across the room or from that place inside me where my Master, my Pursuer, my Hunter, patiently waits for release?
The telephone conversation ends, he crosses the room and embraces me in a bear-hug. “I’m sorry, baby, an old friend…” He holds me against himself with that smirking self-assurance that tells me that he has recognized me as well. The process of mutual creation has begun, and we both are aware of it.
Dinner. I suggest the Japanese restaurant nearby where Wendy and Allan and I had dinner. We bundle ourselves against the bitter cold that has howled through Manhattan for a week or so. On the street, we walk quickly, rushing through the cold. Yet I am aware of his somehow leading. He is in control of this dance and I am following, shivering through the frozen night. The restaurant is a full and a line of people wait for tables. Neither of us wants to wait. Although we both are hungry, we know that the process of eating, the event of dinner itself, is only a prelude to what we know is imminent. We know the next act. We are mutually writing it now as we speed down the street toward a restaurant he has suggested. Burgers and beer and we talk about our lives. He has just survived a disastrous year of illness, misfortune and emotional chaos. Break-up with his lover of 10 years and with it the folding of the business they had shared as partners. Followed by serious illness, two months in the hospital and losing the next two jobs he managed to get due to his time off because of illness. A rough year, bad times; but he tells the story without a trace of self-pity. It is a survival story told with the relish of adventure. Personal heroism. We talk about lovers. I tell him of my years with Richard and the victimization of monogamy. He, too, was monogamous with his lover. This mental scorecard is nearly complete, and he is getting a perfect score. We finish eating and I insist on paying the check. The curtain comes down on Act II, and we leave the restaurant for his apartment.