I met him on my first morning at a new job at Lichtman’s bookstore in Toronto. My boss, Lynn, warned me to have Mr. Weinmeier’s Sunday NY Times stored close to the door, because he didn’t like to wait. He was rich, which, apparently, made him important. Lynn walked me through how she packaged it up and wrote his name across the top of the plastic bag with a Sharpie: Weinmeier. All she told me about him was that he was a difficult, special client.
Just after nine, a jogger came through the entrance, sopping with sweat. From the far end of the counter I could see the moisture thick across his brow. He took a look at me, sort of scowled and tipped his head—he was processing that I was a new face here—then he said something I didn’t catch.
Pardon me, I said, stepping towards him.
He barked the sound again, and pointed to the bin under the counter where he knew his paper was stored. Weinmeier. I handed over the bag and said, Sorry, as he turned on his heel and left. Silence. Gone.
Weinmeier, nothing else. Sweat stains in his pits and ass crack as he jogged away.
I caught myself looking, then scolded, why was I finding this attitude sexy? Why are rude men better men? They must have some kind of power, or else how do they accomplish anything in the world? What’s that guy have that I don’t? Indifference is a smokescreen.
I know that shit is self-defeating, but when you’re young, that’s hot too. The challenge. Everything feels like a contest you might win, so make an attempt. That’s what they mean when they say boundless energy. Youth is wasted on the young because we’re always chasing useless shit. We don’t know what we should be chasing. Like: equity. Or tax-free savings accounts. We’re chasing anything that isn’t available because chasing is FUN. Boundless. Energy.
The next week I kept watching out the window to see which direction he’d come from. A little before eight-thirty I caught sight of him running south on the opposite side of the street. I pulled his newspaper bag out of the bin and left it in the cubby right by the door. We were busy for that half hour, so I didn’t have time to watch. Ricky did the job that week, damnit. But, that richie rich was reliable, a little before nine each week. The following Sunday, I spied him jogging up the other side of the street, and ten minutes later I was ready to meet him by the door. He only had to open it, and I thrust his sack through the open space. I don’t think he even looked at me. He grabbed the bag as he turned, all in one movement.
As the door swung closed, I noticed the smell of bread baking at Subway three doors down. Lately, I was avoiding Subway. One slow Thursday, the guy behind the counter had invited me into the back prep area so that he could rub his groin against me. I remember lettuce on the bamboo counter, half chopped into inconsistent slices. In my twenties, I would just do things that presented themselves because everything was a learning experience. Everything was exciting because it was new.
I guess I’ve always played a long game. I’m better at it now that I recognize it. Each week, I knew I had only thirty seconds or less to wear away at Weinmeier’s demeanour. I smiled, I wished him a great day, I laced some comments with just a hint of sour, so he’d know I resented him being so curt. When he got a haircut, I apologized for delaying—though I hadn’t delayed—and said that I nearly didn’t recognize him. So he’d know I noticed.
It took months, which was totally okay, right. A slow burn inspires the imagination more than a quick fix. Then, one Sunday, Weinmeier’s paper sat there all through nine and ten and eleven and twelve and one and two and three o’clock until it was time for me to go home. Wednesday, when I was back into work, his paper was still there, like cosmic design. I was so happy.
Ricky asked me what the deal was, what was going on. Why are you so perky? I just shrugged. What, I asked back. I’m not allowed to be happy?
Ricky tossed a ball of discarded packing tape at me. I caught it.
He was an odd case, because he looked like a dude and talked like a dude and had dude friends, but he worked in a bookstore and he read books. Book books. I hadn’t yet figured him out. This was back when waiters, retail staff, and hairdressers were jobs for either women or fags. In the ‘90s, only gay guys and geeks worked in bookstores. Or bi guys who hadn’t come out as bi yet, you know? The stereotypes were real until they weren’t. It took years for me to understand that if some guy was too nice to me to be straight, it was just a sign that he was raised with love. Sincerity is a privilege of the emotionally secure. Years later I realized that Ricky could well have been a good friend if I’d have let him.
That Wednesday, a little after six-thirty in the evening, Weinmeier waltzed in, sporting a suit, with his hair dry and combed. He wore brown leather brogues. Although the suit was tailored, you wouldn’t have had a clue what body he had under it.
There you are, I said cheerily. I reached down to drag the bin out from under the counter.
Here I am.
I handed the bag of newspaper to him over the counter, asking, What did you do for three days without this?
Worry, he said.
I didn’t let anybody touch it.
Good. I won’t dust for fingerprints.
Oh, mine burnt off in a house fire.
He paused, and in that pause, I think I became a person. Really? he asked with a small look of concern, like I might have feelings attached to that story.
No. Well, they almost burnt off when I was three. I landed in hot coals at the campsite, hands first. But the prints grew back.
I waggled my fingers so he could see the tips. My thumbs sported dark blue nail polish.
Good, he said, and stumbled a little. Maybe. I thought I saw in his face that he knew his response was inadequate. He was curt, I started to glean, because he was awkward.
There are different kinds of influence in the world: Weinmeier had looks. He had money. In the suit, he’d bought a type of masculinity I wouldn’t know for two decades. But le mot juste was one of mine. Timing, too.
Okay, see you Sunday, I said, dismissing him. I went back to unpacking books.
From the magazine rack, I caught Ricky give me the side-eye.
Sunday, he said, yup. Thank you.
As he walked out of the store, I felt my legs buckle. My insides were jello in an earthquake.
Ricky approached the counter, setting down a stack of expired magazines he’d pulled to make way for the current ones.
He spoke sentences to you.
I know.
He thanked you.
I’m going to pass out, I said.
We both howled.
◆
The weekends with friends that I didn’t spend at the bar or the rep cinema—likely because we didn’t have any cash to spend—we’d sit on the steps at the Second Cup coffee shop and watch the street like it was TV. It was gay mecca. Everyone called it The Suction Cup or The Steps. Let’s meet at The Steps, we’d say, at eleven, ‘cuz, before cell phones were a thing, that was the easiest way to ensure you and your friends could walk into the bar together. Often I’d show up early. One hour on the steps and you would find out who was now dating whom, who’d bought tight new pants and was hoping to get lucky, who was overdressed because they were just in town for the weekend. The Steps were one of the few places to meet people that didn’t involve getting drunk or stumbling around in the dark. Maybe there were gay athletic teams I could have joined, but that was long before I realized I liked sports. High school had ruined them for me. Only in my thirties did I decide to take my body back from the stories teenagers had told me about it.
The joy in going to The Steps wasn’t the coffee, it was the strangers. We always had this sense of Who will we meet tonight?
After the bars one evening that fall, I stopped in for a warm drink. The day had been hot, but when the sun set the cold crept out of the concrete and dampened everything. My coat was light, for the afternoon. I hadn’t planned to stay out late.
A crusty punk with tattoos on his knuckles was sitting at a table by himself. Shaved head, torn jeans. I should clarify—in the city he was a crusty punk, but back home, that was just poor. I knew who he was—he wasn’t a city boy.
He caught my eye and said hello before I’d even sat down, so I felt pressure to sit at the table next to him. Two hot bearded guys in the corner were speaking Farsi and an elderly woman was sleeping in her seat by the window, like she planned to be there all night.
The punk smiled at me again, so, waggling my fingers across my cup, I asked, What do those say?
He made his hands into fists: CANT LOSE.
Nice, I said.
My buddy did them. Needle and ballpoint ink. They might kill me one day.
I asked if he had others, and he turned to show me the 666 on the back of his head, shaped in a sort of clover. Behind the collar of his shirt, legion scribbled across the side of his neck. Did I want to touch them? I don’t think so, I said, unaware he was hitting on me. He looked too tough for me to imagine he could be interested in a preppy twink.
About five sentences later, he said he had a car and asked if I needed a ride home.
I knew there was danger in saying yes. It was super late, nobody knew me, and I’d be climbing into a guy’s car. This was before CCTV had taken over the cities. I thought you made life romantic by intention; you could build romance out of anything by simply deciding to say yes to it.
I told him it’d be a long cold walk when I got off the bus otherwise.
His car was a rusty Camry. The interior was surprisingly clean. He turned the key in the ignition and the alternator gave a sharp squeal as the engine turned over.
Where to, he asked.
I told him my address, which was a joke, because I lived on a quiet little side street that was only two blocks long, but he put the car into drive.
You don’t know where I live.
Just watch me, he said.
At a red light a block from my place, he gestured to the left, along the Don Valley. I used to cruise in there in my teens.
Really?
For grocery money.
Shit, I said, trying to be cool.
He leaned his forearms on the steering wheel. I want to warn you in advance, he said, I only have one testicle.
Okay. Sure.
Sometimes it freaks people out.
That’s fine.
Don’t go looking for it.
Haha, I won’t.
The light changed green. He eased his foot off the brake and drove through the intersection with his forearms still on the wheel.
Can I ask…where it went?
What? he asked, and leaned back.
Did you always have only one?
Ah. High school, someone stabbed me here. He placed a finger to his abdomen. The blade didn’t hit anything important but I got an infection that travelled down a tube and ended up in my ball.
I wanted to ask why someone had stabbed him, but I couldn’t figure out how to avoid sounding like I was blaming the victim.
The one I have left is huge, he said. So I don’t really need two.
He was correct.
When we arrived in my bedroom, he then warned me he had a big dick—‘like, massive’—which was also accurate. Thirty years later, it’s still the largest dick I think I’m ever going to see in person. Thirteen inches long, thicker than my forearm.
When I tried blowing him, I was barely able to get three inches of it past my lips.
He pushed himself up on his elbows on my futon bed, whispering, That’s not going to work.
I’d made him promise to whisper or I’d have to boot him out. My roomie Nijat was sleeping in the next room. The landlady downstairs could likely hear conversations as well as Nijat could. The floors were so thin I would hear Gloria talking at breakfast. She and her family spoke Korean at home, so I never knew what they were saying, but I’m sure our lives were an earful.
I asked him, What do you mean?
I won’t cum from a blowjob. Never have.
He slid an arm under his head, to better look down his torso at me.
I gripped him tighter.
You want me to fuck you, right? Everyone wants me to fuck them with this. Until they can’t take it.
I wasn’t sure what to say. I just giggled.
Don’t worry. We don’t have to. I can just blow you or something. I’m used to it.
I think I can take it, I said.
My curse, he said.
Pardon?
Dick curse. He took hold of it and flopped it forwards and back. It slapped him well above his belly button. You wanna try?
It was going to require massive amounts of lube, which, at twenty-one, I didn’t own, so I snuck into Nijat’s room while he was sleeping and stole the bottle from his nightstand. I hadn’t started buying underwear for myself yet—I couldn’t even go into the underwear section without breaking into a sweat. I’d no idea when or how I was ever going to buy lube. Nijat had refused to purchase some for me. You have to be your own adult.
Pffffffff. Okay, Dad.
Even with massive amounts of lube, sitting down on it took some considerable patience and coaxing—for which he was grateful, I could just tell, he appreciated the effort. When he finally slid past the barrier and his horsey member ascended up into my ass, I felt like I’d accomplished something super impressive: my asshole, I realized, had the ability to stretch wider than my mouth. People don’t talk about sex enough. Like, that should be on the Science Channel. This was my body and I had no idea what it was capable of.
We fucked maybe a half hour, trying a variety of positions. He was all patience. He reminded me of guys from back home who worked at the mill, with mothers they respected, who’d raised them right.
He held my hands in his as I came.
Afterwards, he asked for a towel.
He wiped himself and rolled towards me.
I slid a hand across the landscape of his hip. How about you? What do you like?
It’s okay, he said. I don’t cum with other people anymore.
You want to jerk off?
I don’t cum alone easily either. But when I do, I almost pass out. So I don’t bother.
You’ve passed out?
A dozen times, he said, like he was asking himself the question. Maybe more.
We were talking the way you only do late at night, in the dark. We were strangers, people who were going to remain strangers.
His dick was obviously a thing he had to explain, repeatedly. The dick that got in the way. I came up to meet his face and kissed him.
I’m glad you came home with me.
You looked sweet and innocent, he said, grinning, maybe a little cheeky. I honestly didn’t think we’d get that far.
Fooled you.
He put on a fancy-pants accent. I must apologise for under-estimating you. He kissed me again, a deep, slow, lover’s kiss. When we pulled apart, everything about him seemed to relax. I don’t really enjoy sex, he said, to be honest.
So why have sex if you don’t enjoy it?
This, he said, wrapping his arm around me and holding me to his chest. For this.
◆
A few Sundays later, another nine am came and went with no Weinmeier. I wondered if he was making a new pattern—I liked patterns, I liked predicting things, which had ruined a lot of TV shows for my family, because I’d guess the endings of cop shows in the first ten minutes. Patterns had worked for me because I could compensate for an absent domestic security by being right. I tried to remember when the last time was, precisely how many weeks ago, that Weinmeier’d been late. Could I anticipate his next late trip or were they random?
A little before noon, a woman stepped into the store, decked out. The ribbon on her straw hat was the same fabric as that of her dress and the piping across the lip of her purse. Her bag and hat matched her dress. Couture, before I knew what the word was. Not the kind of rich I knew growing up, which meant you lived in a new brick three-bedroom bungalow and worked at the paper mill. This was rich-rich. I only knew match sets like this existed because she was wearing one.
She did a short tour of the store, walking to the back and then up the middle aisle to the counter. Lynn, the manager, was settling totals in the back, but she looked up at the sound of the high heels on tile. I nodded at her, to say that I had this.
As the woman approached, I pretended to be doing something on the computer, hitting keys. She rested a hand on the countertop, then removed it immediately.
I’m here for my husband’s paper, she said.
Weinmeier, I blurted out, because, like that, I knew. For a half second my stomach opened like a trap door.
How did you know, she asked.
I just shrugged. I felt emptied out.
As I handed the bag across the counter, I said, You want to be careful of the ink on the bag. If someone used the wrong marker it can rub off on your clothes.
Great, she said, like maybe she hadn’t heard me right. I didn’t clarify.
At the end of that shift, I was so disconsolate I considered getting a Subway sandwich. I ate a slice of pizza instead.
◆
After my midnight trick had pointed it out, I began cruising that Don Valley strip near my place. Too regularly, in the first weeks. It was easy enough to find. I just followed a guy in tight jeans and combed hair walking by himself. People talk about radar, but if you were looking, the underbelly of gay life could be obvious.
The parkway at night was weird. It was different every time. The people changed, some of the people, you could count on that, but the place also seemed to re-arrange itself. What you tripped over one night was gone the next, or what was flat yesterday now had a root exposed, suddenly rising up. This spot in the woods had felt so isolated last night, and today, the bush has pulled back its branches, too tired to conceal us. Sometimes, leaves would have grown thicker overnight. We’d step behind this shrub and move sideways and be gone from the world. If we could remain quiet. The land was disorienting.
I’d had many nights that first month standing on the walkway learning the nuance of how to score. It was a complicated dance, under tree cover in the near-dark. Some nights I’d be there till dawn, starving for my own bed. I’d be so hooked on a manic kind of fear, my body would vibrate. Something more than shivers. Maybe it was a trembling particular to dissocation. That tangle of arousal and angst was a drug. Scientists have shown that little chemicals go off in the brain that make us crave the precise feeling of surrender I got from fear and lust and being near-blind in the black of the woods. I’d given up alcohol that year, but without realizing the switch, I’d replaced it with this. Midnight in the park. Dicks and more dicks. Dicks on demand.
The moon was out, but it was windy somewhere up in the stratosphere. Clouds were passing overhead at a surprising rate. I watched a strip of moonlight sliding on a diagonal, sailing across the ground, like a steady, mechanical searchlight. When it was a few feet from me, I determined that it’d pass my body, missing me, so I raised my arm straight out. The blue-white light scanned across my palm and forearm, without sensation.
Then it was gone, sweeping across another part of the park.
Moments later, to the right of me, twigs snapped. The bushes parted as a man stepped out awkardly from within them. Birthed from the night’s vulva. He stopped at the edge of the path, maybe four feet away. There was nothing special about his clothes— runners, jogging pants and a matching jumper, track suit—but he’d come from nowhere and I was a sucker for something that felt unusual.
If I didn’t move, to give some signal, he was just going to walk on, so I shifted my weight to face more towards him. I adjusted my ballcap. He turned to me as a car pulled along the lane behind the trees. For a moment, headlights made a large bright dot in my eyes. Everything appeared darker afterwards.
I said, You missed the coolest thing.
Oh yeah.
The moon, I started, then paused. The rest of that sentence just sounded tacky so I let it stop there.
Mm, he said.
Having heard voices, a couple men stepped out onto the path. Foot traffic had been slow. They were checking out who was new.
He walked over to me, asking low, You want to go somewhere?
I still hadn’t recognized him but it’s not hard to guess who it was.
He took my hand and turned. His fingertips soft. I remember thinking, Accountant maybe. My dad had said office workers were the laziest people alive. He called them sitters. To convince him my book store job was real work, I’d complain on the phone about my feet hurting from running around the store all week.
The man walked us to the other end of the path and made a left, still holding onto me. He took a sharp right and ducked his head, walking through a part in the bush I couldn’t see from my height. He knew this spot, either from earlier tonight or from another.
Here, he said. I brought lube.
He pulled a bottle out of his pocket and put it in my hand. The plastic was body temperature.
I leaned in to kiss him but he took a step back.
You want to fuck me, he asked, or do I have to fuck you?
I’d like to say I didn’t recognize his voice then. Or the track suit. That his last name didn’t flash across a screen in my brain. That I told him I couldn’t do it without kissing him. That I knew already how romance could be a thing of restraint, too. But nobody’d taught me that.
I let go of his hand and flipped open the lid to the plastic bottle. Ready, I said, and he turned around.