It should have felt cold and empty because that’s literally what it was. Not a couch or a bed or even a chair offered a place to sit, and the little cot I’d hastily assembled had already fallen apart, leaving only the thin mattress on the floor. Our newly-purchased Boston condo was entirely unfurnished – not even a log left in the fire-place, as if we were visiting some place the Grinch had just ransacked – yet in this sparse space of echoes and emptiness I couldn’t have felt warmer or more at home. It was December 1995, and I was finishing up the last few days of retail work before returning home for Christmas. Finals had been completed the week before, and as I stood at the kitchen counter looking up at the then-John Hancock tower trinkling in the distance, I’d realized that the dream of me living in Boston – the one I’d had since visiting Quincy Market a decade prior – had finally come true.
Dinner, and breakfast alike for that matter, consisted of the bagels procured from Finagle-A-Bagel, and a carton of orange juice. There weren’t even glasses in the kitchen, so I drank straight from the carton like some heathenish bachelor, tearing off bits of bagel since there weren’t knives or forks or plates either. A roll of paper towels stood on the counter, while a plastic shopping bag served as the makeshift garbage. It sounds ridiculous, but I was happy and, looking back on the moment, full of hope. Life hadn’t really happened to me yet; the heartaches I tended were largely of my own making, and I leaned into them, hungry for something to feel, hungry for something to signify that I had arrived. That something was ill-fittingly placed on somebody – and his name was George.
When I set up the general theme of fire for this fall season on the blog, I thought I’d be burning up all the demons and ghosts that had been haunting me from years past – those who had done me wrong, and those from whom I couldn’t break free. Yet when I looked back and re-read my journals from then, and faced my part in things without trying to salvage an image or reputation, I realized that some of the fires I started would have to consume me. This may be one of those stories.
It had been about one year since I met the first man I ever kissed, and in that year the entire experience had worked to harden my heart against any other men, or women, who happened to cross my path. My defenses were up, as much as I wanted someone to walk beside. I couldn’t see then that I was in desperately in love with the idea of being in love, obsessed with the whole artifice and atmosphere of being in a couple. At such a young age, that betrayed itself in wildly-vacillating mood swings, where I would push people away as badly as I wanted them near me. Figuring that if love was meant to be, anyone who was worthy would see through it and accept me for the wounded little porcupine I was, prickly spikes and all. As a nineteen-year-old young man in Boston, I was also aware of the power that youth held, the sway and swagger it could command, and I was not above using this as leverage whenever the opportunity presented itself. If that meant playing the twink card in situations where gay men might offer something of value, why wouldn’t I work every available angle?
On this brilliant fall day, practically hours after getting confirmation from my parents that I could begin looking for a place to call our own in Boston, I found myself in the South End, traipsing along Tremont to the cluster of real estate offices that were suddenly hustling and bustling with the bubble that was just beginning to grow. It was early afternoon, and the receptionist looked at who was available, casually saying they would call someone. So it wasn’t fate or destiny that brought George into my life, it was his unfortunate availability at being the only agent on duty for my questionably-fortuitous arrival.
With the know-it-all swagger of a college student, coupled with the unearned pride and power of being able to seek out a new home, I followed him into his office and sat down across from him, his desk between us.
(When I thought back to our meeting later that first week, I would want it to mean something more than a mere transactional set of unfeeling circumstances. I wanted it to have the alignment of stars and planetary symbols, I wanted it to be the beginning of a romance that would change my life. I didn’t want it to be such a casual and nonchalant nod from a receptionist who said you were the first available and then you appearing as some secondary haphazard quirk. Certainly not the stuff of destiny or dreams coming true. It wasn’t the way I wanted a great romance to unfold. But that’s the whole point isn’t it? It wasn’t what I wanted. In those days my relationships, or non-relationships as they too often were, were solely about what I wanted.)
He had a sign for Tea Dance which I looked at a little too long. He watched me and gave me a quizzical look, as if to say ‘What do you know about tea dance?’ I looked at him differently after that, wondering immediately whether he was gay. I couldn’t tell then, not anymore than I can tell now, whether certain people were gay, and since it never really mattered unless I was interested in them, it’s never really mattered. On that day, at that moment, with this man who gave off a charming smile whose intent I could never quite determine, it suddenly and intensely mattered.
It was a little lifting of the veil, a parting of the curtain that let us both know the other knew: the secret codes of gay life in certain places back in the 90’s. He winked at me then, and rather than return it with a smile or a laugh for a nod, I snarled. Wolf-like, menacing, and more than an eye-roll, it was the look of disgust, perfected with the smug cruelty of someone who thought he could not be touched, who would simply and outright refuse to be touched. If only I’d known how well it would work…
We talked price range and location and ideas, and my sarcastic quips and testy tone, not entirely-uninspired by Linda Fiorentino’s wondrous anti-heroine in ‘The Last Seduction’, seemed to keep him slightly off his seductive real estate banter. I was not to be charmed or had for the price of a peanut. Still, there was something charming that went beyond the sale before us, and he unexpectedly jumped up and said, “Let’s go look at some places!”
I was not dressed or prepared or ready for such an outing – my backpack and sneakers were not what I envisioned wearing when seeking out our future Boston residence, but George didn’t notice or mind. He said we weren’t going far, just a block or two away, and after crossing Tremont, he wrangled a set of keys out of his pocket, and brought us into a little place on a nearby side street. We ascended to the second floor, and after the dim hallway, the light of early afternoon flooded the place in shocking relief. A small place, indeed, it had some charm to it – an exposed brick wall in the little kitchen, where a depressing bouquet of dried flowers hung desiccated from a string. He walked through the space, pausing to let me take it in, and I made a few cutting comments, as was my wont for so many years of my life. He was alternately puzzled and amused, and as was my other wont in life, I assumed he totally knew it was an act. Break through it, kind sir, break through it. Break through to me…
I said we could keep this in mind, and the only thing I started thinking was how nice it might be to live so close to this guy who was starting to warm to me, and starting to turn on his real estate agent charm, but I hadn’t fallen so foolishly or deeply under a spell that I would say yes to a home without seeing our other options.
We made a date to set up viewing some other places, and a few days later I returned to Boston. It was further into the afternoon than the day we first met, an hour after most people had finished work and school. The days were getting darker earlier, and there was a chill in the air. I entered his office in a slightly better wardrobe, while he was in jeans and sneakers. I must have made some critical commentary, as he surveyed the moment and asked if I was always so… and here he paused to struggle with the best word… snippy.
I’d been called many things in my life up to that moment, and as my brow instantly furrowed, a smile also formed at the same time. Taking it in, I balked a bit, saying I preferred the term ‘prickly’, and he quickly tried to explain himself. It wasn’t necessarily bad, and then he said he was going to start calling me Snippy.
Is there anything more endearing that being nicknamed by someone you secretly adore? It didn’t matter what the nickname was – it was a moment of intimacy, a little shared something that no one else had to know. Without hesitation, I wore the badge of Snippy as proudly as I wore Aloof and Arrogant and Asshole. Underneath both our stances was another wink, as if we were both playing a game now, and having some element of fun. We walked to his car and he brought us to the second property – a large, labyrinthine floor-through that had been divided into a number of smaller sections and rooms. While it had the most space of any place we would see, it was parceled off so much that it felt claustrophobic. Interior rooms with no windows were not for me. Snippy reared his head again.
The onset of evening. The cold air. The second fall in which I was falling for some guy I barely knew. Our final place to look at was located right on the beautiful border between Copley and the South End, looking onto the Southwest Corridor Park and up at the John Hancock Tower. This was Braddock Park, he explained, and we climbed the stairs into a stalwart Boston building that had stood there for far longer than the two of us had cumulatively been alive. What history had such a place seen? I thrilled at the notion.
We walked up to the second floor, and he unlocked the door, switching on the overhead lights as we entered. The hardwood floors instantly warmed the place with their amber hues, and a marble fireplace mantle held pride of place in the middle of the room. Walking to the front pair of windows, he showed me the view, then took a few short steps into the little kitchen area and its window that perfectly framed the Hancock Tower. I don’t know why, or whether this is just rose-tinted hindsight, but it felt like home. That part had nothing to do with George, who was ambling into the bedroom.
He struggled to find the light, but once he did he said this room, and its lovely bay window, was probably one of the main selling points of the place: a floor-through with windows in front and back was not as common as one would think. The bathroom was there, with a half-wall of exposed brick, lending a rustic warmth to the suddenly cold evening. At all turns, I felt a coziness here, a sense of refuge from the wilderness of the city.
We went back into the main room to discuss the merits of this place, the chief one being its location. In close proximity to the Green and Orange lines, and right near Copley Square, it was as near as I could get to where my Mom had taken us on trips as kids. And throughout it all, the main rule of real estate repeated itself in the back of my mind: location, location, location. George was in agreement as well, and whether he had intentionally saved the best for last, I wouldn’t know, but Braddock Park was the chosen one, at least for me. My parents would have to visit for the final say, and then it was a done deal. A few weeks later we closed on it, and George left us a gift basket with pasta and tomato sauce and breadsticks. For something that would come to mean so much, it all felt like it happened too easily and flippantly, as though we weren’t making a decision that would be grandly fortuitous for us, as though I hadn’t just found a home.
It also felt vaguely anti-climactic when George invited me to his office Christmas party a few weeks later. I honestly don’t remember how that came to be – whether it was a casual comment he made the last time we saw him, or whether some generic postcard from his agency arrived at the condo a few days later. It didn’t matter – I took it to heart, and with a new place in Boston to call home, I wondered if I couldn’t somehow get a partner out of the deal too. I mean, he did leave a gift basket – do all real estate agents do that for their clients? (Spoiler alert for idiots like me: yes.)
Looking back, I don’t know why I should have been so affected by George. He was affable and decent and cute enough – but what was exceptional about selling someone some property? I think it was just the excitement and glamour of being in that city, at the ripe age of 21, and wanting to taste all of it, all at once, with such passion and intensity that anyone in my periphery would have been subject to such burning desire. Luckily for all involved, I was too chicken-shit to do anything, other than giving him a copy of ‘The God in Flight‘ as a Christmas gift at that office party at which I drank too much and was summarily dismissed (which was entirely appropriate). It took me a few weeks to get over him – this man who really didn’t deserve my love, any more than he deserved my harsh jabs and vicious barbs – and a few years to see my folly and nonsense in the whole situation. Chalk it up to the silliness of youth. I vowed to do better. If I wanted to find someone to share a life with, I couldn’t afford to be Snippy anymore. My heart understood; my head would not be so quick to set down its weapons.
