PREF: Broken Hearted, NYC

PREF issue 18, now available in better magazine shops all over NYC. The Universal News Cafe on 23rd between Fifth and Sixth Ave. has it, I saw it myself! Go purchase it and you'll be able to see all the French hotness. Here's the original English version of this issue's piece.

WHAT TO DO WITH A BROKEN HEART IN NEW YORK

Do Not: Answer the phone.
Andy calls from Portland and says he isn’t thinking about moving to New York anymore. He says there’s someone else, someone who’s breaking his heart. And I think, My god, you’re breaking mine.

I hang up and that’s when I start to panic. But it’s a calm sort of panic, like panicking in slow motion. Suddenly I have all this nervous energy and I don’t know what to do with myself. I start wandering around my apartment aimlessly, opening closets and cabinets not really looking for anything. I turn off the TV. I don’t want to hear anything. But the quiet isn’t peaceful; it’s oppressive, it’s suffocating. I look around and my apartment seems too big and too small, all at the same time. It seems too big for me to manage, to control, to keep in order, but also so small, so claustrophobic I can’t breath.

It’s almost 1 a.m. when I decide to leave my apartment.

Do: Get out of the house.
The subway ride down to West 4th Street feels longer than normal. The dark, fluorescent/aluminum/plastic environment inside the train is just as hopeless and annoying as my apartment. A surly looking dude in baggy jeans and a baseball cap gets on at 42nd Street and starts eating Chinese take-out from a carton, filling the train with the smell of greasy brown lo mein. At 23rd Street, a couple gets on, so drunk it takes them two whole stops to realize they’re on the wrong train. I’m beginning to think going out wasn’t such a good idea.

But once I’m aboveground everything changes. It’s a warm, early fall evening, and the whole city seems to be wandering around the Village. The fratty NYU kids. The bratty underage New Jersey ghetto gays. The girls in pretty dresses on their way to or from fabulous parties. The aging fags smoking outside the piano bars. There’s something amazing about wondering around in New York, especially like this, in the middle of the night, when everyone should be in bed. It’s like the lost boys and girls have been let loose in an amusement park, long after all the children and parents and normal people have gone home.

Wandering around alone amongst all these people, I feel invisible, inconsequential, a secret eye watching everything. I’m anonymous. I don’t have to be broken hearted or brave or anything. It’s incredibly sustaining.

Do: Go to a bar.
It’s a gay bar, of course. I would have preferred a quiet, dimly lit hotel bar, the bartender in a vest and bowtie, someplace old and austere, someplace where people don’t go to hang out, someplace where people don’t go at all.

Instead, I end up at New York’s version of a gay dive bar. It’s not someplace where I usually hang out. It’s a little bit under the radar, a little bit off my beaten path, and, no, I’m not going to mention its name. A boy has to keep some secrets.

I plant myself on a stool at the bar and order a dirty martini.

“You look depressed,” says the bartender (t-shirt, Puerto Rican accent, no vest, no bowtie), “You want a shot?”

I tell him no. Shots are for fun, shots mean it’s a party. I want to get drunk, but I want to get drunk slowly. I kinda need to feel this, sink into it, let it wash over me, and then slip away from it.

In the movie version of my life – or, I don’t know, the hour-long primetime TV drama of my life – the bartender would stick around, ask me about my troubles. He’d listen, and then dole out his surprisingly poignant brand of no-nonsense wisdom. “Listen, kid,” he’d say, “I’ve heard just about everything working behind this bar, and here’s what I think…” But he doesn’t say that. He just pours my drink and moves on to the next customer. It’s a busy Friday night, after all, and I suspect that type of benevolently wise bartender doesn’t really exist.

Do: Think about him when you masturbate.
It’s early morning. The sun is streaming in through my bedroom windows. I woke up with an erection. A warm, comforting, eager morning erection. I kick the sheets back and take hold of my cock, gently at first, moving my hand up and down slowly, just feeling things out, waking up the flesh.

And then I’m thinking of Andy. Thinking of his skin, his smell, the last time I had his cock in my mouth. It was in the shower, in my apartment. He hadn’t been in the mood to get it on, but when he saw me getting into the shower he decided he needed to get in with me. I knelt down, like we were in some lame porno, and he slipped his cock into my mouth. It was smooth and silky, and I could feel him flexing. When he was done, I stood up and he pulled me close to him. “Thank you,” he said, and he kissed me.

Now, that’s all I can think of. Kneeling in my shower. His cock. His smooth, slight muscles. His eyes closed. His pouty lips slightly parted. That’s the image I hold as I stroke myself. And when I come, it’s short and shallow and not particularly comforting.

Do Not: Tell people you were in love with him.
“I wasn’t in love with him.”

“You said you were in love with him.”

“Yeah, I know what I said. I was wrong.”

I’m trying to explain the Andy situation to my friends. For months I’ve been telling them how intensely I felt about him, and how he felt about me. I needed to impress upon them how different this was from every other relationship before it. He was going to move to New York. I was going to wait for him. This felt like it would last forever. This was real. This was something that would change my life forever.

These are words I have lived to regret.

A word to the wise: Never, ever tell people you are in love with someone. It’s a fundamentally insipid sentiment that can neither be proven nor disproved, even to yourself. That’s not cynicism, it’s just common sense.

“Ok, so you weren’t in love. Then what’s with all the drama?”

Actually, nobody asks that question. But I can tell they want to. The thing is, when you tell people you’re in love, and then nothing comes of it, you look like a fool. All that hoping and planning, all those breathless conversations about your man and the life you think you’ll have together; it all seems stupid in retrospect. It all sounds so melodramatic. The only way to avoid being the silly boy, who gets all worked up about minor romantic follies is to never tell anyone that you’re in love. Deny deny deny. That’s my policy.

So, no, I don’t think I was in love with Andy.

Or maybe I was. I don’t know.