May, impatient and ready for summer, invites a ton of humidity into the Friday evening before Memorial Day. Central Park is vast, filled with commotion and the people who create it. A modern day gymnastics show, dudes flipping and spinning and twerking, with a clapping audience, assemble next to the narrow staircase we walked down from 72nd Street and Terrace Drive. We tuck ourselves in between the Bethesda Fountain and the lake. The water, bluer than expected. The setting, new and inviting. We, are guests witnessing a union of two people. Two men. They stand together, holding hands in front of us. In between them, a cousin, recently ordained, appointed marriage officiant. I am attending a gay wedding for the first time.
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Before my second year of graduate school at The New School, I applied for a position working in the creative writing department. I got the job. The end of August crept up quickly. I was now the MFA program’s Chapbook Coordinator, also responsible for overseeing all the events, readings, forums, and panels hosted at The New School over the course of the next two semesters. I would be working alongside the Student Readings Coordinator, Paul; a Miami native, high-top wearing, martini-sipping, comic book reading gay man, who lived in Hoboken with his fiancé and two Pomeranians. He would be my first gay coworker.
Beginning graduate school about seven years after high school concluded, Manhattan took a bite out of me, a nice chunk of flesh, and spit it into the Hudson.
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Diversity was not shy to the small Long Island town I grew up in. I lived in a Greek home, worked at an Italian deli, parked cars at a catering hall with Haitians on the weekends, went to a ton of bar/bat mitzvahs in my early teens, played basketball with Indian classmates, and often frequented at Happy Garden, the Chinese restaurant that cured any level of hangover with one bite of their chicken and broccoli lunch special. But I went to high school during a time where it was scary, uncommon, to reveal a secret. (It’s, of course, still scary today). Things were suspected in the hallways, and passed between lockers, but no one was really open about it.
Homosexuality is certainly no secret to The Big Apple. I was raised away from the core, sheltered closer to the skin that hadn’t been rinsed with this type of assimilation just yet. Beginning graduate school about seven years after high school concluded, Manhattan took a bite out of me, a nice chunk of flesh, and spit it into the Hudson. That missing space remained missing as the city waited for me to fill it with something I wasn’t used to.
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Paul and I met up on Fifth Avenue. In order to receive the fat paychecks of a second-year-grad-student-employee, we were required to visit Human Resources to fill out all the necessary and tedious paperwork.
“Looks like it’s going to rain,” I said.
A pot of ominous clouds stirred and stirred.
“Good thing we brought our umbrellas,” Paul replied.
Our hands were empty. We walked together with enough distance between us to let someone comfortably slip through.
HR appeared on the corner of 16th Street and Fifth. It was a thin building that seemingly grew fatter the higher you looked. On the sidewalk a man stood in front of a table selling umbrellas. He too gazed up at the sky.
“Hold on,” I told Paul.
I walked over to the man, handed him a ten, and yanked two black umbrellas off the table.
“Just in case,” I exclaimed, tossing one over to Paul.
He fumbled initially but trapped the umbrella into his thin embrace. I chuckled.
“I play sports too, bro,” he said, curling the umbrella swiftly once, twice, three times.
Initially confused, “Oh,” Paul marveled, “I’ve always wanted to give a bro-hug to someone.”
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We reached the seventh floor, sat, filled out our forms, and handed them in. We turned to the elevator and the windows next to it. Lightning, then thunder. The flash. Then the booming picture. Back on the ground level, we stepped out of the elevator, and motioned towards the door. A rain that pierced the concrete of New York’s sidewalks. Loud, loud thumps, like a never ending succession of high fives.
“You want to get a drink?” Paul asked.
Holding out my umbrella, ready for it to pop open, “Let’s go,” I agreed, and tugged the door open.
Five seconds later, our umbrellas turned inside out. Ten seconds later, we were soaked, running down Fifth, searching for a bar to dry off the rain. We sprinted and laughed, slipped and slid. Two strangers now bound by the storm.
We arrived at Reservoir, a dim, narrow pub with an all-day happy hour made for days like this. I got the first round, Paul the second. Me the third, him the fourth. And even before the first pour, I was having conversations in a way I had never before. Personal. Sexual. Comical. Serious. Friendly. New York. Miami. Dicks. Vaginas. X-Men. Exercise. Gay. Straight. Man to man.
Several hours and several empty glasses and several spilled secrets later, we paid and left. The rain had ceased, and a small drizzle now sprinkled over two people leaving a bar at 6 PM. I held my hand out, higher than your normal handshake, ready for the farewell I used every day with my friends back home.
Initially confused, “Oh,” Paul marveled, “I’ve always wanted to give a bro-hug to someone.”
“First time for everything,” I said.
Unique and unconventional, our hands interlocked, flimsily. Our hug, involving a pat on each respective back, awkward and out of sync. We don’t let go of our umbrellas.
“We’ll work on it.”
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“Congratulations, work husband,” I exclaim, holding my arm out.
“Still needs work,” I admit as we release our bro-hug.
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Paul and his actual husband, Jeff, had just sealed their marriage with two words and two kisses. The crowd of friends and family gather around them.
“Thanks, bro,” Paul says with a smile, popping his hand into mine. We meet for a hug, still a little rushed. We pat each other’s back, still too softly.
Throughout the year leading up to his wedding, Paul became my first gay friend. But amidst a wave of firsts, I stood in Central Park, now like everyone else who had known him longer than I had.
“Still needs work,” I admit as we release our bro-hug.
A couple of stray clouds intrude, and darken the aging day.
“We’ll get there,” Paul says.
◊♦◊
Photo: Getty Images
Nice story Demetri!