SEARCHING IN THE DARK

I blame the jet lag. After a month in Sweden, I returned to Vancouver and thought I’d managed to sidestep that pesky part of readjustment. Sure, I awakened at 3:30 the first night but I fell back to sleep after a couple of rounds of tossing and turning. Second night, no issues. This third night proved to be a killer. I awoke at two in the morning and that was that. I tried to bore myself back to sleep with some mundane Internet surfing. Tried lights out again, changed pillows, pulled covers up, tossed them aside. I lay awake as odd thoughts came to mind. Questions about death. Lovely. Newly learned Swedish vocabulary that I suddenly couldn’t put in a sentence. My first could-this-be-love fling with a gay man (alas, it wasn’t) and how I’d Googled him a few years ago only to discover his obituary from a dozen years earlier. More thoughts about death.

And then Jay came to mind. My very first gay friend after I moved to Los Angeles at twenty-four, intent on finally coming out. Oh, Jay! As I slowly nursed a glass of club soda that was mostly ice and I reminded myself not to slouch in a corner near the dance floor at Rage in the heart of West Hollywood, I was still in a state of wonder and awe. Back in Dallas and Fort Worth, I’d gone to a few gay bars but always with a group of co-workers from a department store or restaurant where I worked. I stuck so close to my friends and remained so desperately closeted that I dared not look around to see who else was in the club. But being new to L.A., I didn’t have a group to hide behind. Alone in a gay bar, I couldn’t possibly pass for straight. It was 1990, after all, and long before it was ever cool for a straight guy to hang in a gay spot. It amazed me knowing that all these men were—gasp—homosexual. I hadn’t figured out how to dress the part (never did) so I shifted from foot to foot as I stood overdressed in my baggy Girbaud jeans and a long-sleeved peach shirt with a band collar and snap buttons. There seemed to be invisible electric fencing surrounding me, keeping all these stunning men at a safe distance from me. While later I’d curse that damn fencing that seemed to follow me in all gay venues, it came as a relief then. I could listen to Janet Jackson and Madonna while letting gay vibes soak in without any of that awkwardness that would surely surface (along with an instant layer of sweat) in even the most mundane conversation. It was enough that I was in the vicinity of gay men. Small steps.

But Jay didn’t see the electric fencing. And any little zap didn’t faze him. I don’t recall his first words but they were probably something like, “Relax, honey, that wall can hold itself up.” And I would have smiled while looking down at my shoes. New loafers from Nordstrom. Again, out of place. Then, he asked what I was doing here all by my lonesome and I just shrugged and swayed to the music. Jay pulled me onto the dance floor. No resistance from me. It’s where I’d wanted to be since I’d arrived. No talk necessary. I could be the geek who silently mouthed all the words to “Pump Up the Jam” or “Everybody Everybody” (they weren’t lyrically complex) while smiling at the small spaces between people’s heads to proximate a feeling of belonging.

Awkwardness returned the moment Jay pulled me back off the dance floor after four or five songs, a little too late to spare my peach shirt from noticeable pit stains. I’d been prepped before my first school dance in grade six that proper etiquette after a dance was to say, “Thank you for the dance” and then walk away. But there we were, standing again at my wall—my staked out safe spot—and my voice was still AWOL and Jay...well, if he’d ever had that similar etiquette lesson he no doubt talked right through it. Jay again asked, “Why are you all alone?”

Somehow my tongue fell into place, my mouth opened and I managed to say, “Because I don’t know anyone.” Not a trace of woe-is-me. (That would come later in life.)

“Well now you know me.”

I panicked. I shouldn’t have danced with him. I’d led him on. I blurted, “Sorry, I’m not interested.”

He wasn’t fazed in the least. “Of course not, honey. You’re too good looking for me.” At that time, I didn’t know that Jay was a master at flattery. I just assumed his response was a case of bad lighting. “We’re going to be friends.” He grabbed my hand and said, “Come on. Let’s do a lap.” I followed him as we wove our way through the crowd and slowly walked all the way around the island bar, stopping several times for Jay to chat up the hunkiest men, oohing as he grabbed biceps and ran his hands on massive pecs. This was long, long before Me Too. Getting handsy with strangers was common and especially permissible for a guy like Jay. At 6’5”, rail thin and decidedly effeminate, he was instantly dismissed by the studs he doted on. He had a free pass for fondling.

I was his perfect sidekick. His wildly flirtatious words and actions always drew shock and laughter from me. It took a guy who went to extremes to make me feel comfortable in a gay venue. When we agreed to meet up for my first ever AIDS Walk, I waited that morning by my car in an empty parking lot near Paramount Studios until a woman in a sleek red evening dress approached, asking for directions. My face reddened. I barely knew my own way around. The woman then caressed that spot on my arm where a bicep was supposed to be and said, “Relax, honey.”

Jay. It was only then that I learned that he occasionally performed in some of West Hollywood’s seedier bars, places that never appeared on published lists of the city’s gay bars. Jay did the entire Walk route in high heels and kept the event festive, still doting on handsome men but notably stopping and chatting up many participants dotted with Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions and confined to wheelchairs.

Jay and I spent many a night meeting up at Micky’s or Rage, darting back and forth from one to the other, dancing, doing our laps and finally settling into real conversation in one of the eateries on Santa Monica Boulevard that served consistently bad pizza.

Over time, I made other friends at the gay bars. They never warmed to Jay. To them he was too abrasive and, though they never said it, too effeminate. Jay always seemed to be in performance mode, doing some sort of oddball shtick, perhaps overcompensating for the fact that a tamer version of himself would be utterly ignored, even shunned in gay circles. Jay was a trailblazer, a sharp contrast from my still-closeted self whenever I left West Hollywood city limits. Jay had been out for virtually his entire life, his mannerisms making it futile to ever even attempt to pass as straight. I was never embarrassed by Jay; rather, I was indebted to him.

Sadly, Jay was one of the many who never really made it in L.A. He lived in a slummy part of the city—something West Hollywood adjacent—in an apartment he never showed me. I was always picking him up and up and dropping him off in a Vons grocery store parking lot. After a year or two, Jay moved back to Bakersfield. And as best I can tell, he’s stayed there. Years ago, I found him on Facebook. From photos, it looked like he was partnered and happy. (But then, doesn’t everyone look happy on Facebook?) I sent a message along with a Friend request but never got a response. Maybe the request didn’t go through for some reason. Maybe too much time had passed. Maybe I wasn’t as memorable in his life as he was in mine.

In my jet-lagged state, I Googled Jay again. No more Facebook page, only some undated glorified yellow pages entry linking him to a fledgling food delivery service company, still in Bakersfield. No separate web page, no further links. A nostalgic dead end. That’s one of the downsides of the World Wide Web for a guy like me. I struggle with the “past is past” mentality. I cherish past friendships and assume people want to renew ties just as much as I do. Too often, the internet brings me close but not close enough. My searches unlock memories but rarely open anything new.

I suppose I could have spent my groggy, semi-awakened hours of jet lag vegetating in front of the TV screen as Netflix encouraged me to binge-watch a seven-season show I’ve never heard of. It would have been safer, keeping memories buried and emotions in check, avoiding the frustration of a fruitless search. There’s a genuine sadness that I can’t reach out and let a pivotal person in my life know I’ve been thinking of him. But as I write this in a Vancouver cafe, at least twenty-three years from the last time I saw Jay (he visited me here once), I have a faint smile on my face. Nothing too big to draw attention from strangers. Knowing Jay didn’t lead to me overcome my shyness and reservedness. He just allowed me to step away from it for a short time.