For our second public outing, I took Magnificock to my favorite Middle Eastern restaurant, all the way in the Valley. He worked for one of the studios nearby, so while I sat in traffic, sweating through my sexiest I-know-I-look-good-in-this-but-it-doesn’t-look-like-I’m-trying-too-hard-button-up, he finished up at his I-have-real-adult-responsibilities-and-get-paid-really-well-for-it-even-though-we’re-the-same-fucking-age-but-don’t-let-that-make-you-feel-insecure-job and then popped over in the same old thing he’d worn that morning. And he still looked hotter than I felt, all without burning a single calorie thinking about it.
I’d chosen the place because it was casual enough for us to blend into the wallpaper, the food was good, and, if I liked him enough, I could afford to pick up the tab. But that was only if he didn’t get wasted on cheap red wine.
He didn’t. As a matter of fact, he was a total sweatheart, even when we started talking about sex and he found out I was what I’d call easy, but not quite slutty unless he was into that. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Before we started discussing the carnal, we focused on the intellectual.
“You didn’t finish college?!” gaped Magniffi.
“Nope. Tried twice and hated it the second time more than I did the first. Besides, I was on a full scholarship and exempt my first year anyway, so it’s not like I dug myself into some massive student loan debt or anything.”
But he did. Magnificock had a very, very expensive education. His education was so expensive I was sure it came with an insurance policy and a blow job. We’re talking almost six figures expensive, and that was before he decided he was studying the wrong thing and stopped to go get another degree, for about another six figures, and his last name still wasn’t M.D.
“Damn, dude, your student loan payments must be through the roof. My friend Sa—“
“My parents paid for it.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“You have to go back and finish”, he said again, sounding enough like my father to…”
It was at this moment that I could have sworn I heard my shrink mutter the word “Porsche”, which he tried to play off as a wet cough, and I had to stop and remind him, in no uncertain terms, that I did not have daddy issues, only mommy ones, and those were already buying him a fucking Audi.
Back at the restaurant, the damage had been done. Magnificock had a fancy degree from a fancy school and he had the fancy job to go with it. I was a college dropout loser who couldn’t commit to anything except long term therapy and even bigger losers who never liked me back, I was stuck in a job where I’d serve him and his buddies lunch for the rest of my natural life, and my daddy – with whom I had no issues – was right all along. I was 32, going on 50, going on sad, lonely death. The only sane thing to do was abandon the half eaten dolmas in front of me and move back home, take out a loan as big as my head, and start college the very next day!
But then we started talking about sex and I felt much better. Magnificock, it turns out, was a bit of a prude. Granted, the hooker working the corner market under your apartment is a bit of a prude compared to me, but still. This was exciting. This meant that, college degree or not, I had something valuable to teach Magniff.
Sure, Magnificock had been with plenty of guys, it’s just that none of them were random hookups. He had dated all of them.
“How many deep, meaningful relationships could you have possibly had with so many guys?” I thought. “Did the ability to dissolve into a time warp come with your expensive education?”
I decided to dismiss this foray into the world of logic for the moment and listen to my new pupil so that I could best craft his course of study, most of it now legal in the Continental United States, all of Western Europe, and even a handful of the former Soviet bloc.
Baffled, I finally threw caution to the wind and asked him. All my adult life, I’d struggled with the notion that I shouldn’t casually date people because it might distract me from finding my destined, true, reciprocated Disney brainwash love. Casual screwing was okay, all I had to commit to there was twenty minutes and a trip to the laundromat. But here in front of me was someone who’d actually figured it out. You could genuinely get to know the people you got naked with and still be able to look up and recognize the love of your life when he materialized before your very eyes. Just look at us!
“How did you—?“
“I had sex with them, but not, you know, full-on sex. I have to be totally in love with someone to do that.”
The Anti-Christ sat before me. This was the bastard that considered foreplay sex and thought that unfulfilled look on your face when your eyes bled with rage was cute. This was the kind of fucktard that milked you for twelve dates of “let’s play hard to get with mixed signals” and said he was emotionally available even though he had the numbers for his last three ex-boyfriends on speed-dial and used them nightly after blocking his number just to hear the sound of their exasperated breathing. If the falafel betwixt my thumb and forefingers wasn’t so delicious and covered with a dollop of hummus so perfect it would have made Picasso him-fucking-self weep at the sight of its simple elegance, I’d have hurled the whole thing, dripping with olive oil and hate, at the coy son-of-a-hyena and told him to lose my Connexion profile. I felt insecure about my station in life because of THIS guy?! Fuck him and my father – with whom I have no issues.
But then he smiled, and it suddenly made sense that you had to be head-over-heels in love to fuck somebody, and not just heels-over-head. Of course Magnificock withheld penis, it was the kind, thoughtful, I’m-saving-myself-for-true-love kinda thing to do. And besides, now that we’d found each other, he’d never have to withhold anything ever again. I couldn’t wait to talk about our feelings after fucking like rabbits in inappropriate places!
Later that night, we kissed under a full moon that I wish I was making up. We bathed in its pure light while sipping warm tea in a cool breeze after we split the bill at the restaurant where he was nice to the server and tipped twenty percent. We talked about destiny and fate and how you meet people in life not by accident or as a consequence of coincidence, but because it’s meant to be. We gazed into each other's eyes and I remembered that the world was a wonderful place full of exciting and magical possibilities, that everything I’d experienced so far was leading up to this fateful moment, and that everything would, in the end, not only be alright, it would be beautiful.
This man, this promise of a new day, had so far blown past all of my defenses. Far from being a fall down drunk, he rarely touched spirits, and this because he chose to experience life through the prism of present authenticity. He’d only been to prison while watching crime dramas on TV, and everything he knew about drug abuse was filtered through that same, true-to-life medium that is so thoroughly researched and thoughtfully presented that it could never stoop to exaggeration or stereotype for the sake of drama. He worked in marketing for a television studio, after all, so he knew this. But forget noble profession. Everyone has to make a living. So what if he smoked like a chimney, drank like a barracuda, or shot heroin between his toes while taking a break from cooking crystal meth to wipe away the residue of last night’s coke binge from his upper lip? Who was I to judge another man, as full of flaws and quirks as I know I am? There was only one test this man had to pass to win my heart, until I came back to my senses, and that was the kissing test.
And Magnificock was the Goldilocks of kissers. Kissing him was like dancing that didn’t make you point and laugh. Kissing him turned my innards into a thriving butterfly colony that may have been gas. Kissing him made me think about reading “Twilight”.
I had stuff in my back seat, so we kept our hands to each other’s necks, ears, and cheeks, the way I imagine repressed Mormon virgins do before they plunge into moral oblivion and have to marry vampires. We bid one another adieu and, later that night, he added me on Facebook.
The next day, I opened my eyes to a bright and expectant world. I was ready to climb mountains, bench an extra five pounds, and, recession be damned, find a job with benefits. I would set about doing all of this after checking my email, tweezing my eyebrows, touching myself to online porn, maybe twice, and brushing my teeth – no, scratch that. I needed no online porn on this day, the beginning of the rest of my life. I had love, goddamn it, and love had no time for chiseled abs and eight-inch insignificance. I skipped three whole steps in my regular morning routine and logged on to Facebook instead.
I was in no mood for games, opting to focus my energy on a task so important it didn’t even make my to-do list. I clicked on Magnificock’s profile page, and the butterfly colony exploded within me. There it was, for all the world to see: a coded status update dedicated to me. His face “hurt from smiling so much”. Oh, Virginia Woolf, you committed suicide too soon! Had you but lived to see the affection showered upon me by Magniffi, my Magniffi, the snuffed out flame of hope within your bosom would have been kindled anew.
I waited, until the cascade of comments sure to follow my beloved’s declaration reached a worthy crescendo before I revealed myself. “Silly friend”, I thought. “My love smiles not, as you so naively commented, in celebration of a recently ingested macaroon. He smiles instead for the discovery of me.”
I waited still, for surely, someone close to him would guess that it was his heart, and not his stomach, that brought him late summer joy. If someone didn’t get it soon, I’d have to chime in with a hint.
I grew restless. I had things to do, and his friends were either too stupid or had jobs and lives that prevented them from playing status update trivia. Clearly, they didn’t know who I was by name yet. But then I finally understood: Magniff was protecting my identity. He wanted to introduce me to his mother first (or Mom, as she’d insist I call her), and then to his friends. Christmas was only a few short months away, so I still had time to break the news to my own family that this year I would be spending the holidays with my new in-laws. I finally tossed one of my trademark smiley faces ( a ;-) for reference) into the comment thread and logged off to go poop…
OH my god! I simply fucking ADORE you! I can not even tell you how much I miss you! Reading this reminded me of just that! THANK YOU!!! XOX Daddy
Posted by: Edwin Chachi | December 06, 2010 at 10:12 AM