Thirty-one.
Enter part two of two, about a boy so handsome that I even went to Connecticut for him.
After that first night with Raul, I thought about him every day for the rest of the week. His cologne lingered, wafting through my studio apartment from the headboard of my bed, against which I'd pressed him, intimately. He would later tell me that it's a concoction by Byredo, and to this day the scent it creates when mixed on his skin still haunts my imagination.
I looked for every excuse to talk to him. I came across as overly attached, needy, but I couldn't help it—I hadn't had a crush in years, and it felt exhilarating. When he asked if he had left behind a necklace in my apartment, I was overjoyed to find it and say yes: I would have to see him again to return it.
Raul's necklace was a simple gold chain that he had unstrung from around his neck before we went to sleep that night, and I located it on my nightstand. I put it on, snapped a picture of me wearing it, and sent it to him. Jokingly, he called me a thief. With it, I had the perfect pretext to be with him again; I asked if he wanted to come over that weekend. Once more, he said yes.
That Friday, our sleepover was more platonic. We talked about our lives and the music we liked. I toyed with holding his hand and strung his chain back around his neck. I might have kissed him, too. I probably couldn't contain myself. When we parted the next morning, I wanted desperately to know when he'd come back into my life.
I wanted to see him, but I was afraid that he wasn't interested in me. Certainly, I knew that I was into him perhaps more than he was into me, and I despaired. I was lovesick, hanging on to delusions of Raul, completely and utterly whipped. I met up with him maybe twice or thrice as he ran errands throughout the city, seizing every opportunity to steal kisses from him.
Suddenly, the holidays were upon us and he was out of New York for an extended period of time. I grew frustrated. He wasn't a great texter, but sad thoughts ran through my mind. He would message me if he was sincerely interested, my brain taunted me. I hated feeling such acute desire for someone who didn't reciprocate it, because it made me feel powerless. I wasn't in control of myself—I was, no longer, me. In a bid to reclaim myself from my unrequited crush, I deleted him from my life. I blocked him on social media and wiped away all of our messages. I wanted to forgo our chemistry; I wanted to forget him.
It didn't work, of course. I thought about him all the time, reminisced about the brief moments we'd shared, and regretted my impulsive actions. I wanted so badly for Raul to notice that I'd disappeared; I wanted to reach out to him. I hated that I felt so keenly his absence, and I wanted him to feel mine equally.
New Year's Day came and went, and I was still in my head about him. Finally, now months after our initial encounter, I decided to give in. I reasoned that reaching out to him might liberate me, too: either acceptance or rejection would grant me a way out of my limbo. So, I drafted a text message to him, endeavoring to keep it simple because I wanted to do this the right way. I wanted to be pellucid, straightforward, and not overly verbose, because I was the one hoping to win his favor, and I didn't think I'd be successful if I came across as a rabid fanboy. I wanted to lean into the genuine attraction without seeming obsessive. I read and reread the words I composed, and I sent it to him on Instagram because I'd months ago deleted his phone number.
His reply wasn't immediate, but I also didn't have to wait very long for it to arrive. His message was uncomplicated. He was open to meeting with me again; he'd just been very busy. I hate to say that I was ecstatic, but I was. Hope was on the horizon.
I tried to temper my expectations by going along with his jam-packed schedule, accepting every opportunity to see him whenever he deigned to see me. In this way, Raul and I played cat and mouse across New York for months. I accompanied him to the pharmacy; I met him in Bushwick for tacos. He invited me to The Glass House in New Canaan, where we conversed about Olivia Rodrigo as Filipino representation and I convinced a kind National Trust Historic Site employee to drive us back to the Metro-North station. We slept together another once or twice. It wasn't dating, it wasn't even consistent, but he had become a ghostly presence in my life, sometimes appearing, sometimes not.
To be fair to myself, I knew it wasn't a real relationship and I wanted something serious. I wasn't so enamored with him that I precluded myself from meeting other men, but it was my chemistry with him against which I compared all prospects. Therefore, when I began to date Henry, I kept wondering to myself whether I should prefer the consistency of a man who genuinely liked me over the intrigue of a man who didn't. (It was a no-brainer, of course, and the answer was obviously yes, that Henry would be the clear choice, but exiting my protracted relationship with Jun the year before had left me with questionable priorities.) I was at war with my brain, which wanted what it couldn't have.
My relationship with Henry came and went, and I was left shattered. Henry had decided that he no longer wanted me, and I felt undesirable. I reached out to all of my friends to reconstitute myself, Raul included.
Raul came to see me. He went on walks with me, he got lunch and dinner with me, he sat on my couch and listened as I explained at great length my sadness. Then, extrapolating the undesirability I felt, I told Raul that I would no longer try to pursue him. I didn't want to push us to a place where he too would reject me because my heart couldn't accept any more loss. He would be, instead, my kuya.
Life went on. I slowly recovered, I got a new job, and Raul and I stayed in contact. I was affectionate with him, and I always held him whenever we hugged much too long for it to be platonic, but I remembered the promise I'd earlier made to him, to myself, about no longer going after him, because I was afraid of rejection. I hinted to him about Beau, the other Filipino man who was briefly in my life. I gathered Filipino desserts for his birthday, we spent time with mutual friends and laughed about the men with whom we'd mutually hooked up, but I tried to remain steadfast about staying away.
Predictably, my resolve crumbled. When I say that we had chemistry, I mean that our interplay was always charged with an undercurrent of desire. Our eyes lingered on each other's, our faces were always an inch too close, our hands roved the salacious parts of our bodies. He was a natural flirt, but in those moments he was flirting with me, and I'm not one to back down from a game of chicken, especially when I remembered how his skin had felt against mine. When we were at a gay bar in Chelsea, drinking while sketching the nude male models, the other men noticed our dynamic and asked if we were together. We didn't give a very good answer but, in the crowd, surrounded by—or, protected within—all those gay men, my lips found his. Tom and Jerry were so back.
Once again, we played cat and mouse across New York. If we went on a couple of dates without calling them dates, if our latent electricity continued to sparkle beneath our every exchange, were we dating? Dare I claim that we dated? We biked across Williamsburg and walked the starlit piers in Greenpoint, and I kissed him again in front of the entirety of Manhattan, an island ablaze with the city's lights at night.
Nowadays, Raul doesn't want me anymore. I recently wondered aloud to him whether the two of us should make a proper go of it, whether I should grant us both the leap of faith that I was never courageous enough to take, and he said yes. He said yes, but I said no. You see, dear reader, I still battled my own demons. The scars from Jun that had been hastily paved over were ruptured by Henry, and I walked away from each breakup with my priorities mutated. No longer would I accept a relationship built solely upon a foundation of mutual attraction—I needed, in addition, a potential for the long term, and I didn't see that in the cards between Raul and me. I wanted a partner who would provide for me as much as I would them; from our interactions, I didn't think he could be that person.
"The Chain" is Raul's favorite Fleetwood Mac song, if only for the groove that kicks in at the close. He's an ardent fan of BLACKPINK. It's his voice in my head when I dress myself; it's his eye that discerns, will forever critique, my own sense of style. In the near future, I want for him to be able to open his own creative studio, where he can exercise to his fullest potential his ability to find cohesion amongst wearable art. I said that Raul doesn't want me anymore, but I think the truth is much simpler: he's upset with me for being so blatantly flippant about us. His last words to me, as of late, were that I should be intentional about making plans to see him as much as he was for me. I hope, one day, he forgives me.
An incredibly sensual tug of war.
I loved this!