short - sexy - straight

Who are you?

I saw you across the way, at the table along the wall, your back against the wall, looking my way, glancing over at me, smiling at me. Nice smile, by the way. And those Nana Mouskouri glasses look good with your floppy blond hair, don't you know.

My friend across from me kept thinking I was looking at her; I had to tell her I was using her to get glances at you (fortunately, she's a lesbo so she wasn't offended). Our friend was on the stage with two other singer/songwriters -- I assumed one of them was your friend, too. I noticed the ring on your "wedding" finger, and the guy in the middle on the stage, with the sweet high tenor voice also had a ring on his finger, and it looked a lot like your ring (though of course there isn't a lot of variety in men's wedding rings). But I was convinced. When the singer sang a pronoun-free song of love, your dimples showed, you glowed. I was sure I was right.

To be honest, I didn't like his songs that much. They were okay. The other woman in the trio singing seemed to be trying to write a Nashville hit to save her soul, so I didn't like hers much at all. I was really only there for my friend, whose songs seem to come out of the depths of her heart and soul. She looked like a caged animal up on stage in that straight-backed chair. She could hardly contain her feet as she sang her songs of disappointment and despair, love and loss. There is power in her emotions.

You were the icing on the night for me.

Some other people came to sit at the table I shared with my friend, some said hello; one (straight) man whom I was a little too amorous towards once upon a time wouldn't even look my way, which isn't a new development.

I didn't care; I was enjoying my little game of catch-my-eye with you.

When I lived in New York, I used to play a game on the subway or wherever groups of strangers were caught suspended for a moment or several -- a museum exhibit or drum circle in Washington Square Park; I would commit myself to looking into a stranger's eyes, holding a gaze the longest, not looking away until after he did. It was harder than it sounds.

But there was that ring. And there was that man onstage, your man, I assumed, and it's really not my thing (anymore) to break up happy couples, or even unhappy couples. You break up, and then I'll come calling...perhaps. I pondered my "Shot in the Dark" ad for the Chronicle, but knew I wouldn't go through with it. Who reads those things anyway? What if somebody saw it was me? A friend. Would they pity me? That's the last thing I want: anybody's pity (yours among them).

So I put "our future" out of my head, just enjoyed the caught glances over the mouths of our drinking glasses.

Then there was a break in the music. You rose and came over to our table, said you liked my Obama ("Compassion for a Change") t-shirt. I told you where I got it after an initial huminah-huminah-huminah!
And that was it. Nice little exchange. Damn, you're short! Like a foot shorter than me. (I like that. I've always found short somewhat fey men quite sexy. Must be a dominance thing.)

A couple of minutes later, the singer/songwriters were off the stage, the man in the middle was at your table, and I heard your chit-chat, which didn't sound much like two men who were intimately involved (unless, I pondered, you had some sort of big closet-in-public thing going on between the two of you while your husband worked his way up to super-stardom at which point he could more easily make his Clay Aiken appeal). And then you introduced him to the woman sitting next to him as your wife. What the--

Last night I had a dream that I was at the Central Texas Democratic National Committee Campaign Headquarters (which is just a few blocks from our apartment, and which is where I got my t-shirt). I was wearing cut-offs and cowboy boots. I don't know why this detail seemed important, except that I saw a short blond man in the parking lot (you) walking with a large red-headed woman (like the "fag hag" I imagined the woman sitting next to you last night to be) and I was trying to walk more butch in my boots instead of like a drag queen in heels, in case you looked my way.

The two of you went into a store next to the campaign headquarters, a fabric store that was going out of business. The front window was smashed in and spray-painted letters all around the door announced the deep discounts going on inside. I followed after you, thinking to myself, "Well, I do need lots of fabric for curtains for my new house, and I can also look for some stretchy vinyl." That last part was a reference to a conversation I had with the neighbor on the front porch just before bed (she's been hired to make a vinyl jumpsuit for a friend and said stretchy vinyl fabric is hard to find in Austin).

When I got inside, you and The Woman were looking at furniture and talking about how well this chair would go with your couch and how this fabric matched your lamps. I was heartbroken. In my dream.

Oh, one other nugget -- so to speak -- to hold onto... I showered right before I went to the show last night. I neti potted my nasal passages as per usual and blew my nose in the shower stream. While I was at the show, I went to the bathroom and thought I felt a scab on my dick, but it was a dried up booger. I thought that would be a funny detail for my book, for when Randy the narrator is standing at a row of public urinals somewhere, masturbating next to another "pervert" who notices a big brown booger on his dick, which of course makes the fellow next to him lose his erection, and then sends Randy running embarrassed from his spot.

Of course, this isn't something I would tell you -- I don't even know you -- it just kinda fits neatly into this little entry about you. So there.