When I was in college the only family I had in 500 miles was my aunt Marty and her husband Dave. Marty came of age in the 70’s, and her life reflected the wanderlust of the era; after finishing college she worked as a meat cutter for 10 years, decided that wasn’t good enough, went to graduate school and became a pharmaceutical chemist. Dave, who had more of a foot in the 80’s, was a chemist who loved his pop culture and television science fiction. They met at a extracurricular volleyball league, fell in love, and got married in the early 1996.
As I was far away from home they would take me in on weekends and let me stay in their spare bedroom. What I really loved about staying with Marty and Dave was how very low key their home life was. Growing up with two siblings, my parents were constantly taking us from some activity to another as if our minivan was a shuttle service. My aunt and uncle spent their mornings reading the paper looking for deals at grocery stores – a product of my grandparent’s frugality – and then would plan out something to make for dinner. In the in between, they’d watch a movie, read the paper, listen to CD’s, and drink microbrew. To me, this defined the perfect relationship: two people living together, enjoying life, with little to no drama.
When I was coming out to myself it was a struggle because it made me question all of the fundamentals of who I was, as if I had built the house of me on a swamp that now had to be burned down and rebuilt. Who was this new Nick? So much of myself had been pre-determined by my computer nerd nature that I had never needed to look at everything else, but now everything about me was fair game. Chatting online with other gays helped me find a starting point. Gay chat rooms are full of discussions of dicks, ass holes, drag – and that’s on a Monday – but if you look hard enough there are people who just want to talk. Talking to other people like me I realized that being gay wasn’t my fault; It wasn’t because I demarked the wrong circle in the 8th grade Scantron health test or something like that. We didn’t know why we were who we were, but who really knows why they are anyhow? What I did know was the life I was looking for: a relationship with someone I loved, where life was low key and low on drama. I wanted my aunt and uncle’s life.
While there are many people who desire the perfect long term relationship, Dallas 24 year old gay guys don’t have a large overlap in the venn diagram. New York has culture, Kansas City has barbeque, and Dallas has a lot of horny gays looking for Mister Right Now who really want nothing to do with someone who was waiting for someone special to have sex with. The second guy I went on a date with broke it off after two dates because he was “an intensely sexual person” who didn’t want to “waste their time with someone who didn’t wasn’t the same.” Fun fact: He had just gotten a job at Arthur Anderson. I didn’t feel bad when they collapsed with Enron.
Manuel was the first guy I dated who was relationship material. In February of 2002 he convinced me to meet him at Cafe Brazil on Hwy-75. He had grown up in the Dominican Republic, and had come to the US for college. Graduating in 2000 he got a job at Initech, which was just down the street from Multi-National Incorporated. He was about my height and had an athletic build from playing volleyball. Being both from hispanic backgrounds we understood the “hispanic machismo” and the complications that being gay brings. On our third date, seeing “A Beautiful Mind” at the Cinemark at LBJ and Dallas Tollway, things took an bad turn. Being both completely oblivious to the ways of dating and a film major who believed “movie theaters were for watching movies”, I was completely unprepared for when he began to caress his hand across my abdomen. The honest truth here is that sex scared the sh*t out of me. In my twenties, sex was something that led to STD’s which led to embarrassing conversations with your parents which led to ending up a hobo. Sex would cross a line that would take me from “someone looking for love in this crazy world” to “one of those dirty gays.” It would take me from “It Happened One Night” to “Skinimax.”
Manuel and I went from being involved romantically – if you can call it that – to being friends after that incident. The paradox of my early twenties is that I was convinced that I wanted a relationship but had no idea the only way you find the perfect guy is getting involved with the wrong guy over and over. You can’t know how great the beach is unless you’ve swam in a lot of dingy pools. Manuel was relationship material – and I discovered later totally ripped – but I wasn’t ready to be involved with someone in that way.
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