11: Gil
CASUAL ENCOUNTERS, a novel set in NYC circa 2008
Gil: The way I met my lover, it’s a curious story. I was coming out of Zabar’s one day and I happened to spot this young man—well, young to me, he’s thirty-five—and he caught my eye because he was wearing a French rugby jersey, you know, with the traditional patch and symbol on it. Of a cock, or rooster, rather? Now, I’m not French and I don’t even speak the language—though I’m learning, I’ve taken classes at the Alliance Française—but the fact is I’m a hardcore Francophile and I’m also a great fan of rugby, believe it or not. It’s a beautiful game—violent, yes, but not in a fascist way like American football, and fortunately the players aren’t encumbered with all that equipment. I can appreciate violence when it’s done right. So at any rate when I saw this guy I couldn’t let him pass without a word, no, no—I had to approach him. We chatted for a few minutes. It wasn’t love at first sight. He was wearing flip-flops and his feet didn’t do anything for me. That can be very important to me. So it was nice, but I had no reason to think there was any potential for a relationship—not that I was looking for one, necessarily. Now a couple of months pass and I discover this bistro I mentioned. It’s fairly new and it’s not far at all from my building and even though it’s not what you’d call elegant or anything it’s very cosy and the drinks there are reasonable. And you hear French spoken—the staff is all French and a number of the customers too. And I like that. So I began to stop in on a regular basis. I’d sit at the bar with my copy of L’Équipe, the French sports newspaper. I pick it up at a newsstand at 72nd Street along with Paris Match, of course, and sometimes Le Figaro (I prefer Le Figaro to Le Monde). I don’t read perfectly, of course, but the pictures alone are phenomenal. Just phenomenal. You don’t see photojournalism like that in American publications anymore. Which is a shame because this used to be the center of all that at one time, with Look and Life and some of the other magazines I can remember, but those are long gone. Meanwhile, in France—and other parts of Europe as well, but France in particular—they still appreciate that, they nurture it. You can tell that the pictures aren’t merely there to illustrate the articles, they’re considered significant in their own right. It’s a different sensibility, and one that appeals to me. So, anyway, I get a lot just out of the pictures alone, and then I see what I can get from the articles. I’m in no rush. Given time, I’m able with just the little that I know of the language to absorb more than you’d think. I find it very relaxing. I’ll tell you what it’s like. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those old Jacques Cousteau specials, but he had one of those what are they called? Bathyspheres, I think. Spherical structures with glass on all sides that let you go down into the deepest parts of the ocean to look and yet you’re protected from the sharks and stingrays and giant eels and whatever else is down there. That’s how it feels, in a certain way. Just give me my copy of L’Équipe and a gin and tonic and a quiet corner of the bar with a young French bartender to glance up at now and again, and that’s all I need. All the craziness around me—well, it doesn’t go away, that may be asking too much, but it doesn’t affect me. Anyway, after a while they noticed what I was reading, the staff there. I told them I’m a rugby fan, which impressed them. It impressed them because it’s not a popular sport in the States and in any case it’s the French team I follow. And so they’d tell me their manager is also a great fan of the sport and oh, you should come back tomorrow and meet him. They’d keep telling me that. And for a while I kept missing him because he’s in and out, but one evening they brought him out to introduce me, and who was it but the young man I’d met outside Zabars’s, my lover. I considered him my lover after that night. I don’t use that word lightly. The whole time that our relationship lasted, oh, I was in another world! Of course, it never reached that stage, but I could easily have committed to him. Just to give you an idea how seriously I felt about it. Now, I wouldn’t have been comfortable calling him my husband the way some people do nowadays, that’s simply not my style. I prefer companion. But marriage was definitely in the cards, from my perspective. Oh, no question. I was ready to commit. Whenever I got to see him, it made me so happy, I can’t tell you. And I don’t feel that way about a lot of people. Of course, he was very busy. He was flying back and forth every week to LA where they had another branch that he was also managing. So I never knew precisely when I’d get to see him, but every night that there was even the slightest chance I stopped in just in case. It was such a powerful feeling for me to feel so much affection for someone. That doesn’t happen to me often, believe you me. And it was mutual, I’m sure of that. You could tell. He always greeted me very warmly when he saw me and whenever he had the time he would sit and have a drink with me. He didn’t do that with the other customers. And I would always bring in things to show him that I knew he would find interesting—little things, but ones I knew he’d be able to appreciate because we shared so many interests, he and I. Articles or pictures that I came across in my French publications, photographs from my trip to Paris. One time I brought in a children’s book I’d borrowed from the Alliance Française library. I was excited in part because I’d been able to read it straight through, but aside from that the book was really very special in a certain way and I knew he’d be able to recognize that. Another time I showed him a program I had saved from Jackie Onassis’s funeral at St. Ignatius Loyola. I didn’t attend, of course, but I was standing outside to pay my respects and somebody going by dropped one. Little things like that. So we shared these interests and I was always on the lookout for things that would engage him to some degree. It’s not often I meet someone who’s receptive like that, and, feet aside, ha ha ha, I just found him adorable. I mean, he’s no fashion model, don’t get me wrong, but he has a certain way about him that I find very, very attractive. And I didn’t mind the age difference between us at all—in fact, I appreciated it. I appreciate differences in a couple. Especially when both members of the couple are of the same sex, you know, I find that differences can make it exciting, they really add something. So I didn’t have a problem with the May-September aspect. And I know the attraction was shared. It may sound funny, but for one thing he liked my arm hair. I have rather hairy arms, and he commented on that. People like different things. But he wasn’t ready to take it to a physical level, and I didn’t push it. I didn’t push it. I never would. And between you and me, I don’t even need too much of that myself, believe me. A simple display of affection is plenty for me. I can’t take much more than that. That’s been a problem for me, as a matter of fact, the couple of other times in my life that I’ve been close to someone in this way. Because it’s usually the other person who wants to get more physical with me than I feel personally comfortable with. Oh, believe me, I don’t even like to have to watch another person eating, let alone touch their penis or their anus or whatever it is people do. No, no, no. So I was glad in a way, and even though a little more contact would have been nice I didn’t push it. We would hug sometimes when we greeted one another and that was all. Well, the most we ever did was once when I said goodnight to him I took his hand and touched it to my lips. But it wasn’t gross or anything. It was very European, in a way. He didn’t mind. So that was all right, but I could see he wasn’t comfortable going further, and I never pushed. Especially since we were always in public when we met, and at his workplace, no less. And he’s not open about his sexuality. But I can understand that too. I mean, I’ve been there, you see. I was the same way at his age. And even today I’m not the kind to wave a rainbow flag—that’s not my style. This question of orientation is something I personally struggled with for years and years, even after my mother passed, so it’s not like I have any problem with his being closeted per se. After all, from what I understand he comes from a very bourgeois family, very Catholic and all that, from the provinces no less. From Lyons. So there are certain family pressures and expectations to factor in, and I have no idea what his work environment is like. At the corporate level, I mean. Oh, he has his reasons, I don’t doubt it for a minute. I can relate to all that. Even with me, I didn’t expect him to confide his feelings to me in so many words. But what I can’t tolerate are these fucking mind games. I’m sorry, I just can’t let it go. I’m not equipped for such heartache, I have to tell you. I have a sensitive side. I’ll tell you what happened—and this wasn’t even the first time something like this had come up, but let’s say it was the most serious incident. My lover went away to LA on a longer trip than usual. Each day I’d come in hoping to see him there. I’d see his assistant, she’s there every day, and I’d always say hello. Now she may very well have noticed that he and I have a thing for each other, but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. So I never asked her about his schedule or when he’d be back. I just wanted to be careful in case he was sensitive or something. But finally I just said to her one day while we were chatting about different things, I said, “Oh, by the way, I haven’t seen Yves lately and there’s something he wanted me to pass along to him” (I was bending the truth a little, what I had in mind was actually something he didn’t know about yet that I knew he would be very interested in). I told her, “I’m not able to put my hands on his email address” (which I’d never had, to tell the truth, but never mind). So I asked her if she’d mind giving it to me again, and she didn’t make a big deal out of it. She wrote it out for me on a business card and I went home that night and went on my computer and sent him a link to something I’d come across. It was a video that I knew he’d find very interesting, to say the least. It focuses on a certain star player on the French national team whom we both admire very much, and it compiles in the form of a montage some of the highlights of his career, so to speak, set to music. It’s really very special. It includes footage of him and the other players celebrating some of the big victories he’s earned them, which is fun to watch. Toward the middle there are a few shots of him being interviewed in the locker room which may be less interesting, in a way, but nothing too shocking (they all aired in Europe after all) and in any case that isn’t what’s emphasized but rather all these fantastic plays he’s made over the years that show how amazingly graceful he is on the field—balletic is really the only word, but not in a showy way. Anyway, at the bottom of the message I just wanted to put a few words so I wrote, “Tu me manques”—meaning “I miss you”—and signed it “Gilles,” which is my name in French. Now that isn’t too demonstrative, I think, for a private little note. He might possibly have objected to the use of tu—the French can be very touchy about that, you know, especially when they come from a background like his—but it seemed too silly to write vous, it really did. It would have taken away the whole point, I felt. And after all he knows very well I’m no native speaker, he could have pardoned the faux pas, if that’s what he took it for. Because I never got a response of any kind. And I was mystified. Not that I expected him to write me back a love letter, necessarily, nothing like that. But the courtesy of a simple acknowledgement, you know—it’s so easy, with email, you don’t even have to lick a stamp. You just hit reply and type in, “Thanks. I enjoyed this.” Or simply: “I enjoyed this.” Or simply: “Thanks.” If I had received even a “Thanks”—or even better a “Merci”—well, either way—that would have been enough, that would have made my day, and more, believe me. And even if it offended him in some way—if he found it a little too intimate for his comfort zone, or—I don’t know—he had a problem with my involving his assistant, or he came to know I’d been a little naughty and acquired his address under slightly false pretenses—whatever it might have been, he could have simply let me know, you know? Am I wrong about this? That’s what I mean about communication. You don’t just unilaterally cut off contact. But that’s the way it is. I’m not about to turn around and throw myself at his feet. Even though, let me add, that may very well be what he’s expecting. Well, I’m sorry. I refuse. I did go back, once, only once, a few weeks later, on Bastille Day, when I knew he’d be there. And all the staff people were pleased to see me and asked me where I’d been because I never used to stay away so long, and my lover came over and, well, he didn’t have a drink with me—of course, it was very busy that day—but he greeted me and asked how I’d been and we chatted for a minute. And I just knew he was waiting for me to bring up that message and ask him about it. That’s what he wanted, I could see that very well. But I didn’t say a word about it. It’s sad because I really feel I love him, and I know he has feelings for me in return, and I know we could work it out between us like two mature people. I’m certainly open to it, even now. He just has to say the word. But it’s up to him to make the next move. I’m sorry, that’s the way it has to be. At any rate, it’s been some time now and frankly I’m not too tempted to try to see him again. Except, as I mentioned, every now and then when I’ve had a few drinks I do get this urge to drop in and take him aside, in private, and say to him, look, am I crazy? Have I been reading this completely wrong? Everything that went on between us, was it all in my head? Are you attracted to me at all? Do I mean anything to you? Just tell me. Yes or no? But something always holds me back.