7/17/09

Going Grey Going Blue

I don't want my weekend blog status to be so fucking SAD so I want to write a love note about my friend Grey.



It is true that my real sexual life began in earnest in the summer of 2005. I wasn't a virgin, but I was living in NYC and for the first time it was possible that someone might want to fuck me. This blew my mind. I slept with a couple of boys that summer none of whom particularly liked me and we didn't see each other much. I joined Manhunt, which was really weird. The only person I've ever met from that site was Grey, but that wasn't his name at the time. He's probably the most pivotal person in the development of the Sexual Billy.

He wrote me a message and all it was was "well-played". I thought that was the best pickup line in the world. So after interminable manhunt then myspace messages we decided that we should meet. As it turned out we liked all of the same records, he was really into the corny kind of Cibo Matto stuff that I was. I think the premise for our first date was actually to watch the Gravy Train!!!! Stame the Batch DVD. After a lot of talking about it we set a date for our first date. When I asked for directions to his house I found out that in fact he lived across the street from me. I had actually seen him once before at the Metropolitan BBQ and thought he was cute. I won't go into gross details, but our first date consisted of about eleven minutes of the DVD, him handing me a bottle of Jack Daniels (which he chugged-- which completely impressed me) and me making fun of him for having all the Matthew Barney books. At the time Grey did drawings mostly, and some paintings. His big sexy move on our first date (sorry to give it away) was to handcuff our pants together when I wasn't looking, so that we'd have no choice but to take them off. Smooth, huh? He has perfect teeth and lots of tattoos. By the time I met him in 2005 he was already over Misshapes and the nightclub scene in general years before the rest of us. He dressed like a San Francisco lesbian bicycle messenger. I was fucking smitten.

Grey didn't really care that I was still in school and didn't have super cute abs and didn't know anything about the way the world worked, let alone the world in which wild punk boys fuck each other in the summertime like animals. He was patient with me. He's maybe a year older than I am and I teased him incessantly about this. His room mates hated me, probably because they were all living in a big loft space with strung-up sheets for walls and I talk in bed. I tell this story often and it's true-- Grey and I had violent sex. Because he was one of the first guys I slept with in New York / as an adult, I sort of assumed that everyone liked violent sex and I would find out later that this was unfortunately not true. He's a Sagittarius, he needs proof. (Which is different from being Leo, when we just need acknowledgment: we don't need to see all the math).

I don't know how many dates we went on, but it eventually fizzled out after I went back to college in the fall. He came up and visited me once, and I got to show off the Hot Guy From New York City as a senior. I came into town to sleep over at his house and we had some kind of falling out, I don't remember. I wrote something probably passive-agressive and snotty about it on my livejournal, knowing he'd read it, and he stopped speaking to me. My senior year of school a lot of really fucked up shit happened in my life, but the thing that most upset me by far was getting 'dumped' (I guess that's the word for it) by Grey. I was completely miserable, and trolled his myspace page for months, looking at all the sexy guys he was dating.

After I graduated I moved back to the same apartment. By now, Grey had moved. He called me out of the blue one morning my first weekend in town after graduating to meet him in Williamsburg for brunch. Before we hung up he said "You better still be cute". I wasn't but he was. After brunch he took me on his bike on a little tour of the neighborhood. I was terrified we'd get hit by a car but he wasn't. We went to every little weird boutique we could find, he sort of showed me around. I saw his palatial new apartment in Greenpoint and helped him re-paint his bathroom. Well, I watched while he repainted it and drank fancy drinks and played with his cats. By now, his room mates didn't hate me and we became friends.

Grey and I are good friends because he never judged me, or, really, anyone. If someone did something really stupid or awful, he'd acknowledge it and move on. If he couldn't repair a relationship with someone he didn't agonize over it the way I did. He got on with his life. He didn't ever make me feel like I wasn't cool / butch / tough / smart / femme / top / bottom / whatever enough. He just worked with what he had. It was amazing. Even when he'd get freaked out (he had an insanely stressful job in design-- I wrote my old song "Boy In Fashion" about him) he managed to just get shit done. He threw the most amazing parties and always cleaned up afterwards. We'd go out to the bars together and sometimes we'd end up with boys and sometimes not and it was okay either way. Once at the Metropolitan I saw him throw a full whiskey coke across the room at someone because he didn't want that someone talking to that other someone. If I thought a boy was cute, whether or not he knew them (or had fucked them), he'd saunter over and interrupt their conversation and say "Hi XXX this is Max, Max, this is XXX. I'm gonna be over there if you need me." And no matter what would happen, we'd almost always go to brunch the next day to talk about it. It was.. what's the word? Easy.

We had certainly had fights though. There were months in which we did not speak to each other, even if we saw each other in public. We had both, by turns, stormed out of bars / parties for some stupid thing the other one said. We're both fire signs, and a little teensy bit dramatic. Our relationship was also marked by physical violence. We had bruises. Bite marks. But we always made up. There was a period in 2007 in which Grey and I would spend all sunday at his gigantic, beautifull decorated apartment, among all his totally insane, dark, psychedelic oil paintings, petting the cats, watching porno and cartoons and smoking weed. Often these friend-dates would end with us ordering Thai food and watching the Simpsons and seeing how far into sex we could get before the food got there, and then eating while having sex and watching TV. It sounds gross, but it was pretty magickal at the time.

Our friends all knew each other and we'd often go out together, but Grey and I had this sort of weird discrete relationship, which was untouchable. He had slept with my exes and I had with his, but with Grey we could laugh about it. [Grey is referred to as Blue in the story "Curator Blue" in the new issue of my zine, if yr curious]. Whenever one of us would start dating someone we'd introduce them to each other and get each other's reactions. It wasn't make or break, but we wanted to know. Grey's taste ran the gamut, and pretty much everyone I'm attracted to looks just like Grey. He nursed me through a few broken hearts and though I am apparently physically incapable of comforting another living creature, I'd like to think that in some way I was there for him at some point. Maybe when his kitten died-- mysteriously (we do not discuss it).

A little over a year ago Grey took up dancing, at 25, quit his fancy job, changed his name to Grey and moved to San Francisco. And I miss him a lot, especially in the summertime. I remember being new to the city and getting lost in the Village listening to Grace Jones' Warm Leatherette and worrying worrying worrying that I'd make it to the train in time for my date with Grey. That's a favorite memory. I wish I could see him again, we've been talking some online. I want nothing more than to wake up tomorrow morning and meet him for an overpriced extravagant brunch that neither of us can afford and then to ride his bike around Brooklyn, ogling boys and stopping every time we saw a cute stray cat.

5 comments:

Bruce said...

This is the sweetest fucking thing that I've read in a long time. I hope Grey reads it and misses you as well.

Dusty St. Amand said...

My heart is aching. It rarely aches. This is wonderful.

Dan Winks said...

That is the sweetest story ever. If you're not both married by the time he's 30 and you're 29 you should marry each other! Truthfully, I work with Grey and sit next to him all day long. He's a great guy!

Grey said...

Thank you for the love letter. Ours is a forever love.

Unknown said...

GREY IS FOR FAGS AND A FAG COLOR THAT STINKS LIKE THIS FULL OF STINK TRASH STINKER THAT GETS THROWN OUT IN THE STREES