My first relationship didn’t exactly go as I had planned. I didn’t date at all throughout high school or my first year of college. This could be because I set ridiculously high standards for whatever person I would date and no one I met in that time ever came close to measuring up. It could also be because throughout most of my time in high school I looked like a four-year-old with ADHD tried to sculpt a high schooler out of old, stale Play-Doh. Most likely it was a combination of the two.

For someone who looked like a complete dumpster fire throughout this time, I did set remarkably high standards for potential love interests that I wouldn’t budge on. I wouldn’t even consider someone if they didn’t check off all of my requirements. I was basically looking for my soulmate at age 14. Even then I knew trying to casually date around would be a total train wreck, due to my lack of basic social skills and overall tendency to relate everything I hear back to obscure Saturday Night Live sketches from the early 2000s.
In my head, I wanted to date a cute girl who was my age. I wanted her to sometimes wear casual dresses, but never wear a lot of makeup. She also couldn’t be a vegetarian (a girl I could share a burger with was the absolute dream). I also wanted someone who wasn’t trying to become a performer like I was; I just thought the dynamic would be better if we were in two totally different lines of work. That may sound like a crazy list, but it was just scratching the surface of what I was looking for. I was very picky for someone who didn’t have a lot of potential prospects to begin with. It wasn’t until the summer before my sophomore year of college that I had my first relationship. Just because the universe likes to taunt, it went against every single item on that checklist. Yes, including the gender.

I met this guy- for the sake of the story, let’s call him James- when we were both hired to perform in a new puppet musical about environmental conservation at the Bronx Zoo for that summer. Pretty much right off the bat we became really close friends. We had a lot in common, including our love of Christmas and The Muppets. He was funny and smart and unbelievably kind. At the time, I was nineteen and he was thirty. That sounds like a huge age difference, but it honestly didn’t feel like he was any older than I was because he was the biggest child at heart. We began texting every day. We would send each other links to funny videos or pictures of pretty nature scenes. Anytime I would see anything regarding ducks I would immediately send it to him because ducks were his favorite animal.

I didn’t have my own place in the city that summer so I was forced to commute to and from the zoo from my home in Connecticut. One day, James and I were scheduled to do seven shows in a day, three more than our usual amount, and then come back in the next morning to do four more. Because we would be exhausted by the end of the seven-show day and would have to come back the next morning to do it all again, he offered to let me stay at his apartment so I wouldn’t have to commute the three hours back after such a long day only to turn around and do it all again right after. He offered up an air mattress, and that was the first of many times I stayed with him that summer.

After the seven-show day, we went back to James’s apartment and ordered Chinese for dinner. We watched TV and hung out, but we were both pretty fried so we decided to go to bed early. I set up the air mattress on the floor next to his bed and we shut off the lights to go to sleep. But, we didn’t for a while. We stayed up and talked for hours in the dark. It normally takes a lot for me to open up to someone, but it didn’t take anything at all for me to start pouring my soul out to him. I talked about my uncertainties regarding where I was going in my life and how I felt like such an outcast in my first year of college that I wasn’t sure I even wanted to go back. He gave me advice and told me stories about the similar experiences he had. We talked for a long time and I don’t remember how exactly we got to this point, but he bookended the conversation that night with “I think you’re a good person, Mister.”

He said that without the tiniest hint of irony or sarcasm. It was completely genuine. Who does that? I was floored. Needless to say, I fell for him pretty quickly after that. However, because I had never had feelings for a guy before in my life, I wasn’t sure at the time if I was falling for him or not. All I knew was that I loved being around him and I wanted to be talking and laughing with him all the time.

It wasn’t until I had a dream one night that he started dating somebody else, that upset me so much it caused me to wake up in a cold sweat at 4am, that I realized I had a big crush on James.

I figured it would never happen, because I had a non-existent track record when it came to dating. Plus, he was way out of my league. As the summer went on, we still texted every day and worked together a lot. I would stay on his air mattress at least two nights every week. We watched movies and had dinner together all the time. He was a vegetarian and, because I was staying with him so much, I started to eat healthier too. I didn’t care that I couldn’t share a burger with him. One night, he made us roasted vegetable kabobs and I figured that was just as good. Plus, I was losing weight. It was like magic. Every day I fell for him a little bit more.

One night, he was booked to sing at a vaudeville show in New Jersey, so after working at the zoo I met him at Penn Station and we went out there together. It was a terrific night. Before the show started, we each took a selfie of the two of us on our phones. A woman saw us doing this and invited the official show photographer to take a picture of us instead. She said, “Put your phones down! Get a nice picture. You two are cute together.” My heart jumped into my throat.

It wasn’t until the middle of August that summer that anything else happened between us. We had just worked four days in a row together at the zoo, and we had that Sunday off. We decided to use that day to actually go and explore the animals at the zoo, which neither one of us had done before. So, I stayed over at his place another night and we were going to head to the zoo after lunch. That morning, he started showing me photo albums from his trip to London after I had offhandedly told him I wanted to go there. We sat on his bed, leaning against the headboard with our legs stretched down the mattress, and flipped through his memories. He put his head on my shoulder and I rested my head on top of his. After I closed the book neither one of us moved from our positions. We were leaning against each other and he began to rub his foot gently against my foot. My heart began to pound and my breath became short. We both shifted so we were laying on our sides looking at each other. After a couple minutes he softly asked, “Am I making you uncomfortable?” I could hardly breathe and I could hear my heart pounding like a drum. I honestly answered that he wasn’t.

We got up shortly afterward and headed to the zoo to see the animals. I convinced myself that what had happened earlier hadn’t actually occurred, because that made a lot more sense to me. We had a great time at the zoo and went back to his apartment afterward. I wound up needing to stay with him an extra night because I was called in to do a different job in the city the following morning. After we got back from the zoo, we made homemade French toast roll-ups for dinner from a recipe he had found online. After dinner, we did the dishes then went back to his bedroom to watch Boy Meets World on his little TV. We sat back on his bed, but we were sitting a little bit closer to each other than we had been whenever we would watch TV in his room in the past. Every so often, I would inch my hand a little bit closer to his hand until it got to the point where they were just barely touching. I guess I was sort of testing the waters to see if he would pull his hand away. Luckily, he didn’t.

In fact, he got up briefly to adjust the air conditioner and when he sat back down, he fully took my hand in his. I was so thrilled that he was the one to do that because it meant I wasn’t reaching for something that wasn’t there. We held hands and watched TV for the rest of that evening and I couldn’t have been happier. At around midnight, we decided we should go to bed because James was tired, plus I had to be up really early for my job the next morning. I mentioned that I had to set up my air mattress and started to get it out of his closet. James said, “You know, you don’t have to.” I looked at him, hoping he meant what I thought he meant. He patted the bed next to where he was lying. I said, “Are you sure?” He nodded. That could have easily made me very nervous if I felt it were coming from someone sleazy looking for an easy hookup, but James had such love in his voice and innocence in his eyes that I knew he was just offering up his bed as a place to enjoy each other’s company like we had been doing all night.

I laid down next to him under the comforter and he turned off the light. We said goodnight to each other and he reached his arm around me and started to fall asleep with his head nestled on my shoulder. I couldn’t believe it was happening. Here was this guy who had totally snuck up on me and made me the happiest I had ever been. And he liked me, too! I was flabbergasted.

Before that moment, not only had I never dated anyone, I had never kissed anyone either. I was almost twenty and I had such low self-esteem growing up that I never put myself out there because I assumed no one would ever want to kiss me so there was no point in trying. But that night, I knew I had to kiss him. So, as we laid in bed, I leaned over and pressed my lips against his. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t breathe an internal sigh of relief when he reciprocated it. We started kissing and, after the initial awkwardness that comes standard with any first kiss, it was wonderful. After a few minutes, he whispered “Are you okay?” I said yes and he said, “There’s no pressure for anything to happen.” Did I mention how amazing he was?
We wound up just kissing that night and then laid there in each other’s arms. I couldn’t believe that had happened. I whispered, “Sorry to spring that on you when you were so tired.” He teasingly retorted, “Oh yeah, I really put up a fight! Like I would just ignore the adorable guy lying next to me in my bed!” That was the first time anyone called me adorable.

James fell asleep and I was left with a huge smile on my face. However, because my scumbag brain won’t let me have anything, my smile dissolved as I sunk into a deep ocean of what-ifs.

I laid there with this amazing guy and I started to think, “What if he only kissed me because he was trying to make someone else jealous?” “What if he doesn’t actually like you at all?” “Who are you to think you could ever be with someone like him?” But, the most unsettling one of all was, “What if he regrets this?”

A few weeks prior, we were watching a movie when James got a text. He told me it was from his first ex-boyfriend who sent James a message saying he found something on Instagram that reminded him of James. James promptly erased the message. As I laid in bed with him asleep in my arms, I couldn’t stand the idea of one day sending James a message that he would promptly delete. He was too important to me for that to happen. He had done too much for me. I was nervous about a breakup and we hadn’t even started dating yet.
The next morning, I had to sneak out at 6am to get to my job. I moved slowly to try not to wake James up. I kissed him on the forehead and whispered that I’d see him later. Throughout the day, I couldn’t stop thinking of the what-ifs. I thought I was so stupid for jeopardizing our great friendship by going in for that kiss. I couldn’t stand the idea of one day possibly not having James in my life. I was sure he was going about his day pretending that the previous night didn’t happen because I was just some dumb kid and he would never actually be interested in someone like me. Needless to say, that was a long day.

But, at the end of it I went back and saw him and, luckily for me, he wasn’t trying to deny anything about what happened. In fact, he went in and kissed me pretty soon after I had gotten there. He said that maybe we should talk about what this all meant for us. I agreed, but was secretly screaming inside that this was the end of our relationship. We sat on his bed holding hands and he said, “I’d be lying if I said we don’t have obstacles.”

He went on to explain that he wasn’t sure if we could date because there are things that would make it difficult. Not only do we work together which could pose issues in the future, but he said, “Now, I’m not saying this is true, but I am the stranger that your parents trusted you to stay with and now I’m the older guy who has ‘corrupted’ their son.” I hadn’t thought about that. My parents are not homophobic people, luckily, but I was concerned what they would think about the age difference. I talked about James so much to them that I was fairly sure they knew I had a crush on him, despite not being out, but I didn’t think they figured anything would actually happen.

He went on to say that he had a crush on me for a while, but he wasn’t sure if I would even be interested in “this sort of thing.” I said I wasn’t sure I would have been interested either. He said, “I’m guessing I’m the first person to show you this kind of attention.” When I said that was true, he essentially went on to say that I most likely don’t know what I like yet, and that was okay. I could be straight, I could be gay, I could be neither. (That cemented what a great person he was to me. He could have easily tried to push me to one conclusion or the other, but he said that despite us both being guys it didn’t necessarily mean that I was gay.) But, he said, no matter what I learn about myself he will be there to support me because he didn’t have anyone to support him when he was learning about his own identity at my age. He said that when he first came to terms with his sexuality, he fell into a deep depression. I told him that, on the contrary, because of him I had never been happier.

I told him how wonderful I thought he was. I told him that I had never had someone as special as him. I told him that I kept expecting the care he showed me to go away because that was what I was used to. I told him my worries of whether or not he’d regret me. He smiled and said that I had nothing to worry about. He assured me that he wasn’t going anywhere and he would never regret me. I could tell he wasn’t lying.
We came to the conclusion that it was best to go back to being “best friends.” Honestly, I was okay with that. It made things less complicated and it meant that we would still be able to be in each other’s lives for a long time. I gave him a hug and one last kiss and left for home. I sat on the train that night feeling good about what we had decided. But, because my scumbag brain won’t let me have anything, that didn’t last long either.

The next day, I was home in Connecticut for the first time since all of this had happened. I was alone for most of the day, and I began to think about James. I began to think about how happy he made me and how much I wanted to be with him. I had never had a friend like James; he was someone who I felt comfortable sharing literally anything and everything with. I should have been grateful that I still had a friend like him. But, I also never had someone I cared for so much who actually felt the same way about me. It came and went so fast, and I realized I didn’t want it to end. I kept re-watching the Parks and Recreation scene with Ben and Leslie deciding to “say screw it and do this thing for real.” I wanted so badly to do the same. I didn’t care that he was older than me, or that we worked together, or what my parents would think. He made me happy and I wanted to just say “screw it.”

I fell into a funk for the rest of that day and it made it all the harder when James texted me asking how I was doing. I told him that I was being bugged by “personal stuff,” which he clearly saw right through. He sent me a picture of a puppy playing with Christmas wrapping paper to cheer me up. He knew me so well.
Later that week, I went back into the city for work and stayed at James’s apartment again. I was still kind of in a mood, upset that I couldn’t be with the person I wanted to be with despite him being in the same room as me. We were in the kitchen when he turned to me and gently asked, “Did I mess with your head? Did I mess with your head and your heart? I didn’t mean to.” This absolutely tore me up inside, but I said that he didn’t. He gave me a bear hug and we went to watch TV.

Later on, I apologized for being such a damper that day. And, just like what happened the first night I ever stayed on the air mattress on his floor, I began to pour my heart out to him. I told him how much I loved being friends with him so I shouldn’t have been feeling as upset as I was. But, I said I was so happy to finally have someone that I cared about who felt the same way. I said I didn’t know what this meant for me in terms of my sexuality, because my feelings toward men as a gender hadn’t changed; I just knew I really liked him. James said he understood and the past few days had been difficult for him, too. He leaned over and kissed me. He said, “I’ve been wanting to do that all day.” I finally was able to smile and said, “Me too.”

After that, we unofficially started dating. We weren’t open about it to our friends at first because for one thing, I hadn’t come out yet. I still didn’t know what I would come out as, but as far as everyone knew I was straight.

The first night I moved back into my college dorm in the city, I met with James at night in Union Square. We sat on a bench until 11pm, and then went down to the South Street Seaport to look at the view of Brooklyn at night. We were alone on the pier and I had him wrapped up in my arms. I had to bend down to have my face on the same level as his face, which kind of hurt my back, but I didn’t care. I was standing on the water in New York City wrapped around someone I loved. I kissed his cheek and we just stood and looked at the view. We watched as the giant digital clock on display over the water struck midnight and we turned and walked back to the subway. Before he got on the subway, he went on his tiptoes and kissed me. I watched him walk down the stairs to the train and I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have him.

Despite finally having my own place in the city, I still spent a fair amount of time at the apartment I had come to know so well. One of my favorite things that we would do was when James would turn on the app on his iPad that simulated a fireplace, play on soft piano music and we would just lie together and stare at the virtual flame. Feeling his chest go up and down with every breath was incredibly comforting. I could have laid there all day.

At the end of September, James had to leave New York for an acting job in Arizona for two months. We tried to spend as much time together as we could before he left. On the last day he was in town, I called in sick from my one and only class I had that day so I could spend more time with him. (I knew he wouldn’t like this, so I told him the class was cancelled for the day.) I went uptown and walked into his building just as he was coming up from doing laundry in the basement. We kissed and, for the millionth time, I couldn’t believe it.

That day, I helped him pack for his trip. It was eating me up inside that he was leaving for such a long time and, because he knew me like a book, he sat me down on the bed and assured that he wasn’t abandoning me. He told me we would text every day, write each other and talk on Skype. I knew it wouldn’t be the same as actually being in his company, but I knew it would have to suffice. At the end of the day, he took a train with me all the way down to where I lived on the opposite end of the city. We walked down the street holding hands and he looked up at me and asked what I was thinking about. “When you get back,” I said.

We stopped and ate French fries at a Wendy’s for a little while and then I started to walk him back to his train. We stopped on the sidewalk and kissed. He said he hoped I have a good semester and I told him that I would miss him. We kissed again and he left. I slowly made my way back to my dorm and, because it was a cliché I saw in movies that I figured might help, stopped and got myself a McFlurry.

He texted me later that night and said he was really going to miss me a lot. I told him the same. But I didn’t tell him that I was nervous. I was nervous what would happen over the next two months. He went from being a complete stranger to someone I couldn’t think of living without in less than two months. I was nervous the opposite would happen when we were on opposite sides of the country. I immediately set up an electronic countdown on my phone to the date when he would be coming home.

I’ve been writing this piece as if it has happened so far in the past that the story has a defined conclusion. Well, that is not the case. In fact, James is still in Arizona for that same acting job at the time of this writing. We actually just got off Skype. I just needed an outlet to express my deep adoration for him while he is away. While I want nothing more than to hold his hand or wrap him up in my arms as we watch Boy Meets World, knowing that he will be coming home in only 43 days is enough for me.