Eric’s Reflections

“I read his letter.” I don’t know what face he made, but I can imagine. I kept my eyes down, focused on the fork that ran across a slice of sloppy joe pizza. Eric didn’t respond. My eyebrows raised and I pursed my lips. “That’s what’s new. I saw David a few months back in Philadelphia. He gave it to me.”

More silence as I looked up to face him. The restaurant was quiet. It was a contrast to the packed street just a few steps from the door. Oxford Street was cold. It was also completely filled from one side to the other with Londoners looking for after-Christmas sales at Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser and all of the boutiques that line it.

“Meet me at Duke and Oxford?” Eric had asked/ordered when I’d called him from my hotel in Kensington a few hours earlier. Just over a year had passed since anything that might have been happening between us ended in a scrambled message to London.

“I know it wouldn’t have been simple.” He crossed his arms and leaned forward on the table pushing his plate forward. I continued, “It’s not life that’s complicated, but living it will fuck you over.”

Eric’s head tilted, “How long has it been?”

Indirectly, I answered his question, “He would have been thirty-five December 26th.” I shook my head gently, “It’s difficult to wrap my mind around that,” a pause, “Maybe because it reminds me that I’m not twenty-three, that a decade has passed and it’s hard to know what parts of it were real.”

“What parts feel real?” His feet stretched out and wrapped around one of mine.

I glanced at another couple at a table across the restaurant. They might have been in their early twenties. She kept a scarf tied tightly around her neck, her chocolate hair pulled into a casual ponytail. He reached across the table and stole a bite from her plate. She lowered her shoulders in mock exasperation and smiled at him.

“The parts with people?” It was a question to myself. I turned my attention back to Eric, “Strange thing for a guy who’s alone.” I was quiet for several seconds. “Mostly alone.”

He reached under the narrow table, leaning forward more and placing his hands on either side of my knee. “You are not alone now.”

I grinned gently. “You know…” I breathed in deeply, “I came to London to be alone.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Not true.” My face responded for me. Eric continued, “Why did you call me?”

Would there be bad stuff now? Was Eric angry? Instead of asking him directly, “What?”

“You called me so you can’t be alone.”

My turn, “Why did you want to see me?”

He straightened back in his chair and seemed to ponder the question before answering, “I think I missed you.”

“You think you missed me?” It was a response that required deciphering.

“You are not so messed up or bad as you say.” He put his hands underneath him and raised his shoulders. “You care about people and I think it hurts you to do this sometimes.”

“Eric,” I responded with a surprised expression, “I am not very careful with people’s feelings.” My voice was softer now and my forehead furrowed as I felt my words climb out of the buried places we push away from our consciousness, “I have hurt people that I care the most about.”

A shift in the conversation was splattered on his face. “Let’s go.” Eric stood abruptly and started to maneuver into his coat. It was an unexpected transition. I stood and followed his lead. A few minutes later, we were walking along the crowded, cold side streets of Piccadilly Circus.

As we neared the roundabout, Eric’s gloved hand reached out for mine. I looked down at our hands, then up to him. He was moving ahead, eyes forward. I remembered Fuencarral in Madrid and how quickly he’d moved through the city. I warmed inside, allowing someone to take the lead. I was turned around, and didn’t care at all.

We stopped in front of a Puma store. The crowds had thinned and the centuries-old street curved before us, the tall narrow buildings making the place oddly quiet. Eric turned to look at me with a smile.

“Why are we stopping?” I asked, watching my words crystallize in the frozen air.

“I wanted to show you this place.”

I looked around wondering what I was missing. “The Puma store?”

He reached forward with resting his hands on my head. He was poised to lay hands on me as though we were at a Christian revival in Alabama. “This is where I broke my heart for the very first time.” I looked at him quizzically, silently soliciting him to continue.

He moved a step away from me and faced the opposite side of the street. “I came to London to be with him. I left Paris, my family, all to be with him.” He turned back toward me and the Puma store. “This is where he worked.”

“You never told me this.” I stepped forward toward him. “I thought you came here for your job.”

“Non.” He was French again, “The job was after.”

“What happened?”

Eric shrugged, “He didn’t love me. He told me right here after his work.”

“What did you do?”

His head cocked to the side, his eyebrows raising, “I cried.”

I smiled, “After you cried?”

“I found work and tried not to see him.” We started walking again, slower than we had before. “It was difficult because I lived with him.”

I winced, “Yikes.”

“Yikes, yes. It was a sad time for me, but it is good that it happened.” I wasn’t sure where this would go. There were a couple of directions Eric could be going. “That’s not like it was for you with Tyler.” We’d crossed through to a busier street and Eric was watching the traffic looking for a cab. He stopped against the curb and turned to me. “I think love is water, ami.”

“Water?”

He turned again to hail a taxi that pulled up to the curb. “You have to drink it, but be careful not to drown.” He opened the door to the cab and stepped inside.

We settled into the warmth of the car. I watched the lights of London speed past us as we headed to Kensington. My hand moved slowly across the seat between us, stopping at Eric’s leg. We looked at each other through the reflection in the window as he took my hand again.

“He loved you, Eric.” His eyes steadied in the reflection as he squeezed my hand.

Looking for Michael

8:23pm

His skin was soft. It was young and unblemished. The lights from Times Square danced across it, showing the goose bumps that rose along his shoulders and chest. Neither of us spoke as he moved slowly forward. He stopped just in front of me, holding my eyes with his own.

His hand reached for mine and brought it slowly to him. He pressed his fingers into my palm, opening my hand and resting it above his heart. His skin was warm. I felt the steady drumming beneath his skin; felt my breath move in and out in disquieted rhythm.

He reached around me and pulled himself into me tightly. His head laid on my shoulder and I ran my free hand along the dip of his spine until I met the prickly hairs where his head and neck met. I could smell the shampoo in his hair and I breathed in the flowery newness of it.


10:07pm

“Are you thirsty?” He reached across me to get the glass of water on the nightstand. He laid himself across my chest and drank. The heavy condensation that collected on the glass as the ice had melted dripped slowly onto my skin. I chilled from the sensation of his warmth and the cold water.

He set the empty glass back on the table, but didn’t move. The sheets were tangled under him leaving his back and ass exposed. He was completely unabashed, unfettered and simple. He smiled at me, resting his head on the shoulder propped up next to me. I closed my eyes and extracted my left arm from under him, laying it on the small of his back.

“Comfortable?” He ran his right hand along the stubble on my chin.

I smiled in response. “Are you?”

“Uh huh.” He pried at my eyelids, “Open up.” I did, and enjoyed the glow of the perfect teeth exposed by his smile.

“How are you not with someone tonight?” I asked.

He crinkled his eyes together, “I am.”

Although it was pretty much a perfect answer that made me swoon just a bit, “I mean someone else. A boyfriend, or friends or whatever.”

“Well,” he leaned closer, “I don’t have a boyfriend, and my friends don’t do this.” He drew forward and bit gently at my neck.

I drew up in response and he laughed lightly. “You could do better, Michael.” I moved beneath him, rolling him onto his back. He pulled the sheets and blanket up to his waist and nestled into my side. “Says you. I’m having a good time."

I hesitated, but asked the question anyway. “Why?”

“What?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you having a good time?” I could feel his head move to look at my face. I kept my eyes toward the ceiling.

“I guess what we just did was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Yah, but I mean you’re a good looking guy who lives in Manhattan.”

“So? You’re a good looking guy who lives in Kansas or wherever.”

“Missouri.”

“Missouri. It’s still a weird question.” He moved his head back to my chest and crossed an arm over my stomach.

We lay in quiet for several minutes. I felt his breath regulate with mine, or mine regulate with his. His fingers stopped moving along my skin and I thought he’d gone to sleep.

He was very still when he spoke. “You looked at me.” His voice had been a whisper and I let it settle for several seconds.

“Hmm?”

He spoke more clearly, but in silent, stalwart tones. “You looked at me. In the store, in your hotel, during… you looked at me.” I left the silence, hoping he would go on. After a minute or so, “No one does that. Not really. Not without wanting something. When you look at me, you’re like looking for me.”

Quietly, "I don't mean to be... creepy."

Michael reached beside me to fold his hand in mine. “I like that you look for me.”

I turned my head toward the lights of New York and the world beyond it that soared in echoes of indigo emotions and souls wanting so much to be found. My eyes pooled as I squeezed the hand of a twenty-three year-old who understood what it is to be noticed and thought of and for even four hours in a cold December, to be held to and cared after.


11:48pm

“My flight’s at two o’clock.”

“So this is it ‘til next time?”

I pulled his jacket off the back of the sofa and handed it to him. “Next time?” I smiled.

He stretched himself into the thin black leather of the jacket, lining up the red and white stripes and ran down the arms with his wrists. “You’re coming back, right?"

“I’ll be back sometime in January or February.” He smiled back. When he smiles his bottom lip sticks forward.

He leaned forward and laid the palm of his right hand flat against the top of my head. He touched his nose to mine, “Sure?”

“Sure.” I grinned back.

He moved to the door and stepped into the hallway. I followed with one hand on the latch. He turned and we kissed. Without another word, he moved down the hallway to the elevators.