Ex gay husband - 5. The first time

The next logical step was to meet with Colin in person, and so he and Mark—whom I already met on an earlier occasion as you already know—planned on visiting me for a week. I wasn't allowed to have overnight guests at the shared flat I was living in at that time, so they found a place to stay via Airbnb. Mark made sure, the landlords were gay, too.

I don't know about you, but oftentimes, when I meet somebody for the first time in real life, the experience is somewhat different, not completely what I expected. I already knew Mark—he flung his arms around my neck immediately, which was common among the circle of friends around him, and to be honest I have come to appreciate it since I had barely known that from friends by that time, let alone having more than a few.

To me, it's somewhat special to meet for the first time and—if you do that—hug each other for the first time. In the case of Colin, it was exactly that. It felt like he was 100 % the way I pictured him. And I had a feeling like we knew each other forever.

After having breakfast together near central station, we walked downtown and sat down at the Alster. Colin had brought two bottles of aloe vera drink for us from his trip to the Netherlands. At that time, I hadn't been there yet. He handed me one of the bottles, I took a sip and placed the bottle next to me on the ground.

Because of my social anxiety, I oftentimes need something to be confirmed twice to be sure but am too afraid to ask—what a mess. The question, I had in mind at that moment, was: Did he bring the whole bottle for me with him, or should I just taste a sip? That sounds ridiculous, and maybe it even was. I could've answered the question myself easily. I made an attempt to ask him, to get rid of that burning question, but my mouth disobeyed me. Additionally, I didn't want to look like a fool by asking such an obvious question. So the bottle kept standing right next to me without me drinking a single more sip off it.

Since sitting around makes you get hungry, we started looking for food again. After a short search, we found a pizzeria where we sat down. Mark knew what he was going to order almost right away, while Colin and I didn't really know what to choose from the menu.

"Actually, I'm not that hungry," Colin mumbled to himself, while his eyes followed his index finger running over the different meals.

I pretended not to be that hungry either because I was niggardly and didn't dine out a lot.

"If that's the case, we could go shares with a pizza," Colin suggested, what I agreed on.

Somehow, I saw us needing to eat from the same plate in my mind's eye. And in some way, this vision was tempting. Not because I wanted a romantic dinner with Colin, but because I liked the idea to do this as the husbands we were. At that moment, I realized how important that label seemed to be to me.

To my disappointment, the waiter brought two plates with half a pizza each.