Binders of Men: Why He Couldn’t Look Me in the Eyes

The first time we met, he wore a blue sports coat and dress pants. He was my first. And he spoiled me with his style and ruined the later men who didn’t dress as well. After a drink at the coffee shop where we surreptitiously groped one another, we went to his car to continue the make out session while one of us kept an eye on the passers by. After we said good bye, he drove past me on the interstate, flashing a grin worthy of James Bond.

He fashioned himself after the old time movie stars, with a wardrobe a gay man would envy. Velvet smoking jacket. His own tuxedo and tails. Tailored wool pants. Shoes that cost more than I make in a week. “Should I wear this, or this?” he asked after sending me pictures modeling his choices. Yet, he also loved his skate board. He was a 12-year-old boy who had never grown up.

A romantic at heart, he promised champagne and swimming and chocolate-dipped strawberries for our first real date. Before then, though, he sent texts that had me losing my mind over the thoughts of what we could be doing…what he could be doing to me. Then, a last-minute invite to come over to my house. He showed up and we kissed as passionately as in any romance novel and went upstairs. He pulled down my panties and pushed me on the bed and said “I only came for one thing.” And. Oh my. Oral sex. I had no idea.

Then, before our date, a sign, he said, that he shouldn’t move forward — an unexpected death and work complications.

Still, we continued occasionally chatting. He weighed in on the men I should and shouldn’t see. (“He’s an engineer, he’ll be good to you. He looks like a frat school prep boy. An asshole for sure.”) It all seemed unresolved. Let’s go for a bike ride, I suggested, and a pre-dawn ride along the Mississippi River was filled with tense silences as he refused to converse with me about my love life.

Later, meeting for coffee — another awkward encounter as he gripped his coffee for dear life across the table from me.

All along, he never looked me in the eye to sustain my gaze. He would talk to the floor, or to the sky, never to me.

Then, almost two years in, a chance text caught us both in the right moment.

He came over, dressed better than any man should be on a Thursday in the middle of a pandemic.

We kissed passionately again. “You’re even sexier than the first time I met you,” he told me after we undressed.

We finally had penetrative sex. And then, finally, he held my gaze.