I was browsing contemporary rock music at the record shop when I felt eyes on me. I looked up and scanned the store casually. I had been right. A man in the classical section was watching me. Or was he just staring off into space in my direction? I shrugged inwardly and turned my attention back to the records.
A few minutes later, I looked up again and sure enough he was still looking at me. Now he had a slight smile on his face and an ex-pression that invited further interaction. I ignored him and walked over to the jazz category.
Now I had my back to the man. I still felt like his eyes were burning into me.
After a few more minutes, I cast a glance over my shoulder. He was still staring and smiling wider now that he could survey my ass. I'd had enough. I turned around, gave him the finger and walked out of the store. His expression didn't change a bit.
I visited a few more stores, then hopped a bus home. I found my thoughts turning back to that wordless encounter in the record shop. I was eighteen, not a child. I knew about homosexuality. I had just never experienced such a blatant intrusion of it into my heterosexual existence.
The man's stare had been more than a little creepy. I guessed he was about fifty-five to sixty years old. What wholesome interaction could he expect to cultivate with me, a young man less than half his age?
I shuddered at the thought.
The thought came with unbidden images of the kind of interaction the older man might have been planning. I was surprised when I was not as repulsed by these thoughts as I might have expected.
When I stopped to think about it, it was not creepiness the man exuded, but confidence. In an age when being gay defined him as a fringe player in the world of sex, the man was willing to put himself out there and risk ridicule and rejection.
I regretted giving him the finger. His boldness earned him a little more respect in my mind.
I put him out of my mind for the remainder of the bus ride and concentrated on the trip home and the pretty girl a few seats in front of me.
After supper, my parents went about their business, which usually concluded with an hour or two of television before they went to bed. I went to bed early myself after an exhausting evening spent researching an essay for school.
As I tried to drift off, I found myself getting horny... not unusual for me at that age. I collected a handful of Kleenex and started stroking myself to thoughts of the girl on the bus. She was black and had long sinuous legs that seemed to go on forever, finishing in a wide, round ass, tightly gripped by her jeans. Her hair-
An image of the man from the record shop intruded on my fantasy. His ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into me. They held humour, hope and promise.
Promise of what?
Involuntarily, I envisioned the man without his clothes. He was no Adonis, but somehow I was aroused.
As I blew my load into the tissues, I felt deeply disturbed by what I'd done. I knew I wasn't gay, so why had a man appeared in my sex fantasy?
Tomorrow was a new day. I went to school and found myself occasionally daydreaming about the man's eyes and sometimes his other attributes. When this happened, I blushed furiously to myself and tried to concentrate harder on my lectures.
As the days passed, the older man continued to visit my masturbatory fantasies.
I attended a downtown campus, so I was already near the record shop when my classes broke for the day. I told myself to walk on by, but my legs steered as if following the orders of a different brain. Once inside, I looked around. He wasn't there.
I felt disappointment. Why should I have expected him to be there?
I browsed for a little while for appearance's sake and then left to catch my bus home.
The days passed, and once or twice a week I would stop off at the record shop and I knew I wasn't there looking for the vinyl. My curiosity was leading me on another quest altogether. Even I didn't know where it might lead.
Weeks passed and I settled into a routine of stopping in at the record shop once or twice a week. I had stopped expecting to see the older gentleman, which was how I had now convinced myself to see him.
And then, one day, there he was. Just standing right there in the classical section.
Now, what do I do? I thought.
I wasn't in the store long before his eyes found me. They had all the magnetism and power I remembered. He smiled in recognition and a part of me melted. He did nothing. He just held the gaze.
I implicitly understood. I had to approach him.
That made sense, I guess. He didn't want to be seen making advances to an eighteen-year-old boy. But did I want to be seen approaching a sixty-year-old man?
My choice was in his eyes. That look of invitation which I remembered so well had returned. His smile had faded to a thin slash, giving his face a sterner cast. I deserved it after my thoughtless rejection the last time we met.
I followed my legs over to him. I stood in front of him speechless. Our eyes were locked. I couldn't think of anything to say.
He rescued me from the silence. He held up an album.
"Young man, have you ever heard Holst's Planets?"
"No." My voice sounded like a bird chirping.
"Well, you really must. I'll go pay for it. If you wait for me outside, we can go back to my place and listen to it."
"Okay." I sensed that I was agreeing to far more than just listening to some classical music. Again, I was impressed with his confidence. He couldn't have ruled out another rejection or even violence.
I went outside as he suggested. As the long moments passed by, I told myself this was my chance to run. I didn't feel like I was in any danger at all but I was scared. It was the kind of unreasoning fear I imagine you must feel before you are born.
He emerged from the record shop and his eyes, as ever, quickly found me. His expression showed a mild satisfaction, probably taken in the fact that I had not run off and left him to listen to his record alone.
"We haven't been properly introduced," he said. "I'm Ron."
I gave him my name. It hadn't occurred to me to give him a false name.
We shook hands. He held my hand fast in a powerful grip before letting it go. Then he turned and began to walk. I found myself trying to keep up. We did not talk as we walked, but the distance was short. In five minutes, we were in an elevator zipping up to a fifteenth-floor apartment.
He took his coat and mine and hung them in a closet and asked me to take off my shoes. I complied willingly. Somehow, taking off my coat and shoes made it real that I was here in a strange man's apartment.
It was a modest two-bedroom suite, but as Ron said, it had everything he needed. He invited me to take a seat on the couch in the main living area as he freed the vinyl record from its cardboard sleeve and placed it on a turntable. Before the music started, Ron offered me a drink. I blurted out that I was underage.
"How old are you?" Ron asked.
"Eighteen," I told him.
"Old enough to drive, old enough to vote, old enough to... do other things. I won't tell anyone if you don't."
I accepted his offer. He poured himself a Scotch on the rocks and handed me the beer I selected. I hoped it would take the edge off my nerves. He sat on the couch beside me.
