beautiful day in the neighborhood

andy pink, cambridge, ma —

lovely day — started off slowly, because of last night's pork dumplings and scallion pancakes, and i didn't bother to shower, but i walked in haste to my doctor's office in cambridge, and settled the score of what still haunts, even 3 weeks later:

in email form, reproduced for you here, on the williams and pink fact sheet —

i think in the end the most shocking element of the 141 — and this came to me in delay — is that it was very much an open acknowledgment that he is gay. i think the same thing can be said of the intimidation pose: total open acknowledgement that he is gay. in fact, the choice not to email but to send the 141 was an acknowledgment that there was nothing really to talk about re his sexuality. that question had already been decided in advance, by me, but also by him, i had gotten him exactly right, and it wasn't worth even having a discussion (email) of acknowledgment or denial, negotiation, about it. and the intimidation stance too was a brazen acknowledgement. the only thing he felt the need to communicate was: i am a member of a club that i do not want to be a member of — obviously — now back off. it's remarkable to me. if i were denying my sexuality i would make an attempt to disavow it, explicitly so, in some kind of convincing performance (the absent email). he didn't bother with that. that he came out to me — so second-handedly, as if that were not even of issue — is just sort of shocking to me, and then my response to this violent/intimate coming out was to make fun of him on the website. i mean, the whole thing is certainly the lovers from midsummer — with the substitution of veritably illiterate code for poetry. really upsetting to me, all the way around.

i also wanted to reiterate what came up at the end today, which is that my fantasy of him was very limited and unelaborated. i was more interested in his thinking, or who he was, activities, like the snowboarding, than i was about elaborating some fantasy. i have very low expectations, simple really: that he was beautiful to me, and then that he was basically the same as me in terms of aesthetic, sensibility, intelligence, humor, and worldview. i really sort of took him for an equal, or a mirror, and didn't ascribe to him magical qualities other than the ones i associate with myself. not otherworldly, very familiar, and not elaborated in fantasy at all. there was very little mystery there — no interest — and i think in the end that if we had met i wouldn't have even been much interested in an elaborate backstory. just wanted to sit together and do work on our laptops.

and then, what was so fucking threatening about the website? even if he is hiding that he is gay, that website really can in no way be traced back to him, the whole thing is situated in chicago, he's at the uni of chi, there's no last name, no picture, i'm so surprised he even bothered to threaten me, and then twice, haunting the website. what is he to care about anonymous farm boy in chicago? if he were concerned for some reason that i was onto his being gay, why would he then acknowledge it with the 141? there is something so strange about the whole aborted affair. and i remember i sent you that email earlier in the week — this exasperated: what was so upsetting about the website? until i put up his details, no one would be able to trace it back to a guy who worked at the starbucks in allston and went to grad school at bu. in the end, i don't really know what bothered him — which is bothering me. i guess he just sort of reacted irrationally and got himself tangled in more trouble than he needed to. i'd really like to take 5 min with the brown girl with the wide face.

and then the plan to somehow be interested in me, then pretend not to be interested in me (or to acknowledge that of course he was interested in me) and then pretend that he was interested in me (not, still) — what kind of plan is that? what is the end game of such a plan? — to lure me into a room, strap me to the bed, and set me on fire? and then i don't understand how that girl could go along with that plan. she would have to know that he was gay — even if he didn't bother to admit it to her — she would have to have figured that out. and then, instead of engaging in an intervention (like i tried to do with my clumsy referral to bournewood) she was going to help him falsely (really) seduce me into — what? the gf also has to know that he is gay — as does virtually everybody else, which i think he must know given his dismissal of even discussing the reality of the situation with me, as it was beyond dispute, presumably — and obviously i am the only person who actually cares about him. i mean, i appreciate that that girl got me out of the store but i can't fathom how she could aid and abet this grotesque dysfunction. i'm sure she's interested in him, but still —

this is the same story of the boy in orlando — except patrick didn't feign homonegativity — as the homosexual homophobe from florida did — but it's the same sad truth that irks me, makes me uncomfortable in the world, a sigh, or at least the grin of a sad clown: why don't you want to be a member of the club that you are a member of?

andy p all the way from aisle three —

andy