The One Where I Date Ross
The plan was dinner only, but here he’s shown up with alcohol. Sorry, he says, he gets nervous. It’s our second date. He’s looking at the alligator-shaped cat-house and asking if I’m one of those people. I don’t know what that means, but I say I guess so, as all of who I am rushes through my brain. Autistic queer, but late to both those things, thirty-five years old and driver of the truck at Salvation Army because burnout-this and burnout-that meant no more graduate school. Our first date was at Coal Creek Coffee, and then we walked a bit by the railyard.
I met him on Tinder. Ross, forty, divorced, kids in New York and Paris, bottomed-out in the city and teaches adjunct now at LCCC in Laramie, Wyoming. I thought his hair was cool. Science seemed like a special interest to him. Plus, I was ready to get on living.
He’s not dated many men, which I assume means none, and I credit this for his nervousness. Still, my newbie breath is short too. He asks what’s for dinner, and I say spaghetti. Cute, he says, but again, I’m not sure what he means. I’m not that. I’m awkward in ways you can’t romanticize on TV.
What’s her name, he asks, as kitty Tina presents herself, her head down and belly up.
I’d found her freezing on the street, the same day a crow chased me ten blocks, for reasons I never figured out.
Why Tina? he asks.
Anyway, she’s never not been a love monster.
We sit at the table and talk about work, basically casually, as though we’re not two people attempting to restart their lives. I pulled an enormous sectional from a falling-down house near the church in West Laramie. His students care about their quizzes a whole lot less than he’d like them to. It’s strange how ordinary the talking feels, given how aware we are of the aching current that led us here, to the oldest duplex on 5th Street. Some tired neighbor is mowing their lawn with a fickle motor.
He holds out the bottle, but I say no. He claims he’s drinking only enough to smooth himself out. I imagine it’s hard adjusting to small-town life after living for so long in the city, but he shakes his head and considers it. The small things, perhaps, he says, what with the lack of noise and you have to drive everywhere, but life is more or less life. He thinks some more and adds that he misses the kids, though.
Oh, sure.
This is usually the part of the date where I feel heat, like the rush of it, like they’ve cracked open and I’m here to sop up their goop. Like the spiral is deep and human, because this other person has hands that can touch me. But it only feels sad now. Or, if not sad, then tenuous. He misses his kids—I miss my handjobs from persons who bear pain. I’m no kind of city guy, but I too know about adjusting. You can’t live forever hopping from one date to the next, from one smoke or pill or night of staring endlessly at the wall beside a screen playing whatever series on Netflix again to the next.
Honestly, I want to care, but more than that, I want to go hiking on a second date and talk intently under a canopy of trees about a book he read once.
And I’ve still not been to Paris, he says.
Me neither.
I’m eaten up inside then, because the amount of work it takes is gargantuan, because even this, the transformation, gets rolled out on old tracks. I just wanted to kiss a guy on his cheek and then on his mouth for once. Ross, I think, have we not had enough of the pain stories? Did we not hold hands at the railyard until they got sweaty? But instead of asking, I say what I’m supposed to in an automatic voice and rhythm that are not mine, picked up from sitcoms I watched and re-watched over and over because how else would I ever learn to be a person in this world that made no sense to me? He’s asking how hard it is to be autistic, which is not the right question, though I don’t know what is, exactly, given how sturdy his shoulders look. Ask me how awesome it is to be autistic, because it is, it’s a gas, if you can strike out all the ableism. Anyway, no, I’m explaining that it’s been hard to build and maintain relationships, and how about moving to the couch?
That’s where Tina is, but she makes space for us. She sticks around. She always likes to be a part of what’s happening. Ross pats her on the head and places a hand on my knee. Go on, he says, except I’m not really sure where I’m going. I never am, if I’m not in the truck with an address to head toward. Be real, but not too real, but lean in, but not like you used to, but just talk about life, but the sad is hot, but the hot never lasts. My thoughts are enormous sectionals in tiny-doored rooms, or all doors with no walls, or one godlike sectional I’m rolling around on forever and ever.
His face is droopy and serious, and I figure this is what his students are seeing. You can tell he’s convinced himself that we’re alone in the universe, which feels so childish and pitiful, yet at the same time my heart’s beating fast and his hand’s creeping up my thigh. Tina is purring. Ross makes a noise like he’s surrendering to something powerful, and then before I know it our cheeks are pressed together, like what you might do with a more docile cat. Then we’re kissing, all wet and toothy and bumbling. Shirts off, my pants down, and he’s reaching in. It’s so hard, he says, and truly it’s funny. Uh huh, I say, and watch his fingers wrap around me.
For a while I’m on the verge of tears, because here I am, doing it, finally, and it feels transcendent like it always does, only more so now because he’s a he this time around. All the fear young me had that I was doomed, simply because I dreamed of penis. Here I go, meanwhile, in a too-tight grip, but it’s okay. It’s amazing to think what really dooms you.
He uses his mouth then, and the spell breaks, because I don’t like that. Stop, I say, but he doesn’t. Stop it, I say, I don’t like that, and he says to teach him and starts again. I jerk away and tell him I’m not about mouths at all, I’m only into hands. Just hands? he asks, and I say yeah, but don’t say it like that. Like what. Like that. Well, is it an autistic thing? Not everything is an autistic thing, I say, even though it probably is. The nature of living thirty-plus years undiagnosed is that all your things are autistic things. But I’m embarrassed now and rattled, and his droopy face is less puppy-dog and more snarling stray. I apologize and suggest we focus on him for a bit. He’s got a really nice body, I tell him, and then admire it so he knows I’m serious. He has to think about it, but eventually says okay. But, he adds slowly, he wants me to use my mouth.
Is that all right?
Yes, I tell him, because it is, it’s different, and then I go on and get face to face with it.
It’s soft, which doesn’t stop him from grinding his hips into my jaw. It’s leaky, but soft. But he’s moaning. It grows a little, and suddenly my mouth is awash with him. A few minutes is all, ninety seconds at most, and then it’s over and mostly soft again.
He goes to the bathroom and I’m left there wondering about whether we’ll circle back to me, or whether we need to, or whether I should ask. Or whether he’s doing something untoward in there, because it’s been a while. When he comes back out, he’s all buttoned up like he’s ready to go. I get the sense that he was crying in there, though there are no real outward signs he was, beyond his face being slightly red. But then, he was red-faced going in. He mentions something about it being the alcohol, to which I say it’s no big deal, to which he says what’s no big deal, to which I say nothing, nothing is any big deal. He steps out of the hallway and into the room where I still am, still there on the couch, and it occurs to me how much beefier he is than me, like not taller but certainly thicker. I want him on my side again and try once more to go deep, because that was what he surrendered to before: I’m sorry, I say, but I’m looking for something real and never know how to get there. I’m sifting through patterns here. Bad coping mechanisms, avoidance, unmasking is traumatic. Are you listening? I like you, you have cool hair. Do you want to walk some? Do you? I ask him again, but there are crows in here with us, swooping down to pick our bones clean. Less than an hour ago we were describing our days over pasta.
Then he leaves, because it’s a lot. He leaves so fast, he puts on my shoes instead of his and doesn’t come back in to correct his mistake. It’s weird, I guess, but I put his shoes on and walk around the house. I almost text him and almost touch myself and almost leave the house but don’t. He almost texts me but doesn’t. I saw the little useless bubble in our chat.
Tina thinks the walking means playtime, because that’s what usually accompanies my pacing. We go hard at the hide-and-seek in the alligator until I’ve had a few sips from the bottle he left and Tina’s had her fill of flopping. She bats at a string dangled over the alligator’s eyeholes, then lies on her back in its mouth. It’s right at that moment that Ross texts me, his great and soothing explanation—he’s sorry, he writes, but he really misses his kids. That’s the thing, and it’s no explanation at all. I haven’t had enough alcohol to text back anything argumentative, but my mind loops through its endless dialogue all the same, because what, do I not miss things too? I miss things. The yearning has piled up like dishes inside of me. I miss the person I never was and never got to be, I miss the person I see but can’t reach, I miss the feeling I used to get when I was young and felt hope while reading books or watching TV, like I’d someday find my people too, my friends to sit with and adventure with. I’d become them and find my joy. This weight on my chest would diminish to a soft vibration, like a signal that you were bumping up against the world, but the world was fine with it. Fine, bud, so keep on going. Keep that pretty head up, because one day it’ll be you brought in from the cold, to have your head patted as you jump this way and that, batting at brilliant threads, your back on the floor because it’s today and it’s wonderful. It’s big ears to the ground, friend, to track the rumbling of better days charging toward you. You timeless creature. You absolute monster.
Tim Raymond (@literautie) is from Wyoming but lives in Seoul now. His work has appeared in Witness, Joyland, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. He makes comics and posts them on Instagram at @iamsitting.