It began with a few mails exchanged over the Sondheim list. Then a few emails exchanged in private which blossomed into a daily correspondence. Long emails where I shared my innermost thoughts with him including my condition. He understood as he also suffered from depression. I never imagined the person who would accept me and feel the closest to me would be a gay white man in his 40s in San Francisco. His emails were the only thing I looked forward to each day – they shaped the purpose and structure of my isolated existence. At times we exchanged 3 emails over the course of the day.
Eric picked me up at the airport and I was excited to finally meet the person I shared so many intimate details and feelings with. I was already in love with him before we even met.
“You know, when we first started exchanging emails, I thought you were 42. How old are you?” he asked as we got in his car.
“I turn 23 this year” I said.
When I started planning for the trip, I had offered to give him piano lessons in exchange to crash on his couch so we chatted about the Sondheim songs he wanted to learn on the drive. We began our first lesson when we arrived at his house. I listened as he played each song, then I corrected or demonstrated the passage. He was having difficulty negotiating the fingering on the 3rd or 4th song. He tried and tried and tried until he got frustrated and was about to give up.
“Next time, try to loosen up the tension in these fingers” I said. I took his ring and pinky fingers to indicate their pressure points.
He leaned over and kissed me. I could hear my heart pounding. My first kiss. He kissed me again. My ears were on fire. He pulled me towards the couch and laid down. He unzipped and pressed my head down until he climaxed. Then he got up, washed up and went to his computer. I remained on the couch listening to the tapping of keys.
We went for short trips in the daytime as he showed me around San Francisco. He complained about how the guys he’d dated left without a word. He talked about the plans for his backyard, his preference for muscled Asian men. In the evening he took me out to dinner, and we watched a play or two. Other times I would prepare our meals. But most of my time was spent waiting in the dim living room, or waiting in the adjoining office watching him check his stocks; waiting until he wanted some company on the couch.
Once I was awakened from a medication-induced nap with his penis in my mouth. He gripped my hair, I choked and struggled to breathe, I felt a panic attack rising. He would not let go until he ejaculated.
“Thank you” he said.
I pulled away from him without a word, walked to the kitchen sink and spat it out. I let the tap run, watched it go down the drain, then I rinsed my mouth and my tear-streaked face.
I stayed partly due to inexperience, I stayed partly as I had nowhere to go, but mainly I stayed because sometimes he would hold me while he napped on the couch. I laid in his arms inhaling the scent of his sweater. That made me somewhat happy. Love born from dependency makes one easy to please. But more so I felt I was suspended from time, from falling; it was a relief however temporary. I wanted to stay in that sweet purgatory for my lost soul cocooned in his green sweater.
On Thursday night he took me to his bed, I didn’t know what to do. It hurt, a lot. When he was done, I reached over but he brushed me off. He got up and went to sleep on the couch, and I laid naked on the bed counting cracks in the ceiling illuminated by the streetlights. I felt no connection, no orgasm, no sensation. Was I already that dead inside?
When the week was up, he dropped me off at the Greyhound Station and told me “I am not your Giorgio”
