Two Summer Couples

I don't know them, but I love them--just for being there, for being out, for being happy. On Commercial Street, I'll see men I don't know holding hands and I'll think, "That simple act would be enough to get you bashed somewhere else." I'm tired of people bashing my friends, my people, my tribe. And no issue, my friends, is more important than that. (William J. Mann, williamjmann.com, MannTalk August 18, 2008 "Monday Musing...Republicans, Polls, Tea Dance and Herring Cove Beach")

Oh, Bill… Reading those words evoked in me a rush of emotions and memories, a kaleidoscope almost, of feelings both warm and sad.

I thought of the very first time I saw two young men kiss. It was late summer, I was 21 and working the lobby concession counter at—no joke—Playboy Enterprises, back when the publishing offices were still at 919 N. Michigan Avenue, here in Chicago.

They hadn’t come in together. One of them—a guy who could not have been much older than me and was so cute with his beautiful smile and long lashes that I couldn’t stop staring at him—wanted to buy a package of gum. I flirted with him a little; he was amused and we chatted a bit. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, the Playboy club down the hall was closed (though the joint would be jumping later that night), and there was no one else around.

I guess his boyfriend (also a looker) was wondering what was taking so long because he came striding into the lobby with a peeved expression on his face. He and the Cute Guy had a brief, bantering sotto voce exchange and then, right at my counter, right in front of me, they nuzzled each other and suddenly smooched. And I don’t mean a dry, quick, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it peck either; I’m talking a lingering, passionate lip-lock.

Well. I wish I could tell you that I was charmed by the sight, but in fact I was shocked, and embarrassed, and wished to God I were somewhere, anywhere, else. My mouth flew open, my eyes popped—and I think I actually gasped, like a stock actor in a bad play. My chocolate brown face was now beet red; I looked down, not wanting to see such things, and was furious with myself for the way I was behaving. I had queer friends after all, and had prided myself on being hipper, better informed and more sophisticated than, say, my mother, who would roll her eyes and purse her lips whenever she made reference to a gay coworker, or my grandmother, who would call men and women she presumed to be gay “strange fruit,” chuckling at my wince. When I dared to look up I discovered that both young men were watching me—the Cute Guy with a look of soft disappointment in his eyes, the Boyfriend with a twisted smirk as if to say to his lover, See? You can’t be friends with them. Indeed, I felt angry and defensive, as if I was on trial for something. I felt ambushed. And stupid. I dropped my eyes again, mortified.

The Boyfriend tossed me another cutting look and then left to wait outside in the sun. The Cute Guy paid me for his gum—this time no chat between us; total silence—watching me closely as I made his change. I could feel him wanting to say something, but he didn’t. I desperately wanted to say something—I hated the thought of him thinking of me what I knew he was thinking—but I didn’t know what exactly to say.

Finally he pocketed his money, said a brief “Thanks” and walked out to join his friend. I watched him go, feeling close to tears. It was like, in that moment, with the kiss and the accusing looks, they had forced me to see something I hadn’t up to then realized: what a repressed and immature little girl I truly was. It left me depressed and vaguely ashamed.

But reading your words I also remembered an almost-encounter with another two very young men, this time nearly twenty years later, this also in late summer—isn’t that odd?

I was on a bus going home from work and feeling very dispirited. I was temping and in this assignment I was working in an office I didn’t like very much, doing work that didn’t matter to me, making conversation all day with people who cared about things I didn’t—or the other way around. It was one of those periods in my life when I felt very far away from my truer self, when I knew I was burying or denying myself, retreating from life, just getting by. I had a book with me—I always carried a book—but I couldn’t relax and enjoy it because my mind was jumping and whirling with anxious, angry thoughts; replaying the day, replaying old conversations, replaying old reproaches.

The bus was stopped by a traffic light and was idling close to the curb—and that’s when I saw them: two thin, young white men, both in white shirts with loosened ties, the shirtsleeves rolled up to their elbows and each of them carrying their jackets over their arms, one clutching a briefcase. And they were holding each other’s hands, their fingers tightly interlocked. Though the sight of their hand-holding was touching to see—such brave nonconformity, such affirmation!—it was their facial expressions that really tore at me. They looked so unhappy. In fact, they looked very angry and a little bit scared. I understood implicitly, or assumed I did.

They were headed for subway stairs just a few steps in front of them. As I watched them I wondered: From how far had these two walked in the blistering evening heat to get to here? Did they work in the same office together, or meet each evening on a prearranged corner? My hunch was they were catching the red line train for Lakeview—more commonly known as Boys Town—where nobody was fazed by male-male handholding (or kisses), where such sights were commonplace. But this was State Street in downtown Chicago.

How much abuse had they taken as they’d made their determined way, hand in hand, to that train station? And how much more name-calling and threats and who knew what else would they have to endure on that gritty, smelly subway platform, and on that train, before finally they were once again on their own street and among their tribe? How much insult, every day, every evening, had they had to rise above, and for how long?

My eyes began to sting as I watched them trudging along; at any moment now the light would change and the bus would pull away. I was seized by the need—was I remembering another young couple, years ago?—to make my presence known to them, to somehow communicate my support. I sat up straight in my seat and tapped on the window with my fingernails, trying to get their attention, my mind calling frantically “Guys! Over here! To your right! Look at me! Look at me!” but they stared stoically, resolutely forward, not hearing me.

Or maybe they did hear me and assumed I was just another homophobic jerk trying to mess with them; probably it happened all the time and they were not going to give me the satisfaction. The bus was slowly moving forward in the stop and go traffic; at one point the couple was so close it was like we were all in synchronized motion together… The woman sitting next to me, her attention likely drawn by my silent histrionics, noticed them also and tsked, frowning distastefully. Fuck you Lady, I thought irritably, cutting her a sharp look. What do you know about them. Or me. What do you know about anything.

They were nearly at the top of the subway stairs now and poised to disappear down the stairwell. Your Pride pin, I thought feverishly. Weeks earlier my cousin Mark had come in from New York and we’d bought and been given flags and bands and condoms and dams and assorted other colorful little knick knacks at that summer’s Pride festivities. I had attached a small Pride button to the outside of the leather hobo bag I was carrying that year. I wrestled it to the window. If they would just look up, if just one of them would look up, for just one second, and they could see that button, and my smile of reassurance. Guys! Guys—it’s okay! I’m family, too!
They never looked up, Bill. I guess they’d learned not to. They went down the steps and the bus roared off. I sagged in my seat, feeling utterly drained. We were so close, and they never knew I was there, worrying about them, marveling at their courage, trying in that little moment to watch over them.

And I had so wanted them to know. I’d wanted them to see, just once at least, a friendly, loving, supportive face, especially my face, my brown, female, middle-aged face. I’d sat back in my seat, and clutched my purse and my book in my lap, saying a silent prayer: Please, God. Don’t let anyone hurt them anymore than they have been already. Let them get home safe. Let them grow old together safe.

And as I was getting off at my stop I made sure the disapproving lady next to me saw my Pride button. As I rose I swung and shouldered my leather bag in such a way that she couldn’t fail to see it, nearly hitting her smack in the face with it in the effort.

Unintentionally, of course.