Straw

We were a table of 15 or so, after hours. After working. We were a large group around nine at night ordering dinner and drinks.

He was tall and handsome with sweetness in his eyes and I remember watching while we all ordered. He wrote nothing down. He just listened. And I remember watching, because back then I was a photographer, and time revealed that he had gotten every order right.

The parking situation in Fort Lee was rough but I drove a Hyundai at the time and I could squeeze into those tight spots. Everyone at the salon would go to that restaurant after work, after hours, on Fridays. And I would squeeze into those tight spots, and I could see, and he would take me out for weird diner dinners and get mad if the waiter asked for my number. In a way, the diners could see too. I think everyone could tell, if they looked. I think it was there.

We'd walk to CVS from his studio apartment because once you had a parking spot you didn't want to move. He loved my shoes. He had beautiful thick dark curly hair and a pretty face, and he told me that story about pack animals that everyone who attended West Point tells. And when I made my "I'm not a pack animal" speech he was as impressed as I had been when he remembered 15 dinner orders. He was impressed and I believe he knew what I saw in his beautiful eyes but he would not speak it. Not even in a tight spot. And I kept his secrets, even the ones he didn't give me.

He surrendered the seeing because he had people that expected things from him. It was as if you could feel how torn he was. It was hard to be used but I figured it out. He was being counselled by the busy bodies at the most fabulous trendy 3 hour wait for a table restaurant and I was being offered dating advice from the very fucked up beautiful people of the design team at the most happening salon. All he could do was memorize. And there wasn't anything I could do except be the photographer and warn the reactionaries to chill.

And that's the thing about being the photographer: you have to see. I was so busy seeing that I couldn't hear the trains or the anorexics and I didn't tell anyone my boyfriend was gay. I just drank a lot of free cappuccinos and shopped at Udelco in Nyack.

I bumped into him years later and he took me for lunch. I was no longer working at the most fabulous salon and he was no longer waiting happening tables without paper and pen. The poor thing actually introduced his boyfriend to me as his roommate. I'm not sure which one of us was more annoyed. But his eyes were still so beautiful. And I could feel him struggling. I could feel the pressure and the expectations, and the years of his parents not being photographers.

I wish he had let me be his friend. I wish he had let me know him. The most he let me do was to accept his apology. He apologized with his mouth and his eyes. He offered no explanation or excuse. He just was what he was. And for that one brief moment in the sun that nobody memorized or photographed, he was straw.