Rarely is life just like in a novel, especially one of those English ones, like Brideshead Revisited, where fleeting romances happen against the backdrops of lavish country estates and the grand capital cities of Europe.
But, one summer in my early twenties, my life felt just like that — like it had been ripped from the pages of one of my favorite books.
It was a summer of glamour and romance, of beauty and loneliness, of adventure and angst, and I will treasure it forever.
♦
Contributing to the storybook atmosphere of that bright, balmy June of 2009 was the presence, at long last, of the first Black President of the United States in the White House. Barack Obama had been inaugurated only six months before, and there had been lots of celebrating — glamorous balls (including one where I got to see the President and First Lady dance to Etta James’ “At Last”), endless parties, and lots and lots and lots of glasses of champagne.
The Obama presidency was not a resurrection of Camelot, as some said. It was its own fairy tale, one that had once seemed destined for little more than make-believe, but was now true. People felt hopeful about our country back then, some of them for the first time. The spirit of the times was infectious, and made it seem like anything was possible.
For me, though, there had been a bit too much celebrating. I had spent the year following the election and the new administration like everyone else in D.C., but I had also spent a lot of time at the gay bars and clubs on U Street, at places like Nellie’s Sports Bar and Town Danceboutique, draining my body and wallet as I tried to make up for lost time. I had come out relatively late — my last year of college — and was still deep into my (first) sexual exploration phase.
I brought a guy home every weekend. Sometimes, two guys. I remember being in bed with this Mormon guy one morning, after a one-night stand. He was complaining about his family and popping zits on my back, without asking me first, when suddenly, I got a text from the Obama campaign, announcing Senator Joe Biden of Delaware as his running mate.
“Biden?” I thought. “Okay.”
And then, I got out of the Mormon boy’s bed and went home to watch M.S.N.B.C.
My friends and I had a renovated three-story mansion on Monroe Street in Columbia Heights. All year, it had been a party hotspot, where we threw monthly ragers that my friend Eliot Nelson compared to the last days of Rome.
(I once had a dream that Nancy Pelosi showed up to one of our parties in a crop top and played beer pong while “American Boy” by Estelle and Kanye West played. It was honestly not too far from the reality of things back then. My friend Lindsay dated Senator Chris Dodd’s hot, renegade nephew. We let the R.O.T.U.S. stay at our house the night before she started work at the White House, and we played flip cup with her. Things like that were always happening.)
But I was also planning on going to law school, and I wanted to get into a good law school in New York City, and so I desperately needed to study for the L.S.A.T. I also needed to sock away some money. And I really needed to give my body (and dick) a rest.
So I had decided to raise the stakes, and head to Asia for a year of teaching English in Seoul, South Korea. I didn’t speak the language, I knew almost nobody there, and I had never taught anything before. It was my way of having yet another adventure, while giving myself time to study and slow down a bit, especially after a year of 50- to 60-hour weeks at my white-shoe K Street law firm.
I quit my law firm job, said goodbye to my big group of friends in D.C., and moved most of my belongings back to Boston.
Before I left for Seoul, though, I had two special trips planned.
♦
The first trip was with my friend Tom, an actor who has been on a bunch of network dramas and sitcoms. He had planned a worldwide Hemingway Tour for himself that summer, and was going to spend it hitting all the spots that Ernest Hemingway visited in his novels. He was going to Cuba to fish, to Pamplona to run with the bulls, and to Mt. Kilimanjaro to ascend its heights and see the same sights that Papa had all those years earlier.
And because I was a burgeoning drunk, and a serious devotee of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and had more than a few very entertaining French friends to keep us company, Tom had asked me to come to Paris with him for the second leg of the tour.
We rented an apartment in the Marais, which I was pleased with, as my high school friend Kevin, who had also come out in college, had done his study abroad at the Sorbonne, and had sent me a list of his favorite gay bars and clubs, most of which were in the neighborhood.
Tom and I kept our plans light, the only sightseeing some stops at the expatriate writer hangouts of the 1920s — places like Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, and Shakespeare & Company bookstore, where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Stein and other greats had gathered to eat, get wasted, and banter into the early morning hours.
For the first few days of the trip, Tom and I were on our own, and we mostly took long walks along the Seine, while he took pictures and I told him stories from my life.
One day, it felt like I talked from dawn ’til sunset without stopping, telling Tom about being the worst supermarket employee ever when I was in high school. We laughed, we slugged wine, and I pretended we were a couple in front of people to annoy Tom.
Alone at night, I did some exploring around the Marais, especially at this place called Le Dépôt, a hardcore sex club where they made you affirm you knew what you were getting into before they let you in. The place had a simple bar, dark lighting with a red accent, and fuck rooms.
(If you haven’t heard of a fuck room before, that’s exactly what it is — a room to fuck someone in. Typically, they have a slatted wooden bench and a dispenser with lube in it. Yes, boys are gross.)
All of my visits to Le Dépôt over the years have now blended into one another. Like other great places, it is now closed. But I honed my pickup skills there, learning how a subtle wink or raising of the eyebrow could send a signal to another guy, show him that I was down to fuck.
One time I was there, wearing short seersucker shorts, and suddenly spotted a tall guy in mesh shorts with these gorgeous soccer player legs.
“I want to make out with your fucking legs,” I said to him.
And he let me. We slid into one of the fuck rooms, and I ran my mouth all over his beautiful legs, my shorts rubbing against my cock as I crawled around on the floor, worshipping the man who towered above me. I kept going, kept feasting on him, kept letting my shorts rub against my cock, until I came all over my leg and all over the floor.
And then I went back home, to find Tom sound asleep.
♦
One night, my friends Marceau and Delphine, two of The French People from Georgetown who lived in Paris and were in the throes of some Serge Gainsbourg–Jane Birkin–esque love affair, took us to a right-wing cocktail party. It wasn’t a fundraiser for the National Front or anything concerning like that, just a party with students. A Federalist Society–esque thing. I’m sure I didn’t agree with a damned thing they believed, but as my longtime friends will attest, I have been known to cross-dress as a conservative for fun sometimes.
Eventually, Tom and I were joined on the trip by our friends, Annalise and Arash.
Annalise and I had met in college. She was quiet and literary, and one of the first girls that I had kissed at Georgetown. She had become good friends with Arash, who graduated Georgetown a year ahead of me and went to Atlanta International School with Tom.
We spent our first night at a cabaret show in the Marais, where one of the performers did a transfixing striptease to Yael Naim’s cover of “Toxic” by Britney Spears, and busted out “Zou Bisou Bisou” on us before Megan Draper ever had the chance.
Paris was beautiful every day while we were there. The sun shone brightly, the sky was a perfect blue, and the wind blew just enough to let you smell the magnolias, which bloomed all over the city, some through the cracks of centuries-old stone walls and façades.
One afternoon, we went to Père Lachaise Cemetery and left a rose on Oscar Wilde’s grave, before heading to the épicerie and boulangerie to put together a picnic to enjoy in the Jardin des Tuileries, one of my favorite spots in Paris.
And it was there I met Oliver.
♦
It was warm out that day, and we all had our designer sunglasses on, stretching out to enjoy our wine and feel the sun against our skin, like characters in a Sofia Coppola film.
Every once in a while, someone would recognize Tom and come up to say hello. It was usually a girl who watched one of his shows, but this time, it was a very cute boy.
His name was Oliver, and he knew Tom from Los Angeles. Oliver was studying in Paris, and he and his friends were enjoying the garden that day, too.
Oliver had brown hair and eyes, a big, kind smile, and a bashful, boy-next-door-type demeanor.
Tom introduced us.
“Hi, Oliver,” I said. He smiled at me.
Oliver was obviously enamored with celebrities; the friend he shared in common with Tom was another handsome network actor. I suppose Oliver and I shared this fascination. I was definitely enjoying my jet-setting lifestyle.
What Oliver and I did not share, and which Tom told me of later, was an affiliation with some religious group in Hollywood that viewed being gay as wrong. It wasn’t Scientology; it was some New Age Christian group that a bunch of actors Oliver hung around with — including the handsome leading man one — were a part of, too.
Oliver wasn’t openly religious, but there was clearly something inside of him holding him back, and that was part of it. But I saw the way he looked at me, felt the charge he got when I grabbed his hand to say hello.
He and Tom talked for a little bit about L.A., and Tom invited him to join us later on that night.
“Honestly, I always thought Oliver was gay,” Tom said. “But I don’t know. He’s part of this group out in L.A. and everyone in it is Christian, so.”
“I’ll find out tonight,” I said, which made Annalise and Arash laugh.
They both knew I meant it. Arash was perpetually wowed by my seductive skills back then, although he thought I was a total disaster otherwise. He thought he would never learn, but now he’s doing okay in the romance department. (Congratulations and best wishes, Arash and James!)
♦
That night, we ended up going to this cavernous club, deep underground in the Jewish quarter. It was hot and dark and crowded, and the music was excellent. It reminded me of the Cavern Club in Liverpool, where The Beatles played some of their first shows. There was candlelight all over, and the whisky was flowing heavily.
Our entire crew came, and we drank and danced the night away. The only thing we consumed faster than whisky and tequila that night were cigarettes, Gauloises after Gauloises after Gauloises.
And cigarettes, of course, give you a perfect excuse to get someone outside. So I asked Oliver if he wanted to go for a cigarette. He said yes.
“It’s really loud outside the bar,” I said. “Let’s walk somewhere quieter.”
Oliver didn’t say anything, just followed me with a slight smile on his face. We made our way to the end of the road, next to an alleyway. It was far enough away, and just quiet enough, to make us feel alone, just for those few moments, in the dark of the Parisian night.
“Are you loving Paris?” I asked him, as I handed him a cigarette and struck a match to light it.
“Yeah,” Oliver said. “It’s so much fun. It’s been, like, a nonstop party since I’ve gotten here.”
“That’s what my study abroad was like,” I said. “In London.”
“London’s dope,” he said.
“It is,” I said. “One thing that was cool about it was honestly that it was away from home, you know? Away from the context of the rest of my life. So I felt like it gave me the freedom to explore different sides of myself.”
Oliver looked at me, waiting for me to continue.
“Like, it was the first time I kissed a guy,” I said.
Oliver stared at me. He looked nervous, but not scared.
“Nice,” he said.
My heart began to race. I felt like it was the right moment.
“Have you ever kissed a guy before?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. His eyes never left mine.
I moved a little bit closer to him, and we slid into the alleyway, so that his back was against the stone wall, and I could see if anyone was coming our way from the direction of the bar.
“Would you like to?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. He said it so softly, like he was ready for my lips to touch his before he even finished speaking. And I lost no time, stomping my cigarette out and leaning in, giving him my best French kiss — soft, tender, and passionate.
We kissed under the sparkle of the Eiffel Tower and a sea of stars, and it felt beautiful and electric. The kiss was filled with so much power, it being Oliver’s first with a guy.
I could feel the hunger in Oliver’s kiss. But when I leaned in to kiss him again, I thought to myself, Once we go back into the bar, we’re in a different world — one where what we just did didn’t happen.
And I was right.
Our group exited the bar in the early morning hours, and we walked along the Seine under the pale light, chugging from cheap bottles of wine. Everyone was there — Marceau and Delphine, Tom and Arash, Annalise, Oliver, a few others, and me. I started to feel sad. Oliver wouldn’t let there be less than a yard between us the entire time.
While the other couples held hands and kissed, savoring the night together, why did my Parisian romance have to be a secret?
I fell in love, or what I thought was love, easily back then. Too easily. And just a kiss, just those moments alone, along with the romance of Paris, made me want to be together with Oliver, and with all the other young lovers of Paris, that night. And my exuberance had been snuffed out.
♦
Arash left early the next day for Africa, where Tom was due to meet him. Tom, Annalise, and I spent a pissy, cloudy afternoon on the lawn by the Louvre, and I tried to call Oliver on a payphone at the Ritz — yes, a payphone — a few times. There was no answer.
Annalise, Tom, and I all got very drunk the last night there, and got caught in a rainstorm. The staff at the boutique luxury hotel Annalise was staying at would not let Tom and me stay the night, nor would they let us borrow their umbrella for the evening, so I made sure to throw the umbrella in a ditch and tell them to go fuck themselves. (Another type of thing I was prone to do when drunk in those days.)
And the next morning, in a hungover haze, I headed back to the States. I sat on the plane reading a copy of Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald that I had bought at Shakespeare & Company, wondering if I would ever see Oliver again.
I felt alone and melancholy, like I did much of the time back then. But it was not lost on me that I had had my first romantic kiss, with a boy, under the stars, in Paris. (I don’t count the stuff that goes down at Le Dépôt as romantic, per se.) Having been in the closet only a little over a year earlier, that moment felt like an incredible triumph, like fireworks announcing that I had nothing to fear, that my life would be filled with romance and adventure, like I had always hoped.
The closet was a terrible place, and I had thrown open the door into the bright new day and given life a strong embrace, ready to have my heart broken again and again if it meant that I was free to love the way I wanted to.
♦
No sooner had I arrived back in the States than I was headed to the Hudson Valley, where Annalise was throwing me a twenty-second birthday and farewell party at her family farm before I took off for my year in Seoul.
Annalise was an heiress to one of America’s great pharmaceutical fortunes, and Thunder Hollow Farm, as it was called, was less a farm and more an estate to rival Jay Gatsby’s. It featured an 18,000-square-foot Greek Revival mansion, tennis courts, horse stables, a pool with a Grecian grotto, a helipad, and acres and acres of land for riding horses and driving A.T.V.s.
Thunder Hollow Farm was a vast, bucolic wonderland that Annalise was generous to invite us to stay at many times during our college days and after. Annalise’s mother, the late New York City legend Bitsy, had bought the place, and partied there with people like her boyfriend Michael Bolton and her friend Cher.
It was a different crew that weekend, mostly people from Georgetown, like my friends Elle, Katie, and Kristin, but we gave the Studio 54 crowd a run for their money with our debauchery, playing drinking games amid priceless paintings and antiques, running up and down the spiral staircase, zonking out in the movie theater, skinny-dipping in the pool at night. It was fabulous, every moment of it.
♦
One person arrived a little late that weekend: Ziad.
Ziad was a friend of some of the girls, from Potomac. He was tall, of Lebanese descent, with dark hair and big, bright eyes, and he was incredibly beautiful.
People were genuinely captivated by Ziad’s beauty. It seemed to be the first thing out of anyone’s mouth when they mentioned him. And honestly, they were right.
I remember one night, drinking beers at the Tombs, with Ziad sitting across from me. He was wearing a red-and-black flannel shirt, and he looked like a beautiful lumberjack. Every girl in the place had her eyes on him, and many of the guys did, too.
“Damn, Ziad is hot,” I thought to myself.
Ziad had come out only a month or two before. And because I was out and outgoing, our girlfriends had encouraged me to take him out and show him the ropes of the gay scene in D.C. And I was more than happy to, but I really did it just to be a good friend.
I projected supreme confidence in those days, but in truth, I was quite insecure. I considered Ziad too beautiful for me to even think about making a move on, and so, when we had gone out on U Street to the gay bars, I had strictly played wingman, not picking up at all on the fact that he wanted to make out with me.
That fact had come out only a few weeks earlier, on the bare wooden floor of my Columbia Heights living room.
My roommates and I had already started moving out, and we didn’t even have a couch. Ziad and I had come in from a long night out, a little drunk, and we collapsed on the floor, talking. Ziad was a shy and sweet guy, and had never really let me in, and this felt like a rare moment of intimacy between us.
Looking into his eyes as he talked to me, I suddenly knew to kiss him. I craned my neck towards him, and we shared a long kiss, running our hands all over each other.
When we came up for air, Ziad said, “So, that finally happened.”
(There’s a scene in Rosemary’s Baby where John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow have sex on the bare wooden floor of their apartment in the Dakota, after they move in. I always found that scene hot. And even though Ziad and I didn’t take our clothes off or go beyond kissing and light touching, I was privately stoked to have had a little shade of that scene in my own life. Bare wooden floor hookups are hot.)
Ziad went home that morning, and I thought, That was nice. But it was not something I expected to happen again.
But suddenly, here in the Hudson Valley, Ziad was.
I was sitting on the lawn, watching the sunset, when he emerged from the house and sat next to me.
“How was Paris?” he said.
“It was really great. Wish you had been there,” I said.
“Yeah, well, if you want to make out with me this weekend … I’m down for that,” he said. He didn’t look at me when he said it, just looked straight ahead. Poker face.
Wow. For shy Ziad to come out and be so assertive like that was really fucking hot. I felt a bolt of electricity coast through my body when he said it.
“Yes,” I said, and I leaned in and kissed him. He had a thick beard, and it scratched me. But it felt so good, the cool wind making his skin feel even warmer against mine.
“That was nice,” he said.
“It was,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say, not that anything else needed to be said. But I was suddenly nervous around him. I was immediately vulnerable, because I had loved the kiss, and now I wanted more.
“Sorry if my beard scratched you. I can shave it off, if you’d like,” he said.
“Only if you don’t mind,” I said.
The next morning, Ziad came downstairs to the kitchen, where we were eating French toast and bacon, and sat next to me with a clean-shaven face, smelling of aftershave and cologne.
I felt it immediately. The bareness of his face was like a green light, a starting pistol. We spent the rest of the weekend making out all. over. Thunder. Hollow. Farm.
We made out in the library, amid the plush couches and antiquarian books. We made out in the maids’ quarters, among the plaid wallpaper and twin beds. We made out in the playroom, with the pink wallpaper and Tibetan prayer flags hanging all over. We made out with towels around our wet bodies, in the grotto, by the pool, as our friends splashed around outside, oblivious. We made out on the lawn at dusk, in the evening, under the light of the silvery moon.
It was passionate, and we smiled and laughed a lot. I saw a more aggressive, playful side of Ziad that I had never seen before, and that I was positively captivated by. There was so much I didn’t know about him that I wanted to know.
But there was also his body, and the setting, and those alone were enough to enchant and hold me. I hadn’t read The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (perhaps my favorite book) yet, but if I had, I would certainly have thought of Nick Guest and Wani Ouradi, a bit like the pair that we were.
Me, like Nick, a middle-class boy intoxicated by the glamour of the new world he now inhabited; Ziad like Wani, the stunningly beautiful Oxford classmate Nick loved, so similar in appearance they were.
♦
My friend Elle arrived partway through the weekend, and I told her about my tryst with Ziad as we rode through the property on A.T.V.s, passing by the horse stables, the hot pink barn, and into the vast woods that cover part of the property.
“He’s really beautiful, Charlie,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
I wanted more, but Ziad didn’t. I wanted us to spend the night together, and he said no. Not even the last night, the last night we’d have together before I left for Asia, which also happened to be the night before my birthday.
Not only did he say no, he said it wasn’t fair of me to ask him. I never understood why he put it that way.
After kissing all weekend, I wanted to have a real goodbye between the two of us, but Ziad did not give me that. In fact, on our last day, he was cold to me, and wouldn’t allow for a private moment between the two of us, no matter how hard I tried to engineer one.
I was probably a bit thirsty, certainly, but was even a private moment to say goodbye to each other too much to ask? I didn’t get it.
♦
I would probably have forgotten the rest of the weekend, if it weren’t for the fact that on the last day, my birthday — as we were blowing out birthday candles underneath the candelabra in the formal dining room — Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and a seeming baker’s dozen of little Kennedy children came charging into the room.
Elle looked at me from across the table and was like, “What world are we in right now?” Like me, she had grown up in an average, middle-class family, and this was all new and wondrous to her, too.
Apparently, Bobby Kennedy, as they called him, lived nearby, and he and Bitsy were friends. She had told him he could take one of the trailers on the property to use for one of his environmental charities, and so he enlisted me, Ziad, a couple of Annalise’s brothers, and a few of the other guys who were there that weekend to try to move a trailer that clearly weighed over a ton.
Elle took all the little Kennedys to play at the pool, like a good Catholic nanny, while us boys and Bobby made a few pathetic attempts to move the trailer, before giving up.
I talked to Bobby for a little bit about his uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, who had recently gone public with his brain cancer diagnosis. We had a nice conversation, and he was a pleasant enough guy.
Now that I know he’s crazy, I consider him a bit of a bargain-bin Kennedy, not worth fangirling over; but that day, it felt auspicious to have a Kennedy interrupt my birthday party at the manse.
Was this my life now?
♦
Ziad, after avoiding me all day, glanced over at me as we all packed into cars to go our separate ways. I was headed home, and then right off to Seoul. As his car began to drive away, Ziad’s glance turned to one of longing, and I saw him wipe a tear from his eye, and then, at last, a stream of tears flowing down his cheeks.
There it was. The emotion I had wanted. That I had known was there, and that he had almost fooled me into believing wasn’t.
I was ticked off at him for that. It felt like such a waste.
It had now been two times in a row in this so-called romance that your protagonist was denied what he wanted so very much — not sex, but intimacy. To be truly close with another guy.
Two beautiful boys had closed their hearts off to me, for what reasons, I did not know.
With Oliver, it seems obvious now that shame was at work. With Ziad, I think things were more complicated. I don’t know if Ziad ever really had feelings for me, or if I just happened to be someone who was there when he needed someone to make out with.
It’s also true that I could say obnoxious things back then that I thought were funny, and weren’t. It was because I was insecure, and I realize now how it put up a wall in my relationships and hurt people’s feelings.
I probably said a few stupid things like that to Ziad during the time we knew each other that could have put up a wall between us. If so, I’m sorry, because I always thought he was lovely, even when he didn’t want me.
♦
I wrote Ziad from Seoul a few times, and received only one very late, halfhearted response (which Annalise had clearly forced him to write me), so I gave up on the idea of any future relationship with him as I transitioned into my life abroad.
Since we had friends in common, I did see him again, when I got to New York. I learned through our friends that he was dating this guy Barron, who was from one of those old New York art-patron families. As in, their name is literally on a museum.
But if they hadn’t told me, I could have found out in the pages of Town & Country, where Ziad was pictured on page after page, with Barron, in glamorous poses, on his family’s estate in Maine. And there were plenty of other photos of Ziad at New York society events online.
New York Ziad seemed to be finding his confidence and his place in the world, and I was happy for him.
I would see Oliver again, too. Also in New York. We ran into each other in Union Square, at the big costume store, one sweaty Halloween, and went back to my apartment to have sex. The sex was hot. Oliver had thick chest hair, even thicker than mine, and a gigantic dick. His body was such a contrast with his babyface.
Oliver and I ended up fucking a few times, and we would sit out on my fire escape on W. 65th Street, smoking cigarettes, after. It was nice. He was a bit more relaxed in New York. But it was also like before — we weren’t allowed to say anything about it, or be seen together. (Even though I had already told everyone I knew.)
I remember the very last time I saw Ziad. Kind of. It was at lunch at Épicerie Boulud along with Annalise and her then-husband Jacob, and I was pilled out of my fucking mind, only weeks away from completely blowing up my life in New York, as well as my entire existence. I was loopy as fuck, Blue Jasmine–style, insisting that Jacob take me on a tour of the offices of an infamous tech giant (it had just bought his startup), and telling Ziad that Elle had asked about him and would love to see him!
After, we went to a Gilded Age mansion on the Upper East Side, which Bitsy had just bought and moved into. (She was always suddenly buying priceless real estate.)
Bitsy and I did Pilates together at Equinox Columbus Circle twice per week, and she thought I was an absolute loller, and was therefore very amused by how erratic and peppy I was being that day. But Annalise was not. I definitely embarrassed her and pissed her off that afternoon. And I am truly sorry to her (and everyone) for being in that state in their presence, ever.
It was not the best side of me, so I kind of hope I run into Ziad again someday, so he can see that I didn’t become a mess forever.
I don’t remember the last time I talked to Oliver, but we texted a bit once, when I was high on Xanny bars at my Nana’s place in Florida, and he was still half-in, half-out of the closet. C’est la vie. I hope that has changed for him by now.
♦
Nowadays, I think about both of those boys, and that special summer, fondly.
Even though they weren’t the perfect romances that I wanted — and that I felt I needed so much, as an angsty twenty-two-year-old — I am grateful now to both Oliver and Ziad for those moments that summer. Because they both gave me such confidence in myself, made me believe I was someone who could be lusted after, someone who could seduce, someone who a boy would cry over when he went away.
There was a time in my life when I thought I would never have those things, and to have them at last was truly beautiful.
Evelyn Waugh couldn’t have written it better. ♦