the buzz among peacocks

I was in West Hollywood enjoying a beer with J., a handsome man with striking cornflower blue eyes. I felt like he and I were a human island in an ocean of shallowness and cell phones and posing and primping and promenading. The gay world can be only about those things, and most of us never transcend it. He never really talked much, to my deflation. He just kept looking at me with a strange combination of smile, smirk, and desire, and I found myself doing most of the talking and it made me feel awkward. Am I to be some form of entertainment for him? A distraction from his perception of reality? An oasis?

It did turn out to be a pleasant evening, despite his lack of inolvement in conversing. But he did expound a bit on his disgust with the current state of the world. I think that's where he spends his passion. I could see the anger in his sharp eyes and the tightening in his face. But it wasn't the world I wanted to fix to try to make him happy again. Was he ever happy?

And now I think about it and he did talk a bit more than I initially remember. Still, most of it was anger, like a cobra spitting. It must be so thoroughly exhausting to invest so much of yourself that way. However, the beers were refreshing, and we both enjoyed the little buzz, defying the peacocks all around us who kept craning their necks in hopes that they get as much attention as they possibly can.

When he dropped me off at the train station in Hollywood I gave him a hug, and he put his arms around me and that's when I felt, for the first time, his tenderness, buried under all that bitterness. I only wish that hug had lasted more than a moment, these things are so rare.