Before Rick, there were Omar, Kyle, Andrew, Nate, John, Jon, and Johnny. They all found it hard to see me as more than a hard dick and a firm ass. Or both. We'd move the child's seat to fumble in the back of the car; we'd do it in the lobby of their friend's apartment; we'd fuck in the last car of the train at three o'clock in the morning. Afterwards I'd always climb into my own bed wondering why I was sleeping alone, while they went home to their wives and girlfriends. Why hadn't anybody told me that being comfortably gay could feel lonelier than life in the closet?

Rick was the first intelligent, educated adult who had interested me in months. I went to a predominately white Ivy League school, and so accordingly most of my friends are white. My good friends of color are all women. If black America is lamenting the dearth of educated black men, then educated black men who are gay and OK with it seem like an endangered species.

Black men tend to see me, though, where men of other races simply don't. I've noticed a strange sort of racism in the gay community that tends to render black men invisible. Maybe it's the paranoid, stigmatizing reporting on black men and AIDS; maybe it's something as dumb but insidious as the lack of black models in the Abercrombie & Fitch ad campaign. Who knows; maybe it's that I just don't do it for a sizable portion of the white community. (I've been on more than one date that's begun or ended with "Sorry, I'm just not into black guys"; the ones who say they're into black guys are actually just into black cocks.)

Black men have different hang-ups. They tend to think I sound white, which, to them, makes me seem like a Republican, which really isn't a turn-off; it's just exotic. But after I tell them I have a media job, men on the DL are leery that I'll out them, so I learned to make something up -- "I'm a graphic designer," "I'm a lawyer," "I coach middle school girl's soccer" -- in the same way that with some men, in certain contexts, I'll alter the way I speak so I sound less ... Republican.

Steve, a news producer from Nebraska that I'd slept with at a black journalists conference, told me he was happy living on the DL. He was a good husband who made good money that kept his wife oblivious. He told me he "earned the right to spend the night" me, and that he looked forward to spending the next night with me, too.

"What about the day?" I felt stupid for asking.

"If I'm free, we can do it in the afternoon, sure."

He didn't know what I was asking and he never called me. I watched him dance with some women at a party. I watched him disappear with two men in the elevator. I ran into him on my way out of the hotel, and he said, "See you next time!"

I tried to be casual about it, but it didn't work. "You're an asshole," I said, and climbed into the airport shuttle. On the way to my flight, I thought about Googling him and calling his wife. I tried letting it all go, but I felt like the pathetic refuse DL men leave behind.

------------

Anyway, as I was saying: Rick drove the car, and I was sad: I'd seen something that dampened my enthusiasm.

"Can I ask you what that ring is?" I asked.

"Man, you don't miss anything, do you?" After a long pause, he said, "I'm with somebody."

I imagined his wife and their adorable children waiting for him back in suburbia and let out a long sigh.

"I'm with a guy," he said.

Well, this was unprecedented. He was on the DL, in the closet and contemplating cheating on his boyfriend? Earlier that night Rick mentioned that he could easily have gone to a straight bar to pick up a woman, and had regularly contemplated being with one. Still, even though his steady partner wasn't a woman, and he liked sex with men, he was adamant that the world outside his bedroom see him as a practicing heterosexual.

"I live here, and he lives somewhere else, and sometimes I get lonely and need to feel wanted and attractive," he said. "Right now, I feel that with you. Is that a problem for you?"

"Well, I like you. So, yeah, that's a problem for me. But I'm lonely, too. And I want to feel wanted."

"So what are we doing?"

"We're talking about how much life totally sucks."

I've been in this moment with lots of men, the moment where you realize you're the milk he had to pick up on the way home or the crazy thing he did on that business trip in Miami. Because even if he had to confess, I'd be the other woman. I'd have to be Pam, the girl he used to work with, or Skittles, some out-of-control stripper he met at So-and-So's bachelor party.

He pulled up in front of my house and we sat in the car. He asked me to touch him, and I did. I asked him to come up, and he declined.

Recent Stories