Ex called last week to wish me a happy belated birthday and to invite me out to "to celebrate the only year we will both be in our forties at the same time."  He turns fifty in February, but unless I took a wrong turn at that last wormhole, our forties will have overlapped by two years, not one.  Never mind. 


He decided we should go to Union, across from Holy —, well across from what used to be Holy Cross Cathedral, before some scoundrel absconded with their relic*.  I don't know what they're going to call it now. Cathedral of the Holy Missing Splinter, Batman! perhaps, perchance?  Point is, it's about two blocks from Ex's gym, and there's parking.  Ex is pretty practical when it comes to that sort of thing.

I'm sure he wanted to look gigantic for me.  Get all jacked at the gym, paint on a tiny little t-shirt, and show up looking like The Hulk.  And who can blame him?  Knowing where he was going with it, I dropped into my gym beforehand, too, two-sizes-too-small tee in tow.

On my way in I ran into a fellow who had called out my name when I was in the middle of an upper body workout a couple weeks before.

He had introduced himself as Ethan, and told me he'd chatted briefly with my online supersexual alter ego "somemikeithot."  I was grateful he was able to puzzle out my real name (you'd be surprised at what a riddle it is for some) and didn't shout out my handle at the gym.  I mean, it's sort of a Clark Kent/Superman need-to-know basis kinda thing.

Anyway, we had chatted.  He's a good-looking guy, if a little too South End WASPy for my taste. 

So I ran into him on his way out as I was on my way in Wednesday.  We chatted some more, and towards the end of our conversation I said "well, we should get together for a drink..." trailing off coyly for effect.

"...Ethan," he put in, seeming to think I was searching my memory for his name. Which I wasn't.

"Um, Ethan," I dutifully repeated anyway.

He gave me a searching look. 

"And you are...?"

I fought back an eye-roll.

"Mike," I said. 

I just thought it was funny, is all.  The whole affected little exercise.  Not only had he assumed I didn't remember his name and was searching my memory for it, but he'd also assumed I was presuming he had remembered mine. 

People you've just met who think they know what you're thinking — red flag.  But he was at least half right.  I didn't for one minute think he'd forgotten my name, despite the act.  I mean, he was able to remember it two weeks ago from a long-ago chat session I'd long ago forgotten.  You know?

Nonetheless, I went with it.  I had seen the goods online, and it was worth a shot.  This weekend was out, though, as was the next.

"I'm in P-Town EVERY WEEKEND!" He gushed. 

I threw up a little in my mouth, and we had to leave it at that. 

I did a quick upper body workout and had a shower.  There was an adorable little show-off jumping out when I was getting dressed.  I didn't get an explicitly sexual vibe as much as just a horny lad vibe from him. He was radiant with boy energy.  It was bouncing off the walls in all directions as he came hustling out of the shower in his towel, which he inexplicably whipped off right in front of me when he was turning the corner, giving me a gratuitous little show on his way to his locker. 

When I say "show," he was just walking to his locker with his tight, perky little butt exposed.  No biggie (literally).  But like most people, I like seeing a nice bare butt just for the sake of seeing it — it's a pleasure to behold when things fit together just so.  And I think some guys like showing them off just for the sake of showing them off.  And why not?  Men are show-offs.  We're wired like that.  Life is full of gratuitous gestures.  Get over it.

But we're so neurotic about nakedness.  Nakedness can never be gratuitous.  And I think part of the reason we're so neurotic has to do with the almost complete disappearance of our historically gender-segregated society.  Homosocial settings were once the norm, not just outside the home, but in the home as well.  Nowadays any homosocial setting where men meet away from the female gaze is suspect.  Straight men are simply no longer allowed to socialize with other men — with the explicit aim of socializing with other men — without suspicion of sexual apostasy. 

And that makes it a lot less fun for gay guys, too, let me tell you.   Don't get me started.

Back at Union, when I met Ex we were both wearing our two-sizes-too-small tees.  And in his artfully ripped jeans he really did look like the Hulk.  He had gone from a lean, muscular bod the last time we'd lunched to a bit of a muscle-bloated freak, sad to say.  Even his face looked freakishly bloated. 

At dinner he admitted off-handedly to "doing testosterone".  I didn't ask — he was telling me about a falling-out he'd had with an old friend over a purloined sweater, where the friend had blamed Ex's sweater-rage on his "doing Ritalin and testosterone".  But there was something else going on with The Face.

That made greetings a little awkward, but I tried not to let on.  A gentleman never asks and a lady never tells.

But things got weirder — in a freak-show sort of way — when we were seated across from Cardinal Sean O'Malley's dinner party.  Well, "party" isn't quite the word for that medieval waxworks.  From my perspective, Cardinal Sean (in his Scheming Monk frock, with his big blinking cow eyes) was like a bobblehead perched on Ex's left shoulder, while two waxwork dummies of indeterminate gender were seated, with their backs to me, on his right. 

There was also a husky young man in street clothes seated with them.  Ex, who could see them in the mirror behind me, wondered aloud if that was "The Boyfriend", but while he's certainly homophobic enough to be, I don't think Cardinal Sean swings that way.  That bitch is all business.

I had never been to Union.  The waitstaff was attentive.  We had a tall handsome waiter with hairy arms who didn't even sniff when Ex asked about the "price fix" menu.  We had beer instead of wine, since beer's always been our "regular guy" thing.  The grub was OK.

But I was really here for the monologue.  I got settled in and enjoyed the show.  And soon I was musing (Cardinal Sean bobbling on Ex's shoulder batting those big cow eyes and egging me on): "I really dated this guy?  For, like, two-plus years?" 

I wasn't saying it with regret so much as sheer wonderment.  I'm not generally a regretful person.  I don't see the point of re-imagining the past at the expense of the present, much less the future.  We'd had fun, but it was basically the world's longest hook-up.  I still bristle at the idea that aside from the sex we were ever intimate. 

And that's not to minimize the deep, wild intimacy of even anonymous sex.  An I-Thou is an I-Thou .  (I'll leave for another post the suggestion that all sex is anonymous on some level — that while personality plays a part, something happens in sex that is beyond the self — thus the I-Thou reference above — truly, sex is, in obvious and less obvious ways, way bigger than self.)

But on a slightly less philosophical plain, you know when you're deeply involved with someone and you can't see your way out, and then once you've gotten out and look back you can't quite see how you got sucked in in the first place?  Of course, Ex was a reliable shag.  I mean, we're talking a total fuckbot here. You could set your clocks by him.

But as he banged on at dinner about his "new Mike", a twentysomething lost boy he'd taken under is wing, and later about his "old new Mike", a scrappy fortysomething drifter with a drinking problem he had put to work, I finally understood — with the help of that Cardinal O'Malley bobblehead on his shoulder — what I was dealing with here.  A saint.  Saint Ex of the Lost Boys.

He fancies he takes in strays, puts them to work, and turns them into productive members of society.  That he sees sex as part of the quid pro quo doesn't diminish the charitable deed. 

When we met I was in an unsettled place — I'd left my life in Budapest after seven years overseas to look after my dad.  After that ordeal was done and dusted, I crashed with Sully, whom I'd summered with in Boston over the years.  I was taking teaching gigs where I could get them, and writing for Metro Corp., but was still underemployed and scraping along.  But I was not exactly a lost boy (or even a boy at all, at 36).

But that's still how he sees me, after all these years.  And I guess it's sort of touching in a way, although I'd rather not be classed with the alcoholics and runaways.  Sure, one night a year I'll be the Mary Magdalene to his steroidal Jesus in a two-sizes-too-small tee.  Why not? 

If they'd only had toothpicks at Union, I'd even have offered a splinter from Ex's to Cardinal Sean.

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*For the harrowing true story of my own encounter with the relic see here.