Toronto

Gale/Randy RPS

R

It comes down to cities and relationships. I can categorize my life by the cities I’ve lived in and the relationships I’ve had (sometimes the relationships I’ve had with the cities.)

Until I was 18 I lived with my family in Atlanta, or rather right outside of Atlanta (but everyone who lives on the outskirts stretches the borders so they can claim it as their own.) I fell in love with Atlanta easily, all of its southern charm and thick, humid air and welcoming warmth. It was the best place for me to grow up.

I rode Marta, I went to public school, I smoked pot, I got laid and I learned what it was like to drive a truck down Georgia 400 at 4am with the windows down and the music up so high the base moved the fabric of the seat against my back in a way that felt dangerous.

I bought used albums in Little Five Points and played soccer in the sticky summer grass at Piedmont Park. I took bus 14 all the way downtown about three hundred times my senior year in high school (telling my parents I was at school or studying with friends or taking a girl for ice cream.)

I graduated and headed to college in D.C. I was, officially, no longer my parents’ problem. They’re good people, they just didn’t know what to do with me. In any matter, they got to brag that their kid got into American University on a soccer scholarship when they mingled at pretentious cocktail parties with the people they pretended were their friends.

I got over Atlanta pretty easy. Three weeks into my first semester I met Laurie. She was a bisexual political science major. I could never decide what I liked better, listening to her wax intellectual about foreign policy or watching her eat out her roommate. I would smile and nod while Laurie rambled on about the fucked up state of the world until she tumbled off of her soapbox after too many glasses of wine. Dorothy, her roommate, always managed to stumble upon us in various states of undress on the living room floor. Dorothy was curvy with a talented tongue and vacant eyes. The three of us had a nice time.

I had a sore dick and a smile on my face the entire time I lived in D.C.

Then Laurie met Marianne, some save the world tree hugger who was apparently a better lay than me. Dorothy was a hell of a lot more pissed off than I was and slashed Laurie’s tires the day I moved out of their apartment (which I never officially lived in.)

I hated playing soccer for The Man anyway so I headed west.

San Francisco just sort of happened. My parents got me this old Leica that I decided to put to use. I bought a beat up old truck and headed out west to get inspiration from the desert. I liked the idea of taking an entire series of photographs on Route 66. My road trip ended up being a string of one-night stands and cut-rate snapshots (mostly of the one night stands.) I never did get to Route 66.

By the time I reached California I decided art was the only thing I could stomach for the long haul and San Francisco seemed as good a place as any to get my start. Plus, I’d heard the Castro was pretty laid back.

I tried to take pictures for a while. There was actually more bureaucracy, red tape bullshit and politics in art school than there’d been in one of the nation’s most uptight universities. Go figure. I dropped out after a couple years.

After my failed attempts at visual artistry I just hung out for a while. And by a while I mean half a decade.

I knew Fisherman’s Warf, Nob Hill, Union Square, the Mission and the Castro like the back of my underused hands. I wandered through streets and jobs and women in an uninspired blur. I couldn’t name half of the bars I worked in or half the women I slept with, but I don’t remember being unhappy.

I think having that much free time in a city full of that much life created a connection I won’t be able to find again. I’ll always say that San Francisco is the best place in the world to find yourself. Yet, somehow I know I’ll never go back. Once a romance is over I don’t revisit it.

The last few months in San Francisco, I roomed with three gay guys in a two-bedroom apartment just behind The Castro Theater. I felt like being experimental and they let me stay rent-free provided I got naked with them every once in a while. It was our unspoken agreement and it wasn’t a big deal. It was what I’d imagined being a porn star was like, a lot of forced moans and simulated thrusting.

Sometimes at night when I was lying in my lumpy twin bed with the window open I would focus on the faint sounds of the Wurlitzer Organ entertaining the audience before a film. I had to do something to drown out Tom and Tim fucking in the next room (and yes, they’re two big burly bears just like you’re imagining.)

I couldn’t stand the sound of that organ any more than I could stand the sound of Tom’s desperate ‘fuck me harder’ pleading, so I moved to LA.

LA was…well, it was LA. It’s smog ridden and plastic coated and Gucci filled just like you’d think it would be. I could take it or leave it really. But I wasn’t there a month when I met Rebecca. LA for me will always be Rebecca.

A friend convinced me to try acting. The photography thing hadn’t worked, I couldn’t paint or draw or sing or dance, so it seemed like the logical thing to do. I was too old, too thin, too ordinary and too jaded. But I gave it a shot anyway.

At my first audition Rebecca was handing out clipboards, the ones where you write down all of your vitals and clip your 8x10 glossy to the top and all that shit. Anyway, our hands brushed and she rushed to explain the various sections I needed to fill out. When I was done with the audition I got her phone number.

I didn’t get the part in the commercial but I did move in with Rebecca a few weeks later. She had a studio in West Hollywood that smelled like curry and dishwater, but I liked it.

LA was really good for the first few years. I got commercials, did a couple of plays. Being an actor wasn’t so bad. It paid the bills and gave me more free time than I could even fill up. I bartended sometimes and started taking pictures again. It was all right.

Then Rebecca met Sam The Alcoholic. Sam was a tortured sculptor that knocked Rebecca around. The first time I saw the faint yellow and purple marks on her jaw I lost it. My eyes soaked in the bruises and her denial lit a fire in me. I beat the guy’s door down and then I beat his face in until he lost two teeth and some dignity. I moved out of our apartment the next day. Rebecca moved in with Sam four days later.

LA was over for me.

I didn’t really have money to move or any place to go so I slept on my friend Dover’s couch for six weeks until he told me he hated the fact I ate Ramen every night and kicked me out. In hindsight I owe him. I finally got off my ass and took a shower.

A couple months later I was about to open a show at a small playhouse when my agent called about a role in a new cable show. She tossed around shit like ‘ground breaking’ and ‘make your career’ in order to get me to go for a reading.

The reading went well. I got the part and I left LA.

That’s when I fell for Toronto.

In a matter of days I had to find a place to stash half of my life, find a place to leave my truck, buy a shitload of winter clothes and learn a million lines of dialogue. My agent, thrilled with her fucking commission, flew to Toronto and got me an apartment and maps and groceries and then she flew back to LA to put me on a plane.

I started shooting the show four days later.

I didn’t know we’d get famous. Hell, I didn’t know we’d even be picked up for a second season. We filmed sixteen hours a day for five months without any idea about what would happen. We were being well compensated to sludge through snow and sleet only to strip down to nothing and moan and thrust in soft-core porn.

Toronto was white. It was cold and snowy and a little bland, but I liked it. Most of the cast left apartments and lovers back in LA or New York and they bitched about how much they hated Toronto and its weather, but really I was happy to be somewhere new. When everyone went home for the holidays I stayed in my small apartment with my stray dog, but I didn’t tell anyone.

We wrapped filming for the first season in May and then spent a long, warm summer holding our breath. Or at least I did. I think everyone else had other shit to do - friends and family to get back to, summer projects to work on, whatever. I was already falling for Toronto, so I decided to stick around.

That summer Toronto turned into Randy.

About a month after we’d wrapped filming he called me to say he’d come back to town from New York to stay for the rest of our break. It turned out he kind of liked Toronto too. We hung out that night, had dinner and saw a movie. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of our summer.

I’m sure people think what happened between us was fast and furious. Some amazing, blinding moment of ‘oh God this is it’. But that wasn’t the way it was at all. We spent time together just hanging out, really got to know each other in that way you rarely ever know other people.

Our relationship started with me licking his ass four days after we met. You don’t have a lot of places to go after that. The long months of shooting and our nine million sex scenes together made me comfortable around him in a way I’d never been comfortable around anyone. Then we filled days and weeks and months of summer with conversations and comfortable silence. And well, I just felt like Randy really got to know exactly who I was. I wasn’t sure anyone else ever had.

We also got to know Toronto in a way we hadn’t before. We found little Italian restaurants with good house wines, dumpy Mexican joints with the best burritos. He brought me books and I showed him some of my photography. Randy turned out to be the closest friend I’d ever had.

Months of the same passed, except it was never really the same. It was always new and different. Every day I knew I’d see him I was happier than the days I knew I wouldn’t. I guess that feeling in my gut was what told me there was something more going on than we acknowledged. I decided to let it work itself out.

And it did.

One night in August, Randy came to my place for dinner. We ate on stools at the bar and drank too much Merlot. After we were done we watched a movie (I don’t remember which one anymore.) Randy laid his head in my lap and dozed half way through it. When it was over I muted the television and flipped through the channels.

I stumbled on an episode of our show and sat in awe as the scenes played silently. It was the first time I’d seen us on television. I had a thing about watching myself so I’d always avoided it.

I recognized the story line from the middle of the season, Justin ran away to New York and Brian went after him. Randy and I had a hell of a time filming the sex scene in that one. I smiled to myself remembering the thousand takes and our sore lips.

“We’re beautiful,” he said softly. I nearly came out of my skin I was so startled. I looked down to find him staring up at me, sleepy eyes and a small smile playing on his lips.

I looked back at the screen, watching our bodies grind together. He was right.

I nodded.

He laced his fingers through mine and squeezed my hand a little. “We’re good together,” he added as he watched the screen. I was mesmerized by the way the soft glow from the television played across his cheeks and nose and lips.

I nodded again.

“Come here,” he whispered so quietly I felt it more than I heard it.

I leaned down and he kissed me like it was the most natural thing in the world. I remember thinking it was so strange kissing Randy and feeling like it was the first time.

I slipped a hand under his head, weaving my fingers through his hair. Then I raised his head up closer to mine, trying to push my tongue deeper inside of him. He shifted and sat up a little, climbing half way into my lap and wrapping his arms around me. When he finally pulled back to look at me he was smiling.

“I waited a long time to do that,” he laughed and then he kissed me again.

He stood up, so sure of himself, and said, “Come on,” as he pulled me off the couch. As he led me down the hall to my own bedroom I shook my head thinking that I’d been blindsided by some kid.

He undressed me slowly. He made me leave the light on. He touched the tip of his tongue to every inch of my skin. He undressed himself and then danced on the bed, shaking his ass to music that wasn’t playing. He made me laugh and relax and let myself go.

He laid me on my side and whispered to me for a long time before he pushed inside of me. He showed me what he liked. He taught me the things I didn’t know. Then he let me fuck him three times so I’d still feel like a man in the morning.

He rolled a joint and made me smoke until my muscles calmed down. He let me go to the bathroom and shut the door, letting my emotions calm down.

When I woke up in the morning and he wasn’t there I only had to panic for thirty seconds before I found the note pined to my pillow. It said ‘what kind of bastard runs out of coffee’.

He brought me an espresso and climbed back in bed so he could tell me why sex with me was the best sex he’d ever had. He kissed me for an hour until his tongue didn’t taste like coffee anymore.

He let me wait six months before I told anyone what we were to each other.

Toronto for me will always be Randy. And some days I catch myself hoping I never have to move again.

End

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