The Boy, Part Two

Seeing the world through Kenji's eyes suddenly made me realize how far I'd fallen from grace.

Once we crossed that first barrier together--getting him through his very first sexual encounter with a man--Kenji threw himself into the relationship totally and completely. We had had sex, and in his mind that meant A) he could trust me utterly and completely, B) we were officially a couple, and C) we would be in love forever. It never crossed his mind that I might have lied to get him into bed, that I might have two or three other guys on the side, that I was an emotional basket case waiting to blow up, or that I'd get bored in five minutes. All the things that run through the average gay man's mind when dropping his pants with a new partner were not running through his.

It was early in the relationship, and having discovered sex Kenji couldn't seem to get enough of it, coming over to my place three or four times a week. Always enthusiastic, I was surprised how fast he caught on, his initial clumsiness rapidly evolving into a real sense of what I needed and wanted in bed. After one particularly fantastic lovemaking session, we lay in the semi-dark of my room. He was on his back, I was propped up on my elbow beside him, my other hand resting on his naked (and incredibly flat) belly. He looked up at me and his eyes said it all; he was head over heels in love. He hadn't learned yet not to trust, to always be on guard. His heart was on his sleeve. "Later, maybe a year from now, do you want to move in with me? We could get an apartment together."

Suddenly, I was not a thirty-something gay man. Suddenly I was starting all over again, a young man on the verge of my new sexuality, which stretched before me sunny and blue all the way to the horizon. That was the way he saw this world. He didn't know that sex was the cheapest commodity on the market, that it could be bartered and sold half price and in bulk. He didn't know that men could swear they loved you and see an endless string of other guys on the side. There had been no Shouhei in his life. No one had lied to him, cheated him. He was the boy I once was, thinking that the way the world worked was that you found your soulmate, fell in love, and lived happily ever after.

I realized that night, then and there, that I had stopped believing in love. When the hell had that happened? Had it been when the first person I ever loved walked out, telling me he'd found someone else? Had it been during the endless string of guys I dated after, trying to fill the gaping hole he had left when he went away? I remember that after he dumped me, I dated with the intention of finding new love. One by one, the pattern was the same. We would meet, connect, have sex, and then it all went wrong. He already had a boyfriend. He had a wife. He was just after sex. He disappeared without ever explaining what went wrong. Somewhere in the process, I gave up on the love and settled for just the sex. And once that happened, sex had somehow become boring. Then it had to be threesomes, or sex in the bathroom of a club, or an alleyway...anything to shoot fresh adrenaline into something that had become banal and stale. Like the man behind the curtain, all the magic had been stripped away.

But in Kenji's eyes, I saw it unclouded. That real love. That innocent expectation. That connection. Uninjured, he was content to stand naked before me with his heart in his hands, while I--layered in enough character armor to deflect a grenade--watched. It was at that moment that I understood this was my chance. It was Lucifer's chance to crawl up out of hell and hang with the angels again. A chance to be in a relationship that was not a lie.

I removed the armor, and surrendered. "Of course, I would love to live with you."

Teary eyed, he hugged me, and I realized I had meant what I had just said.