Get Out! GAY Magazine – Issue 370 – June 6, 2018

BY IAN-MICHAEL BERGERON
@ianmichaelinwonderland
Never Been Kissed
Despite the fact that I
kissed J at our company’s
Christmas party, we
remained friends.
In fact, we never even
talked about the kiss—I
think he assumed it was just
a drunken mistake on my
part.
I wasn’t sure what it was.
I knew that I’d wanted to
do it. And, if I’m honest
now, I was pretty sure that I
wanted to do it again.
All the same, we pretended
that we’d never kissed. I
kept dating AJ, who had no
idea, and when my sublet
was up, I asked J if he
wanted to move in together
with me.
Of course, I knew this was a
terrible idea. I think we both
did. Despite the kiss (that
we’d silently agreed never
happened), and despite
the fact that we were both
clearly attracted to each
other, we were not a good
match. He’s seven years
younger than me; he’d
been in the city for less than
a year, to my five years; his
credit score was so low that
we couldn’t get approved
anywhere. (Parking tickets—
kids these days.)
Then, barely two weeks
before my sublet was up,
I was having drinks with
one of my best girls Katya
(no relation to the drag
queen—we both wish) and
her straight brother when
he mentioned that he
needed a new subletter in
one of his five rooms.
“Me!” I said, like Elle
Woods in “Legally Blonde.”
“Done,” he nodded,
shrugging off how easy it
happened. (I’ve found it
always happens this way in
New York—you can stress
for months, but everything
always comes together at
the last minute.)
“But I promised J I’d move
in with him,” I remembered
out loud.
“What if I take the
room opening up,” he
suggested, “and you take
my room. It’s the biggest
room—there’s a couple that
lives in the first room that’s
behind on rent. They’ll
definitely be gone soon.
Then you take that room,
and we’ll be set.”
I knew it was an even
more terrible idea than
moving in with J—
moving into the same
room. Yes, we could
have two separate beds,
and splitting the cost of
the room would be dirt
cheap until the other room
opened up.
But the kiss—it still
happened, whether we
acknowledged it or not.
J and I went to Merchants
(may it rest in peace)
the next night
to celebrate
finding an
apartment. As we toasted
our third toast of the
evening, a cute boy at the
table next to us leaned over
and said, “You guys are a
super cute couple.”
“Oh, we’re not a couple,”
I insisted. “Just new
roommates.”
He and J went downstairs
to the bathroom at the
same time—when J
returned, he blushed,
and I realized his shirt was
missing a button, as if it’d
been torn off when the cute
boy from the table next to
us ripped it open.
Green with jealousy, I
forced my mouth to curve
upward at the ends into a
tight smile. “What color
should we paint the room?”
Red like my rage? Black like
my soul?
“Gray?” Gray, like
the skies above
me, raining on my
parade.
“Sounds perfect.”
PHOTO BY STEVE BRENNAN