Biosphere Boy

I met up for dinner last night with a guy whom I hadn’t seen in over a year.

During the winter break of my third year of law school, I was at my parents’ house in New Jersey, spending a lot of time on IRC — Internet Relay Chat, a form of online chatting. One evening I checked out this one guy’s profile and was instantly smitten. He was a very cute 21-year-old Ivy League college student and a Westinghouse Scholar to boot; a scientific genius, practically. Back then, overachievers turned me on. But I was too shy to open up a chat window with him. A few minutes later I forgot about him, and eventually I went back to school and months passed. In the interim, I graduated from law school and studied for (and took) the New York Bar Exam.

On August 4, 1999, I left Charlottesville for good after eight years and came back to my parents’ house. That night, I was hanging out in a gay chatroom when I got an ICQ message from someone. It turned out he’d seen my profile online, and since it contained my ICQ number, he decided to write me that way. It turned out it was the same guy. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been interested in him, and yet he’d contacted me. We wound up chatting until 4 in the morning and decided to meet up the next night.

He was only about 40 minutes from my parents’ house, so I drove to his town to meet him. We got coffee, we sat and talked, and then we went back to his parents’ house to get his telescope. We took it out to an open field and he set it up, and on that cool August evening, we peered up at the stars. I was falling for him; I was feeling things that I’d never felt for any other gay man before. He’d even spent a semester studying in the Biosphere, for goodness’ sake.

We became friends, and I kept wondering if he felt the same way I did. I was constantly looking for hints. I wound up telling him how I felt, and he said that although he wouldn’t say that it would never happen, he didn’t feel the same way about me. He told me that he usually liked to get to know a guy before he started dating him. I grabbed onto that tiny shred of hope and kept holding it. It was a painful few months — we kept hanging out as friends, and I kept hoping that something might happen. But nothing ever did. Not even a kiss. It was completely platonic.

We had a few misunderstandings, and then he began dating someone whom he’d known for two weeks. I felt hurt. He invited me to hang out with him and his boyfriend and a few other people for the millennial New Year’s Eve, but I really didn’t want to meet the boyfriend, so I declined. We lost touch with each other and months went by without any contact. I realized that although he was cute and smart, we didn’t really click in important ways. I was okay with that.

In June 2000, I had just broken up with someone else, explaining to him that I just wanted to be friends, and we decided to conclude the evening by having coffee. We were sitting at the coffee shop, and who should come in but Biosphere Boy and his tall blond boyfriend. We briefly said hi, and that was that. More months went by, and then around last Thanksgiving he found me online, and we chatted for a little bit. A few months later the same thing happened. Then last week it happened again, and we decided to have dinner.

So last night we went to a chain Mexican restaurant and had fajitas and caught up. He has another boyfriend, someone he’s been seeing for seven months. He’s finished college and soon he’ll be going off to grad school. Still cute. I’d forgotten how cute he was, and in fact at first I felt an old pang for him. But that was it. I seem to have become immune. Or maybe I realized it just wasn’t worth wasting the energy on someone whom I’d previously come to realize wouldn’t have been right for me anyway.

There’s always been this wall between us, this stiffness. Oh, he’s always had a surface charm. But something has always been missing. He’s always seemed to be holding something back. Rarely have I ever heard him say something self-deprecating, or express self-doubt, or exude imperfection, or display a hint of real human warmth. He’s never delved into human emotions, or at least he’s never displayed them in front of me. He never seems to have questioned himself. Too perfect — a perfectly scientific android. He seems as hermetically sealed and impervious as the Biosphere itself.

We had a perfectly nice time last night, and after dinner and coffee, he drove me home to Jersey City. We said we’d hang out again before he goes off to grad school. He’s an intelligent and charming conversationalist, and I’d probably hang out with him again. But I can’t talk about deeply emotional or insightful things with him, because there’s no organic response from him. We just don’t click that way. We’re speaking English from different centuries; we can communicate, but only up to a certain point.

So two years ago I fell for Biosphere Boy, and a year later I fell for Nick. There’s a common thread here: both are charming, very intelligent, high-achieving guys who look great on paper but lose their luster once they’re exposed to the open air.

(On the other hand, neither of them ever wound up being interested in me. If either of them had been interested, maybe I’d be singing a different tune today. But maybe not.)

I’ve often looked for someone who was larger than life, someone better than me, someone whom I aspired to be, someone whom my parents could be happy with; if my parents couldn’t be happy with me, at least they could be happy with my boyfriend, right? And if I could find the perfect guy, maybe some of that perfection would rub off on me. Or at least I could show my parents that I had good taste.

In slightly different ways, Biosphere Boy and Nick are both the guy whom I’ve aspired to be at some point in my life. But I think I’ve learned to stop chasing the guy whom I aspire to be. The guy whom I aspire to be is hiding right here (tapping my chest).

If I keep chasing guys who are larger than life, it’s only going to make me feel smaller. So I want someone who impresses me — but not someone who’s perfect. Someone who’s self-deprecating — but someone who has self-esteem. Someone who’s talented — but someone with a hint of self-doubt. I do want someone who’s exceptional, yes — exceptionally human.