For a brief time my first year in New York, I had a crush on B.
B was a promoter: You’d find him at The Ritz, or really any bar that had twinks flocking to it like moths to a lamp. The protégé of another New York City gay club promoter, infamous for his hot pink-rimmed glasses, B did well.
That wasn’t what I liked about B—sure, I liked going out to bars, but I couldn’t give two shits about the perks of a bar that had $6 drinks strong enough to fuck up a horse. I liked that B was sarcastic as hell, constantly making fun of said twinks that flocked to him nightly for drink tickets and VIP bottles.
But he never made fun of me. Maybe he could see that I wasn’t just another twink looking for a free drink. Maybe I was just more his type than the others. I guess it doesn’t really matter now.
After an underwear party at Fairytale Lounge, he invited me and a few of his close friends to go to karaoke in Chinatown. We stayed up past 6 a.m., singing and drinking and taking smoke breaks every 30 minutes.
We left: Everyone dispersed, leaving the two of us to walk toward the train. He was downtown in Brooklyn; I was uptown in Washington Heights.
“So what’s your deal?” he asked me, stumbling at my side.
“What do you mean, ‘What’s my deal?’” I slurred, carefully putting one foot in front of the other.
“You come to all my parties. You come out with me after. So…”
“So what?” I asked, trying to sound mysterious and aloof but probably just sounding loud and drunk.
“When are you going to come home with me?” he asked.
I’d been waiting for him to ask me: After seeing how sarcastic he’d been to the other twinks, I didn’t want to put myself in a position of being embarrassed by asking him myself. “Tonight,” I smiled, “err, today, whatever it is.”
“We can’t today,” he said. “My husband is home right now.”
I stopped walking. Husband? What? I must have been too drunk: Maybe someone slipped something into one of my drinks. “What?”
“My husband works nights. He’s just getting home now.”
“You’re married?”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t started walking again; I had to process this new information. “How long?”
“Almost eight years—didn’t you know? It’s on my Facebook profile. I certainly don’t try to hide it.”
Naturally, I looked it up the second I got home. He was right: If I’d taken the time to stalk him a little, I’d have seen all the photos of the two of them, the “MARRIED TO” in his profile.
Sometimes, I guess we only see what we want to see.
I never did go home with him, and eventually he stopped inviting me out. He and his husband are divorced now, and he lives in New Jersey.
And I’m still looking for a husband of my own.
