Friday, Sept. 06, 2002 - 4:41 p.m.
Fellow Traveler

How’s this for a conversation-opener? “Hey, I ride the bus with you each morning and we’ve never met but I saw you naked on Pride Day!”

(smirk)

Yep, methinks that opener would out-Queerscribe Queerscribe.

There’s this slender 30-something guy on my bus route; every morning and every evening without fail we are on the same crowded bus together. We’ve never spoken, not even so much as smiled at one another, but I’ve been curious about him from the get-go. He’s slim and wiry and dark-haired with brown eyes: totally (one of) my type(s).

Yet I am not attracted to him.

It’s his severe, constrained facial expression; he looks as if he’s perpetually constipated. From the beginning I knew that if ever I caught him relaxed and happy someday, I’d definitely be drawn to him. My fascination with this guy correlates with the intuition I’ve long had about my own attractiveness—when I’m emotionally open, guys want in; when I’m not, they don’t.

Day after day, week after week, I watched this guy on the bus ride to and from work; never once did I see any variation in his cold, compressed face. It was always scrunched up against everything. Without me consciously realizing it, the sight of him became a daily reminder: how am I feeling? And to check out my reflection in the mirror, or in or a shop window; always, there was a correspondence between my mood and my appearance. (Fortunately for me, my moods vary more than do my bus-mate’s.)

It’s so easy to fret about my looks; equally, it’s a bad habit of mine to push emotions out of my awareness. But when I become more mindful of what I’m actually feeling, I soon begin feeling positive emotions more of the time; back into such a healthy groove, I’m less fixated on how I look, and it seems too that I become more attractive to others.

I saw my bus-mate once or twice, after hours, in my neighborhood, so I began to think he was probably gay too. This was undeniably confirmed on Gay Pride Day when I saw him marching in the parade with the local queer nudists. My jaw dropped. There he was, sauntering along wearing some little skirt thingey that barely draped his crotch and left bare his small, hard buttocks.

He was radiant, I tell you. Big, sunny smile; dancing brown eyes. The transfiguration was utter. Even before glimpsing his sweet ass, I was a goner.

The next day back at work, sure enough, there my bus-mate was again. Clothed, shut down, closed off. Several weeks have now passed, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever talk to him.

And so it goes.

There’s an elusive, ideal state for all of us; nakedness triggers it for some, erotic rapture for others, spiritual connectedness or intellectual insight or athletic mastery or creative expression or whatever else for still others. It’s a plugged-into-the-universe kind of vibe, and it lights up our most beautiful selves.

This beauty is not only accidental and uncommon; it is also impervious to the aging process.