Just by Looking at Him by Ryan O'Connell

Author:Ryan O'Connell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2022-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 34

When I was twenty-four, my life didn’t consist of many real things. In fact, I couldn’t even envision a life that could be good. I don’t mean that in a pity-party way. More in a practical sense. Where were my disabled gay role models? Geri Jewell could only shoulder so much responsibility. I assumed, at best, life could be about experiences. Like having an excruciating conversation with a girl you met at a party who’s convinced you’re instant best friends and wants to tell you about her trauma, eating a peach in Midtown because Joan Didion wrote about it in an essay, befriending boring people who fill out clothes nicely in the hopes that they tag you in a picture and a stranger will see it and think you’re cooler than you actually are, going to a foreign country and finally having a reason for people not to understand you, or getting wasted at a bar an Olsen Twin used the bathroom in once. Good or bad, as long as things kept happening to you, you would be all right.

I believed in my theory until I met Devon my last summer living in New York. He was my best friend Maura’s roommate—medium-cute, except for his eyes, which looked like the bottom of the pool in that famous David Hockney painting. He was a writer like me but a serious one. He wrote short stories about gentrification and AIDS—nobody had bothered to tell him about Rent, I guess—and besides, when we first met, I didn’t think about him—or anyone—in a romantic way because I was convinced I was gay Gollum.

“I think Devon wants to fuck you,” Maura said to me at Three Lives bookstore in the West Village. It was July in New York, hot and sticky. Everyone wanted to fuck in July.

“No, he doesn’t,” I said, pretending to thumb through the latest Philip Roth.

“No, he definitely does.”

“Isn’t he with Ian?” Devon was always with some boy.

“I think they’re gonna break up, like, Friday,” Maura said, smacking her gum.

“Oh, is there an official breakup date on the calendar?”

“Ian’s going to Cambodia Friday.”

“Cambodia? Why?”

“How would I know?”

Imagine hearing that someone was going to Cambodia and not asking why. Maura and I stopped being friends six months later.

“Okay,” I said, pretending to be distracted by a Franzen novel. God, how I wish a kind soul had led twenty-something me to Lorrie Moore. “Did he say something?”

“Yeah. He said you were hot and he wanted to fuck you.”

I hadn’t had anal sex in three years. I basically identified as a virgin, so I was thrilled to hear that someone wanted to do sexual things to my body.

“Okay,” I said, a little embarrassed. “So what should I do with this information?”

“Don’t you want to fuck him too?”

“I’d fuck my radiator at this point, Maura.”

“Tight,” Maura said. “I’m having people over Saturday. We’ll get drunk, set the scene. You can seal the deal then.”

Remember throwing parties for the sole reason of inviting your crush? Obsessed with being young.

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