HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOW BLOW ME

My birthday had ended a few hours ago, but in my drunken stupor that was nothing more than a technicality. I had settled comfortably into the beer stained sofa at The Boiler Room on the Lower East Side, sipping my drink and watching the interactions between the remaining men around the bar. As the night came to a close, it was clear everyone knew this was their final chance to find company for the night. A pudgy, balding thirty-something leaned in towards a lanky black man and lingered just a second too long. I sat back and smiled.

At the end of the bar one man sat alone, ready to make his move. He looked over, moved his glassy, drunken eyes up and down and squinted, either in an attempt to look sexy or focus. I wasn’t sure which. I am certainly no stranger to gay bars, but the directness of gay men’s dating rituals compared to the shy lesbian flirting I was used to never ceases to amaze me. After about five minutes, the man slid down from his bar stool. With a gaze that never left the direction of his prey, he walked slowly and deliberately past me into the bathroom. I turned to look behind me. No one followed him in. After a few minutes he emerged from the bathroom seeming angry and defeated. He stormed over to his stool, grabbed his coat and walked towards the door, first stopping directly in front of me. I looked up to see his rejected eyes glaring directly into mine.

At that moment I realized I was the one he was after. It was me he wanted to “do” in the bathroom. As the door swung closed behind him, a wave of excitement passed over me--not sexual excitement, but a misguided sort of pride. For the first time in my life I felt like a cheap piece of meat and I enjoyed it. I was the one being looked at. I was the man someone wanted for the night. Not only did this drunken stranger see me as a man, he saw me as a man he wanted to fuck. This was unlike my private sexual experiences where every fear and insecurity I’ve ever had can come to the surface. In this very public place I was a male sexual object. What had just occurred wasn’t a sexual day dream with 25 years of body disconnection behind it. This was a real life moment, lustful and sexual. The memory was permanent. Never would he know that my body was any different than his. Being desired like this did more for my confidence as a man than years of therapy ever could.