On Cruising For Guys With Your Gay Dad

And a love letter to The Village in the 90s

“One for you, Darling.”

“No, I don’t think so Dad, I think that’s one of yours.”

“One for both?”

Laughter.

1997. This is the dialogue of the summer of infinity. This is the laughter of the summer of perfect. These are the endless days of cruising and dancing and dinners and the first moments of feeling like a grown up who belongs somewhere. These are the days of looking at guys and realizing they might be looking back.

We loved to cruise, Dad and I, which is to say we loved to roam the city streets and notice who was noticing us. This may seem like it was about sex, but mostly it was about power: mine and his and ours together. It was about belonging; to each other and to ourselves and never to the people who wanted us. The want only fueled the fire of that power; raised us up on our tower of aloneness where we could look down on all our subjects and think how good it felt to be an object of desire without ever having to fulfill its promise. Our bellies were full (of penne a la vodka from long-closed and much loved Viceroy usually, on 18th and 8th) and our hearts fuller and everything was ahead and here we are look at us look at us look at us. And they did. They always did.

The path went like this:

Eighth Avenue down toward the village and then across town on Tenth Street to Sixth Avenue  to Washington Square through clouds of weed and chess players barely seeing their pieces and still taking the college kids for that last 20 dollars and jiggity jig on across to Bleeker past the laundromat at La Guardia and ‘the longest block in the village’ where we schlepped our dirties every week toward the loft in NOHO where Bleeker runs into The Bowery and here I am look at me look at me look at me. And they did. They always did.

I did not know that I was beautiful what I knew was that they all thought I was and more than that Dad did, and that was as good as I could imagine, better even than my wildest dreams. Each turning head a teaspoon of fuel that lit my skin and my heart and my mind on fire with the power of being longed for; the idea that I was out of reach.

My hair trailed down my back in waves the color of honey. Not store-bought-honey-bear-grocery-store-honey. The rare kind. The buckwheat kind. The kind that shimmers with minerals and almost tastes bitter but it’s delicious and you don’t know why. The $28 a bottle at the farmers market kind. The kind that is always sold out. The kind in demand.  That kind of honey.  That’s the kind that it was.

The air in the city was sticky, hot and wet even after dark and we loved it. “I'm a tiger, Darling,” he’d always say (referring to his Chinese astrological year), “of course I love the heat.” And because he loved it, I loved it too. And so we walked, strode, swayed down the avenue and across town and I felt my strong legs and my tender arms and my soft skin, sticky and sweet in the still of the evening air, and I felt the power of this beauty other people saw and the power of their desire and all because he was by my side and smiling and we were feeling the look at me look at us look at me look at we are here and we have everything we need.

And they did.

They always did.