His name turned out to be Alan, though I didn’t know that when I first met him in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on a sweaty Saturday evening. The sun had set, but the sky still held a swath of purplish light. I was cruising the Ravine, a stand of old-growth forest in the middle of the park, decorated with man-made waterfalls, hills and crumbling stone steps. Guys would perch on those steps like Olympian gods looking down at the mortals who approached and deciding their fate. The less confident ones would pose outside a cluster of bushes with a hand on their crotch. If they looked at you and dashed behind a bush, you had an invitation. If they looked at you and turned away, you had instant rejection. Cruising wasn’t really my preferred method of engagement, but I’d been dumped by my boyfriend of ten years that summer, so in solidarity with the spurned, the jilted and the categorically repudiated, I sought solace in the streets, the bars, the interwebs and, if need be, the bushes.
He was standing by one of the bridges, his hands jittery in the pockets of his cargo shorts. He had short grey hair and a matching goatee. In 2008, everyone from hipster to homo had a goatee. It was the necessary baby step before we all committed to full beards in 2014. He stared at me as I passed, and I sauntered back and asked, “How’s it going?” We struck up a conversation while checking each other out: hair, teeth, nails. Pecs, abs, delts. Shoes, watch, belt. Whatever cursory qualities one held essential to deem another desirable. Though, generally, if one found oneself in the bushes, one’s standards of desirability had already waned.
He had thick legs and bony shoulders, with a little belly stretching out his T-shirt. The kind of natural frame not built at the gym but on the soccer fields of youth. We were both in our forties, though he might have been in the latter half and I in the earlier.
Soon, I was leading him to a spot that someone else had shown me. It involved hopping a fence that enclosed the old-growth trees and moving deeper into the forest, out of sight of anyone on the paths. He seemed nervous but also quite excited. He trembled when I reached under his shirt and pulled him close to me. We kissed for a while and explored each other’s bodies. He shivered with every caress. It seemed like he hadn’t been touched in a long time, and this added a layer of sadness to our meeting: my recent loss and his great need, discovering each other among the branches and leaves.
Afterward, we gathered the clothes that we had flung on the bushes, and made ourselves respectable. As we walked out of the Ravine, he said, “I’d like to see you again.” I told him I’d like that too. We stopped by a fountain, took big gulps of water, then rested on a bench near the park exit. Neither of us was in a hurry to leave. He told me he had been married for 16 years and had a 16-year-old son. He’d always known he was attracted to men, but except for some casual flings in his youth, he hadn’t acted on it until his wife stopped having sex with him. She’d been clinically depressed for years and he didn’t know how to help her.
“I can’t divorce her,” he said. “I don’t want to leave my son with her.”
I told him that my ex and I hadn’t had sex in the last year of our relationship, and it was a sure sign we had drifted out of love.
“There’s more to love than sex,” he said.
I agreed, but wondered how much more. Sure, love contained many working parts, but sex was the lubrication that kept the parts running smoothly. Without it, things tended to stick and grind and became hard to manoeuvre. How could anyone actually endure the mind-numbing vagaries of another person without being attracted to them? Or at least without sharing orgasms with them?
We met a few more times. In a cheap hotel in Queens or in the park. I couldn’t afford to move, so my ex and I had divided our apartment into two separate living spaces with the agreement that we wouldn’t bring home “guests.” I certainly didn’t want to run into his new 28-eight-year-old boyfriend on the way to the bathroom.
Around our third or fourth meeting, Alan told me he didn’t want to have anal sex anymore. He still wanted us to keep seeing each other, but didn’t enjoy the anal as much as the oral. For me, oral sex has always been more of an appetizer rather than the main course. One was either servicing or being serviced; never mutually engaged. Maybe for him that distance was comfortable, or what he was used to, but for me, it always felt somewhat disconnected. We gave it a go a few more times and then agreed to be friends, which, in reality, meant strangers. The last I heard, he had resumed marital relations. His wife had found a new medication and was interested in sex again. I presumed, in giving blowjobs.
Shortly after we parted ways, I met another man in the park. He was standing by the gazebo in nylon running shorts and a tank top. He had obviously just finished a late-night run and the astringent smell of his sweat permeated the space. With his big arms and flat stomach, I thought he might be decidedly out of my league. He asked: “Do you fuck?” And soon, we were in my secluded spot with his shorts down around his ankles. His body was nicely bronzed but his ass shone in the moonlight like two magnificent white globes, so muscular that one squeeze could sever my manhood. Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to finish and he asked if I could go again. I went to kiss him but he pushed me away and started tugging on my dick. I lifted up his tank top and put it around his neck so I could watch the muscles in his chest contract into two perfect ovals as he played with me. It wasn’t long before we started up again. I reached around and tried to manipulate his rock-hard member, but he brushed my hand away. A few minutes later, I collapsed over his back, spent and exhausted.
He stood and stuffed himself back into his shorts.
“Don’t you want to come?” I asked.
He pulled his tank top back down and put a meaty hand on my neck. “Monday at ten o’clock,” he said. “Be here.” And then he left.
When Monday rolled around, I arrived at the park a half hour early and waited by the fence. At 10:05 he arrived, sweaty and out of breath from his run. Without a word, we went back to our bower. This time, I was determined to make him come, but every time I reached for him, he swatted my hand away. I lasted as long as I could and he seemed satisfied, as he didn’t ask for another round. Again, he proposed a future date. I asked if we could exchange numbers, and it was then that he told me his wife reads his texts.
We met like this for a month, once or twice a week. He would pull down his shorts. I would grab onto the sculpted mounds of his shoulders. And no matter how fast or gentle I moved, he never uttered a single sound. Afterward, I would try to engage him in conversation, but he always hurried away. Finally, when he proposed our next meeting, I said I couldn’t make it. Truth be told, I was getting tired of the arrangement. It was exhausting and mechanical, more like aerobics than sex. And, as far as communication, I’d had more interpersonal feedback from the Stairmaster at my gym.
I started to walk away but something about his presence held me there. He kicked around the leaves at our feet and studied the tops of his running shoes, which were caked with mud from digging in his heels. Finally, he confessed the real reason he needed to meet. He wanted to satisfy his wife, and the only way he could get hard was through anal stimulation.
“Why don’t you just get a dildo? Or a vibrator?” I asked.
“My wife. She is very traditional. She would not allow.” This conversation was the most we had spoken in all our encounters and I finally discerned his Russian accent. “What you do work much better.” He grabbed my dick and gave it a brotherly handshake.
“So you don’t think you’re bi or a little bit gay?”
“I like the pussy. If this is what I have to do to get the pussy, I do it.”
I’m not sure if this shows how far a straight man will go to have sex with a woman, or how far a homophobe will go to justify taking it up the ass, but it did get me thinking about the significance of identity. Both of these men went to great lengths to preserve their identity as husbands and heterosexuals. Undeniably, marriage is a status symbol. It marked one as chosen and socially viable. And, admitting to being gay, even to oneself, is an immediate loss of status. But, married or single, gay or straight, I no longer wanted to be the scratch to a sexual itch. I was ready to move up the evolutionary ladder to drinks and dinner conversation, dates and sleepovers on firm mattresses with sheets and memory foam pillows.
Still, I understood the need to hide one’s desires. There’s really no incentive for a straight man who wants to be a little gay. And so they go to the bushes, in the dark, in the dirt, where all identities dissolve. Status doesn’t matter, nor do society’s norms or obligations. In the bushes, we’re all just disparate urges looking for a release, which is the original state of true equality.
Why you can trust Xtra
