Something crappy happened on Friday night.

Actually, the first part of the evening was great. It was Sparky’s big Brooklyn birthday bash. We all hung out at the back of a spacious bar. It was open to the sky, and the stars were twinkling. There were so many people there! Yes, it can now be said — if you didn’t already know — that Sparky has a TON of friends.

It was a mix of bloggers and non-bloggers. By “mix” I mean that there were maybe six bloggers (not including Sparky) and about twenty non-bloggers. Mike, Julian, Michael, Andy, and myself basically huddled in our own little Homo Blog Nerd corner. We didn’t really talk much about blogs, but we all knew each other much better than we knew anyone else, so we basically kept to ourselves. Yeah, we were total isolated blog dorks, but we had a great time. Happy Birthday, Sparky!

So now on to Part Two of the evening.

I met up with Wes at 10:00 in the East Village. He’s going on a week’s vacation with his family tomorrow, so this was our last chance to hang out for a while. He doesn’t know the East Village bars at all. Last week I took him to Starlight, and tonight I decided to take him to Phoenix. He liked it. We had a couple of beers and relaxed and stood against a rail with our arms around each other and talked and smooched. He thinks I should get rid of the goatee. We engaged in cute banter.

We ran into some people I know. Many months ago I mentioned Arch and Carrot, who are boyfriends. Arch went to UVa undergrad and graduated a couple of years ago, and he’s now living in Manhattan. We saw Arch and Carrot, along with three other guys. One of those guys is another UVa alum named Sean. I’d met him a couple of times, and he’s cute and friendly and a little flamboyant.

I introduced Wes to all of them. Arch and Carrot and Sean are all somewhat effeminate, and Wes is resolutely masculine, so I wasn’t sure what he’d think of them. But these were people I knew, and I wasn’t going to ignore them because of Wes.

So we all stood in a little circle and chatted. I’d been to a party at Arch’s apartment a couple of weeks ago and had told him about Wes, so tonight Arch whispered in my ear, asking if that was him, and I said it was. Meanwhile, Sean struck up a conversation with Wes and they seemed to be getting along well. I had a mere, mere flicker of jealousy — so slight that I was barely aware of it, or at least I was trying to sublimate it. In sublimating it, I warped the feeling into the following internal monologue:

Well, cool. I know from observing other gay couples in the past that you shouldn’t interfere when your guy is chatting with someone, even if the someone is cute. After all, I don’t possess him, and he’s allowed to do what he wants. And anyway, it feels cool to show other people that I’m not worrying about it. If I don’t interfere, if I adopt a policy of laissez-faire, it shows other people that I’m secure enough in how he feels about me that I don’t care whom he talks with.

I told myself I didn’t care, but deep inside, it must have bothered me. Wes went to the bar at one point to get drinks for me, Sean, and himself, and while he was gone, Sean asked me about him. Apparently he didn’t know that we were sort of seeing each other. He was also somewhat drunk. He said, “Have you had sex with him?” I said, well, we’ve slept together, and we’ve sort of been hanging out and seeing each other for the past month. “Ohhh,” he said. Apparently he hadn’t realized. Okay. Fine.

Wes came back with the drinks. There was a bit of flirtatiousness going on between the two of them, and I continued to try not to care. I let them be, and I chatted with Arch and the other guys. Arch pointed out to me that Wes was cute and seemed like a nice guy, although, Arch said, he also seemed kind of flirtatious. Still, I let it go. I even went downstairs to use the bathroom.

When I came back up, I rejoined Arch et al. I looked over at Wes and Sean, and they were both leaning against a pinball machine, physically very close to each other. Sean was leaning against Wes, and Wes had his arm around Sean’s waist and was almost touching his waist with his hand. I tried not to look but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Then they were touching each other’s shoulders flirtatiously. I don’t think either of them was sober. They were facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes, and their faces and their lips were only about an inch apart as they talked. Sean kept leaning in very close to Wes’s ear and whispering into it and Wes would smile. I have no idea what they were saying to each other, but it all looked very sexual and seductive. Their faces were so close together that they looked like they were about to kiss.

This was bothering me more and more and I kept peeking over Arch’s shoulder to look. Finally the emotion overwhelmed me and I couldn’t look anymore. I felt my heart sink. I just stared at the ground as Arch and the others continued to talk around me. I couldn’t look up. I wanted to cry.

Arch must have noticed my expression, because suddenly he decided it was time for he and his friends to go on to Wonderbar, including Sean. He said something to me like, “Don’t worry, I’ll handle Sean.” He practically had to pry Sean away from Wes. But Sean kept lingering. And then I heard Sean ask someone for a pen. My heart sank even further. He wrote his number on a Post-It note and gave it to Wes. Sean cheerily said goodbye to me. In a monotone, I responded, “See ya, Sean,” purposely not looking at him. I couldn’t look at him. I was too angry.

Then the group left.

I can’t remember the last time I was infuriated with someone. Until tonight. I was infuriated with Sean. I wanted to kick his ass. I wanted to punch his lights out and beat him to a bloody pulp. I was so relieved when they all left.

I wasn’t feeling too good about Wes, either.

After they all left, he and I stood there. Wes seemed completely unbothered by what had happened. Oblivious. Meanwhile, tears were welling up in my eyes. I tried to stop it. This is totally not what I need to be doing right now, I thought to myself. You do NOT want to fall apart. He’s going to freak out if he sees you cry over this.

I was fighting it back but I was still staring at the ground, grimacing, my shoulders tense. Wes looked at me, smiling, about to say something, but then he saw my expression. He knew something was up.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

I hesitated, and then I told him what was wrong, and I tried to explain what I was feeling about it. I’m usually good at that. I feel that when you’re angry or upset about something that someone has done, it’s best not to lash out at the other person, and instead to describe what you’re feeling. It’s all about “I” messages. “I feel” this. “I’m feeling” that. This is crucial so that everything is clear and you avoid recriminations and nastiness. At least that’s how I’ve tended to view the world.

So basically, I couched it in terms of the fact that this was all new to me and that I wasn’t prepared for seeing something like that and it was really hurting me.

And it was new to me. Hard as it may be to believe, this was the first time I’d seen a guy whom I was seeing start to flirt very physically with another guy. And it hurt like hell. I really wasn’t prepared for the force of my emotional reaction. I once had an unrequited crush on a guy and watched him flirt with another guy, and that hurt like crazy, too. But this was the first time I’d ever seen it happen with someone that I was ostensibly seeing.

I told him all this, and he reminded me that we’re not boyfriends yet. That confused me, considering that last Saturday night, after watching a movie and cuddling with him on my parents’ couch, he said to me, “This is kinda like what boyfriends do.” I don’t get it.

I told Wes that I was really mad at Sean.

And then his expression changed. He got angry. I’d never seen that expression on his face before. It worried me.

It reminded me of… my dad.

He said something like, “Don’t get mad at Sean. It’s not like I was completely passive in this situation. It takes two people, you know. If you’re going to get mad at anyone, get mad at me, not at him. The last thing I want is for this to turn into some gay-soap-opera-drama thing.”

He was right about that last part. I hate gay drama, gay cattiness, gay grudges. I’ve always felt contempt for people who act like that. But damn… it’s hard not to feel angry at Sean.

And now I was even angrier at Wes. But, conflict-averse as I am, I continued to phrase it in terms of my own personal feelings and insecurities.

He had no idea I was insecure. That surprised me. I realized how much he doesn’t know about me.

We hung out at the Phoenix for a while longer, each of us drinking a beer, our arms around each other. His arm was up underneath the back of my shirt, rubbing my back.

But my self-confidence was shattered. Not only was I crushed at what I’d seen between the two of them, but now Wes probably thought I was overreacting. After seeing me like this, there’s no way he’d want to date me.

I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to go home, and I wanted to be alone. But I didn’t tell him.

But he had to go home and get up early so he could drive to his parents’ house in the morning to start his vacation, so when we finished our beers we left. We walked all the way from First Avenue to Sixth Avenue without saying much. Then we waited for the PATH train, standing next to each other. I was still upset, and my eyes were welling up again. He held my hand and asked me what was wrong. There, waiting for the PATH train, as a couple of women walked by, we held hands. In public. I’d never done that before.

And I told him that this has nothing to do with how I feel about him, and everything to do with how I feel about me. I started to tell him about why I’m such an insecure guy — about my childhood, and my dad, and how kids used to make fun of me in middle school because I was smart and because of my hair. It felt good to tell him about the real me, the me I’d been hiding from him all this time.

But his eyes were closing. He wasn’t sober, and he’d just finished a particularly exhausting week of work. He was fading fast.

So I stopped talking.

The train came and we rode home. My eyes were closed, and he fell asleep against my shoulder on the crowded train.

We got to our stop and he walked me back to my apartment. We were both exhausted. We went inside the lobby of my building, and we leaned against the wall and kissed. And held each other. And stroked each other’s backs. And kissed again. And again. And again. And continued to hold each other.

Finally we drew apart. He had to go home.

“I had a great time with you tonight,” he said.

Hah. Good one.

I smiled. “Have a great vacation,” I said.

“I will,” he said gently. “And I’ll see you when I get back. Hey… don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

Huh?

“Don’t do anything stupid? What do you mean?”

“Like… I don’t know, don’t start a gay porn ring or something. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

Hmm. I think he meant one of two things. Either he’s afraid I’m suicidal, or he’s afraid I’m going to hook up with someone else while he’s gone. I don’t really know. What did he mean?

I don’t know what to feel. Am I right to feel hurt? Or am I being overly sensitive? Or was he wrong to be so seductive with Sean in my presence? Maybe it’s just me, but if I were out on a date with someone, and another guy started to physically come on to me, I would actively resist it, because I wouldn’t want my date to be upset by it. But maybe that’s me projecting my insecurities onto other people.

And yet… I was trying hard not to look at other guys at the bar, and I felt bad that I couldn’t keep myself from being turned on by them.

I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t know how Wes feels about me or how I feel about him or what’s going on. I’m totally confused.

But most of all — absolutely most of all — I want to erase that image from my mind. The two of them, their faces leaning into each other, practically about to kiss.
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