When we reached the climbing wall, the photographer was setting up his equipment, which left Damon and me standing there with nothing to do. He asked me how I became a writer, and I told him I got a master’s degree in journalism because I thought it would pay the bills. I asked him how he got into marketing for a sports complex, and he told me he had always been an athlete so it seemed a natural fit. At one point, he told me he rowed at Brown and I, completely confused, asked, “Rode what?”
He looked at me as if my head had suddenly turned into a canned ham. “A boat.”
“You rode a boat?”
“Yeah. As in crew.”
“Oh, rowed!” I said. “I thought you meant you rode—R-O-D-E—like horses or a bicycle or something. Not R-O-W-E-D.” I realized that the more I kept talking the more insane I sounded.
As if to save me from further embarrassment, Damon said, “Look, I think you’re all set up here. I have to go back to my office, but send me a copy of the story when it’s printed.” He handed me his business card.
I looked down at it. “Will do, Damon Bayles.”
He looked shocked. “You pronounced my name right.”
“Damon is a pretty easy name.”
“No, Bayles. Most people say Bails. But you said Bay-liss.”
“Oh, I didn’t even think to pronounce it any other way,” I said. “When I was growing up, I used to work at a restaurant called Danfords Inn, and it was on Bayles Dock.”
“In Port Jefferson,” he said. “Out on Long Island.”
“Yeah, that’s where I grew up. Do you know it?”
Smiling, he said, “Well, yeah, that’s my family’s dock. Well, it was. In the 1800s they used to build ships there.”
“Get out!”
“I swear.” He seemed very serious all of a sudden.
“I worked there all through high school as a busboy,” I said, “and as a waiter during summer breaks in college. There was this yacht the restaurant would charter, usually for corporate groups, and I’d have to lug all this food and ice and alcohol across that dock when it was ninety degrees outside. Man, it sucked. How crazy is that? I toiled away for years, sweating my ass off, on your family’s dock.”
“That is pretty wild,” he admitted. “I’ve been meaning to go out there some time.”
“You should,” I said. “I could meet you out there for lunch or something.”
He smiled a polite smile. “That would be lovely,” he said. “Anyway, it seems like you’ve got everything you need here. I’m going to head back to my desk.”
“Gotcha,” I said. “Thanks for helping me out with this.”
“That’s my job!”
When I got back to my office, I decided that I was going to ask Damon out on a date. I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was smart, funny, athletic, gorgeous, and not an asshole—a breed so rare in New York many assume it’s extinct. But I didn’t want to ask him out over the phone or e-mail. Too pedestrian. So, I decided to handwrite him a note on my nicest stationery. Maybe that would make me stand out, I hoped, from the mob of homosexuals most certainly clawing at him daily.
I pulled out a note card with my name embossed across the top and wrote: “Can I take you out for coffee sometime?”
It was the me I wanted to be, strong and decisive. A real man’s man. But then I decided it was too straightforward, and part of my charm, I hoped, was being kind of a spaz, so I took another note card out of the box and wrote: “I was thinking, maybe, if you had nothing better to do, I could, like, take you out for a coffee, or a tea, or some kind of other beverage if you don’t do caffeine. Or not. I mean, I wouldn’t want to bother you so . . . ummm . . . give me a call if you feel like it. Or if you’re busy I totally understand. Have a nice day. Or a nice life. Or I’ll see you soon. Whatever.”
I set both note cards down on my desk and tried to decide which one to send. Rambling or direct? Direct or rambling? I must have looked at them for five minutes before I choked. I crammed both into a blue-metallic-lined envelope, along with my business card, addressed it to Damon Bayles at Chelsea Piers, and threw it in the company mail bin.
Four days later I received an e-mail—an e-mail!—that read: “Dear Clinton, I really enjoyed speaking with you. Thank you for your invitation(s), but I’m seeing someone right now. I hope you understand. Maybe we’ll bump into each other one of these days. I’ll look forward to that. Sincerely, Damon Bayles.”
And I thought, He’s lying. I’m not his type, but he’s telling me he’s in a relationship because he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. Because I’ve never been the type to think about what I can’t have, I put Damon out of my mind, quite successfully.
The next day I received another significant e-mail, this one from a casting agent asking if I would like to audition for a television makeover show called What Not to Wear.
Switch.
*
Now, where were we again? Oh, that’s right. We were in that crowded bar, two years later.
The friend dragging the handsome guy in the orange-striped shirt asked me, “Are you Clinton Kelly?”
“I am,” I said.
“I think you know my friend . . .”
“Damon!” I said. “Damon Bayles. How the hell are you?”
When I said that I had put Damon out of my mind, I meant that I had forgotten he existed, forgot what he looked like, everything about him, until that exact moment when it all came flooding back into my brain, my whole being. A switch had been flipped, but not just a switch that triggers memories of platonic encounters of years past. It was a track change. And I felt it. It’s like being sprayed with a superfine mist of ice-cold water on an excruciatingly hot day, all over your body, all at once. Or standing in a room in which the atmospheric pressure changes so suddenly that you have to take a little breath. Or, I would imagine, watching your baby walk clear across the room, out of the blue, smiling his face off.
“I’m great,” he said. “How are you?”
“You know, I’m a big TV star now,” I said with a laugh.
“I don’t own a television.”
He really didn’t. That was 2005, and today Damon and I have decided that this story, at least insomuch as it concerns you, is best ended here. I hope you’re not offended, but the complete story of “us” just isn’t one we want publicly consumed. I will, however, tidy up a few loose ends because I’d hate to leave you hanging. I’m no tease.
Damon was being truthful when he said he was seeing someone. When he called it off with whomever that was (I’ve never asked), he e-mailed me again to ask me out, but the e-mail bounced back because I had quit my job to embark upon my television journey. He called too, but no one answered. He only had my work information from my business card. And those two note cards I sent him: He kept them. I didn’t believe him, but he showed them to me once. I could have died of embarrassment—how ridiculous I was—and yet I wanted to cry from the chest-crushing happiness.
We’ve been together for eleven years. Sometimes I think about how, if I hadn’t accepted the job on What Not to Wear, Damon and I would have gotten together much sooner. But would I have been ready? Would he have been ready? Would I have felt the switch—click!—the same way I did that night? I’ll never know, of course. Unless when I die, some godlike being shows me a map, perhaps an incredibly detailed decision tree of my life, in which all paths lead to Damon. But in this reality, I’m happy with the track I’m on.
CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT!