1995 - 3. Chapter Three

Chapter 3

So, here we are back at the beginning of my story. Terry still loved me, didn’t know about my straying yet, but I wanted out. We’d stopped connecting, emotionally or sexually, and I kept getting stronger and stronger urges to go, really go and get out.

The longest love affair of my life was with New York City. I loved New York more than anyone else I knew, but that too was coming to an end. When I first moved to “the City” 10 years earlier, I’d worked in several gay bars and clubs. Then I’d gotten a job working in Broadway theaters for several years. After all of that, I’d landed as an aerobics instructor and personal trainer. Imagine all the gay men who’d been my coworkers and good friends in all those jobs. Well, most of them were dead by this time. It’s a cliché, but still true that walking around the city by then was like visiting a ghost town. Every street seemed to have a connection to someone who’d died of AIDS or had simply disappeared out of New York, back to some smaller town with family.
Now you should understand what I meant at the beginning, when I said my life was imploding. I was too old for my job, my relationship was on the rocks, and I didn’t love New York anymore. This is when we received an eviction notice.

Actually, it was perfect. It was the stimulus that got me to admit to Terry that the reason we hadn’t had sex was because I’d been stepping out on him. He was very, very angry for a while, but seeing as neither one of us could go live anywhere else at the moment, he sort-of got over it. I really hated hurting Terry, but looking good together is really not a good basis for a lasting relationship. We made so many other mistakes as well. We moved in together because his apartment was haunted, not because we’d thought it through. We even moved out of my Hell’s Kitchen apartment into the Greenwich Village apartment without thinking about the future eviction.

Terry ended up renting a nice little coop in Queens, which he was able to buy a few years later. So, his wandering days were over. I'd like to think that I had something to do with his finally growing up and settling down, but really, who knows. Right?

I moved away from New York and our ugly, yet amazing little apartment, and didn’t return to the city for 3 years. In that time, the ghosts seemed to mostly take to the ground, but they left a lovely sheen of memory over everything which is still beautiful. I would never live in Manhattan again.

The End.