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This is a story of Charles the Gay, as my girlfriend came to call him.

Charles was my first date when I got into town. He was comic and peculiar: very thin and a few inches taller than me with big dramatic eyes. His voice was rich, with a tapping staccato to his pronunciation. Words came fast and incessant once he got started. Charles the Gay was very fun to listen to. He reminded me of an industrious cricket.

We laughed a lot.

Charles the Gay and I kissed on the first date. It seemed to be going very well, the date. We strolled down the neighborhood and ate snacks at an outdoor haunt. We drank beer and listened to a guy play sidewalk sax around the corner. There was a festive mood in the air. It was dusk.

Charles kept touching me, his hands on my hands, my arm, my knee. I was wearing a cute skirt. He stroked my leg and remarked with a piquant joy on its smoothness.

“How lovely,” I thought. “He likes to touch.” A touch communicator myself, it made me feel at ease. Like date conversations often do, talk progressed to our hands. Ever notice when dates progress to touching that hands are the first focus? They’re the gateway body part. He held mine and then pointed to the silver ring on his index finger and said, “I thought you could handle it.”

Me: “Handle it?”

Him: “I’m comfortable with my masculinity.”

My head: “Self-conscious?”

Charles’s warm stream of words bounced and lilted over every topic before waltzing straight into being a Southern Gentleman but really wanting to kiss me. So we kissed. It was nice. He pulled back, tilted his head, and looked at my lips inquisitively, like he was in the office break-room pondering choices in a chocolate box. Caramel? Toffee? He came in for more kissing.

Charles had this expressive way of moving his head. Though completely bald, he would toss his head slightly as if tossing long hair off his shoulders. It was very don’t-hate-me-because-I’m-beautiful. And funny. I pointed it out and he laughed.

Two evenings of kissy, blissy fun involved alcohol and innuendo. When he handed me a gin and tonic, I asked if he’d squeezed my lime. He said in his comic staccato, “No, but don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”

How did it go wrong? Was it me? Was it the gay bar he took me to on our third date? After the bar, we rushed to the movies. On the way in, he leaned down to kiss me as I looked up and caught my nose in his mouth.

“Sorry! Guess you weren’t expecting to suck on my nose,” I told him.

“It’s okay, I’ve sucked on much worse,” he said. And then he said, “That came out all wrong didn’t it? Rest assured, I’ve never sucked on anything angular.”

My inner eyebrows shot up.

“Soft, round, yes,” he continued, “but never angular.”

Enter my identity crisis. Charles talked like one of my gay friends. I wanted to play with him like I play with my gay boyfriends, chatty, a little catty, flirty and raw, but never like we’re gonna jump into bed together, or woo each other into the sunset. He had the affect and the humor and the expression. And being bisexual myself, having called the queer community my home a mighty long time, I started to feel for him in a family way. How can I kiss my brother??

Worse, you cannot ask a straight guy you’re on a date with if he’s gay. It’s just a rule.

How was I supposed to act with this guy. On one hand, he kept holding my hand and being sweet; he opened doors, paid the bill even if I offered. On the other, he made me feel for him, really feel for him, in a way I didn’t quite know how to handle:

Charles took me to a party. He told me to look hot to make his friends jealous, even suggesting an outfit he had seen me in. I dressed the part. He introduced me to everyone in the room…until Randall walked up. Randall was adorable, sensitive-looking with dark lashes around blue eyes.

Charles immediately gushed about Randall’s dog. He had told me about her before. He would go over to Randall’s house just to walk her. Randall’s wife and daughter were not at the party that night.

Charles and Randall caught up. I got bored. I mingled with strangers. I didn’t see Charles for 30 minutes. When I finally looked for him, he was still with Randall, flush in the face and positively glowing. My heart broke.

For him! Charles is in love with Randall! And Randall’s married! So Charles visits the dog of the man he loves! And cannot have! And he stands by his side the whole party! While his girl-in-costume talks to strangers!

I had not been drinking. I told myself it could be my imagination. But it didn’t change the way I was beginning to feel.

I love the gay men in my life. I get excited to be with my boys, laughing, dishing, talking deep, expressed, wide open. This openness is what Charles inspired in me. But I couldn’t be that person with him because he wasn’t presenting that guy with me. Vivid imagination or not, he was not offering the guy I was seeing in him.

I was downright conflicted. If I can’t be who he inspires in me, and he can’t be who he wants to be in my presence, who ARE we on this date together?? Oy my head.

Guests were leaving the party and I suggested we go, too. I was hungry. Charles said we’d leave with Randall, who looked almost ready. We lingered. People left. Before I knew it, I stood with the hangers-on around the table in the dining room. So much of the evening was spent on my own, I hadn’t realized Charles wasn’t there. Neither was Randall.

For the purpose of the story, you should know that the bathroom at this house opened into a dark hallway that sat right on the dining room…where everybody lined the walls. At that moment, both Charles and Randall came out of the bathroom and into the dining room, one touching his brow, the other stroking his lip. Their arrival did not go without notice, nor without a little ribbing from friends: “Wow, what were you guys up to in there? Looking a little guilty.” They shrugged it off and the moment slipped past like a leaf on a stream. Party conversation continued.

But in my head, my imagination was confirmed. I was an unwitting prop waiting for my role to end.

I still don’t know the man’s persuasion. Through another awkward story altogether, he told me he is quite straight. It’s bad of me, but I didn’t believe him. I felt like I was lying in his presence.

There are myths we somehow get into our heads. People end up representing folks they never could conjure if they tried. Poor Charles. Was he a figment of my inner world, projected onto a guy that seemed to fit it? Or did I see something in him he did not want me to see? In either case, I couldn’t let him be who he wanted.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

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Photo courtesy of jasonawhite