CHAPTER 3

All out of love but I take it from the past

All out of words cause I’m sure it’ll never last

Sleep doesn’t come until early morning hours, so I lie awake and think. Remember. Reflect. I go through those last four years in my head, over and over again, as if looking for a breaking point, a flaw, a place where we went wrong so that we both ended up here. Shattered, fucked up, unwanted. I can’t find it.

It was August after our junior year when Kurt met Marcus. The damn charmer went up to him one day in our favorite café and started a conversation. Once they were on the subject of fashion, he had Kurt where he wanted him. Marcus told him who he was, showed him a couple of things he was working on that he just happened to have on him, dropped in a compliment or two and my boy was hooked. I’ve always thought it was suspicious that he coincidently found Kurt just as he had a chance to bloom with a serious competition. It was too convenient.

It certainly helped that Marcus was easy on the eyes, six years older and oh so experienced and worldly. It took all of one date and Kurt was putty in his hands. He was starstruck, and so in love he was glowing. When Marcus told him he loved him, there was no turning back. Kurt was lost to the world. And to me. We spent less and less time with each other, until he moved out altogether. We still met sometimes, but it just wasn’t the same – what is an hour in a café every other week when you’re used to being together almost 24/7?

Suddenly my life was empty. I had way too much time and no one to talk to. I really realized then just how much Kurt meant to me. How big a part of my life he was. When he went away, he left behind all this empty space that I didn’t know what to do with. I tried. I decided maybe it was time to finally start dating – I was a single gay guy after all, in a city where it wasn’t a death sentence. It turned out I was actually considered attractive and once it leaked out I was on the market, so to speak, I had no trouble finding dates. I went out with several guys, but after what I had with Kurt, I couldn’t really find a common ground with any of them. It was just so tedious, all these mechanics of getting to know each other, weighing reactions, interpreting words and behaviors. Like trying to learn a new language every time, when I already knew one perfectly. Maybe I never really wanted anyone else. I may have been pining after Kurt, I admit. Anyway, by New Years I gave up trying to find a boyfriend. In January, he actually found me.

I met Danny at an open mic night in a campus club. I decided to sing there for the first time, to get some feedback on a few songs I wrote, so I turned up with my guitar. The reactions were quite enthusiastic and when I went back to my table, a cute guy with striking blue eyes came up to me. He was a year younger, majoring in English. We hit it off immediately. He just got me, almost as well as Kurt did. We had similar sense of humor, liked many of the same movies and singers, and had some similar experiences. It was enough to spark something.

We spent half the night talking and decided we liked each other. He walked me to my dorm. One goodnight kiss led to another, then there were dates and fireworks and fun, chemistry and hormones, suppressed for so long around Kurt. Danny was my first. He had more experience, having grown up here in New York, where dating is easier for gay kids. He was gentle, patient and enthusiastic, everything I could dream of in a first lover. He taught me everything, step by step, orgasm by orgasm. It was mindblowing. I was in love.

It wasn’t all about the sex, of course. Danny was a gentleman, a romantic and a poet. He surprised me daily with little tokens of affection, silly little rhymes that I found in my pockets and my textbooks. There were long walks in the moonlight, romantic dates, picnics, words that made my heart race. Phone calls in the middle of the night just to say I love you. Real love letters, sent by mail. Dancing in the rain, in the empty parking lot to the music in our heads. He was everything I dreamed about when I thought of a boyfriend, and more.

Once I graduated, my parents bought me the apartment and soon after, I asked Danny to move in with me. He didn’t hesitate, and our relationship got even better. We fit together, easy and comfortable, without initial tensions and problems everyone warned us about. Our sex life was fantastic and varied, we were both open to experiments within reasonable limits, and by our first anniversary I was able to say that I knew what I liked and how, and was quite well versed in the language of bodily pleasures.

I was determined to finish my post-graduate studies in two years instead of the customary three, and as always when I was motivated, I managed to do so. The end of my last year was approaching and inevitably, I began thinking about my future. And along with jobs and career paths and ways to smuggle as much music in as possible, I still found time to dream about weddings and married life, and – further down the road – children, a dog, a house in the suburbs. Family. These were still just dreams, but my heart was there. I was deeply in love and more and more, I allowed myself to imagine my future with Danny. Kurt approved of him, which was important to me, and my family accepted him as much as I could hope for. I was happy with him.

Until he broke my heart.

I used to believe that love can vanquish anything – time, distance, any kind of trouble. I believed that I love you meant forever. I thought that if you love someone, you never, ever want to hurt them. I was wrong.

I don’t believe in love anymore. It’s just a trick of chemicals in our brains. A temporary mental illness of sorts. It’s not real. It’s just a way to get hurt. Really, really hurt. Sure, I’m grateful for what I learned with Danny. Sure, I have a lot of happy memories connected with him. But when I try to decide if it was worth the pain of heartbreak, the shattered dreams and hopes, the tasteless, numb months afterwards – I’m not sure.

I don’t date anymore. I hook up sometimes, when the need to connect to someone even for a brief moment becomes too strong to resist. I have one-night stands, safe sex in anonymous hotel rooms. Nothing more. Never anything more. I don’t believe in love.