Mirror (aka Leo, Part I)

for Anamnesis #33 (notice, I’m struggling to be monthly, let alone weekly)

Mirror (aka Leo, part I)

“And we all want something beautiful.
Man, I wish I was beautiful…
So come dance the silence down through the mornin’.”

-from Counting Crows ‘Mr. Jones’

I remember the first time I saw Leo, walking into a social gathering at Westminster. He smiled at me and walked over and introduced himself. He was slightly taller than me. His voice was low and rich timbered. He had shoulder-length auburn hair. Dark amber eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses held my gaze. He felt uncannily familiar, though I’d never met him before. We talked for an hour, the party moving around us like water around a stone in the stream. The differences in our unlikely friendship? He was political and I was apathetic. He was Zen Buddhist and I was pagan (though we were both baptized Mormon). He was an environmentalist who loved the outdoors and rock-climbing, and I (then) thought the Sierra Club and Greenpeace were militant recycling groups doing fundraising for baby seals, plus there was no way I’d willingly do rock-climbing. He was straight and I wasn’t.

“We must be long-lost brothers,” he said. I noticed the golden coronas around his pupils that matched mine. “Or something,” I said.

We got to know each other over the next several years. He met my partner. I met his girlfriends. We would drink wine at his apartment where he would light candles and play the guitar, or sing his own compositions. He taught me various chords, but I enjoyed listening to him rather than me shredding the notes. I would sit on the floor, my back against the sofa where he played a Dave Matthews or Seal song, like “Crash” or “Crazy.” We enjoyed the comfortable silences, the way we could sit and look at one another or sit next to one another and let the evening fold around us. Our dreams floated in the darkened room, suspended by our breath.

One snowy New Year’s Eve, my partner and I charted a limousine and invited Leo and his girlfriend along. We drove downtown to first see the lights at Temple Square, to a party and then to a gay bar called The Sun. We’d drink in the car then go inside the bar to dance and then back out to the car for another drink. My partner and Leo’s girlfriend and some friends took the limo for a short drive while Leo and I danced with the growing crowd. Leo danced near me and guided us to one corner of the dance floor, his hand around my forearm. He leaned in close to my ear and said clearly, over the music, “I love you, you know that?” He danced with his back to the wall-length mirror, his shirt halfway unbuttoned. The dance-lights silhouetted his form, blinding me to everything but his outline. I danced, lost to the beat of my blood, the pounding music, and the sound of his voice in my head.

My partner and his girlfriend came back before midnight, wading through the many dancers, before the final countdown to the New Year. Around us, celebrants cheered and kissed and hugged. I kissed and hugged my partner. Leo, his back to me, was hugging his girlfriend, and then he glanced into the mirror and smiled at me. I smiled back. We all left the bar for a party near their house in the Avenues.

There was more drinking at the party, but I had stopped at midnight. Since my partner and his girlfriend had gone for a spin in the limo earlier, Leo suggested he and I do the same around the neighborhood. I felt warm, not very drunk, but suddenly nervous. He sat across from me in the back of the limousine, lowered the divider and asked the driver to drop by his apartment a few blocks away. The limo stopped in front of his place, he got out and I followed him inside. He got two beers out of the fridge, another light outlining his form before the door returned us to a nearly black kitchen. We popped the beers and I leaned into the doorframe.

I’m night blind: I could not see him, but I could feel him move closer, and then I could smell his cologne. His beer clinked against mine.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” he said.

“What big deal?” I asked.

“Us,” he said. I chuckled, not because this was in any way amusing, but because I didn’t know what he was doing. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness.

He came closer, put one arm above me on the doorframe, his face above mine. “Where is the harm in that?” I could smell him, his cologne, and beer. He came closer and I let him kiss me. “See, that was okay, wasn’t it?” He said. I hugged him and said into his ear, “Yes, that was fine.”

We got back into the limo and he asked the driver to meander a while then head back to the party. He put up the divider and sat down next to me. Suddenly, he twisted around so that he was laying with his head in my lap, staring up at me. I could feel his kiss on my lips and a big scarlet ‘K’ in my mind. I twined his long hair between my fingers. His eyes were twin suns. I did not kiss him again. Not until many years later.