What it felt like -- sitting in the Indian restaurant next to you, in Baltimore (a city I don’t really know, but will get to know like Edgar Allen Poe), seeing you watching me, scrutinizing me with your accepting eyes, and feeling self conscious about such stares (yet also feeling glad to be so admired, by your accepting eyes), periodically putting my hand on your knees – periodically -- hoping to communicate to you that “I love being here with you, in this city I don’t know but I wish to get to know;” listening to your friends talk and understanding that (like you – for like kind attracts like kindness --) they are easy going, accepting; and its lovely, but not always lovely, because at the same time that we are having dinner with your friends, who are so welcoming (in this city of Baltimore, in this Indian restaurant I have never eaten in before, among your two best friends whom I’ve only just me), while feeling euphoria, I also feel remorse, having brief flashbacks (which are not welcoming) of our earlier fight that very same morning (at another restaurant, also in this city of Baltimore which I don’t know, eating Spanish tapas for lunch, which neither of us liked really, and where the conversation was not so lovely, although it should have been because it was only the two of us) and I reflect that we still need to work on how to communicate best, how to be able to talk without making the other feel unappreciated (and this remember Ralph, I did not mean to hurt you – my Ralphie, my dear Ralphie); but fortunately the flashbacks are brief, overpowered as they should be by my desire of wanting to kiss you in the middle of this dinner at an Indian restaurant in the city of Baltimore, but deciding against it -- because I did not want your friends to think that I’m the show off type (they don’t know me, the don’t know that I am a cautious man, that I do not render my heart easily, that my wanting to kiss you in public is against my every pattern, against the deepest core of my crusty old self); perhaps, I thought, they will think I’m the kind that kisses his new beau in public because he is the type who is in it only for the momentary giddiness of it and not in it for the inevitable ups and downs of an adult gay relationship (but they would be wrong, I tell myself – if they thought that, they would be wrong), and as I think about kissing you in public (and choose against it), as I have this dread of being conspicuous, not wanting to embrace you in the middle of dinner in the middle of a crowded restaurant – at the same time and during all these times – I feel the sweet conquest of having been kissed by you, moments ago, when we entered the restaurant, unabashedly, in this city of Baltimore, telling me with that kiss, as you did and intended, that “we fought, but I’m still proud to love you.”
What it felt like: It felt like a dream (but don’t pinch me – I know that I’m awake).
