"Marooned No More"

James B.
Sep 1
4 min read

This is the engraving on the back of the Apple iPod Nano you purchased for me in our first year of dating. The engraving playing off of my personal email address, MaroonedOnMongo@, referencing an episode of my favorite super hero television show, Flash Gordon. It was an email address that I used on the gay dating sites at the time, a pretty explicit statement of "I'm feeling abandoned" and a subtle reference to my kink for exhibitionism.

We were pool side at our friend Cornell's home in Palm Springs, naked, probably spent, the sun sparkling off the pool so that the mountains on the horizon simmered. We were both in our early forties, in the best shape of our lives, and engorged with the newness of each other. I don't believe there was any special occasion we were celebrating. It was just a gift. The first, I believe.

But, those words “Marooned no More” meant more to me than you’ll ever know.

That memory from our time in Palm Springs was not my first of you. I have to reach way back in the dark of my crowded mind to find those early memories of you. Memories you don't share.

I must have been underaged and using my fake ID, you just barely 21, as my first memory is of you waiting your turn for the urinal in the tiny hallway of The Townhouse, a gay bar in midtown with a restaurant on the second floor. Your brilliant blue eyes caught mine and you flashed that smile that has taken so many men’s breath away, and just as quickly moved on; both of us attracted to older men, cataloging the other as competition rather than prey.

I had recently arrived in Sacramento after a three day, three night trip across lands I had no interest in nor memory of. Every time I gained consciousness on that impossibly long Greyhound trip, I unfolded myself from the bucket seat, bleary eyed, only to lock eyes with a small, beautiful, brown girl. She was probably eight, sitting between my feet, her hands always in the paper bag that held everything I owned; which no longer included a Twix candy bar, as it was smeared across her surprised face. I pulled a pill from my pocket, took “my” bottle of soda out of her hand and swallowed memories that tasted more like chocolate than Diet Coke. And closed my eyes to only open them again when the bus arrived in Sacramento, the furthest distance I could afford to put between me and “home”.

I found a job and tried to find purchase in the low wet soil of Sacramento. We crossed paths several times in those years. I remember men we both craved swirling around you like a murder of crows. You swatted away what I would have feasted on, cavalier with your charisma. I saw you as bright as the California sun, while I felt as dark as a Louisiana storm. So my memories are not so much of who you were, but of my visceral reaction to your beauty. Yes, beauty. You have come to grow into a ruggedly handsome man, now at 58, those dimples above a grey beard. But then, you were Beach Boys beautiful.

It wasn’t until I matured into a man you could desire that you noticed me, your first memory being of us at age 40 sitting together at Geary’s Theatre, a cabaret of sorts performed for just the two of us, though a crowd filled the room. It was warm that night but not so much that I couldn’t feel the heat of your thigh pressed against mine.

You were shameless in your flirting. Something I’ve watched you do so easily over the years; men melting in your attention like cotton candy on the tongue. But I was frozen in doubt and confusion and excitement and lust, so I played coy. So much so, that you contacted me the next day on an app to ask if I had even noticed.

I lied. Said I hadn’t.

Those early years were intoxicating. I asked you to go with me to Turkey for three weeks. Unbelievably, you said yes. We devoured each other in Istanbul, then New York, and Palm Springs. Wherever we were, Lady GaGa’s Monster played as if it were the soundtrack to our lives :

I just want to dance, but he took me home instead

Uh-oh there was a monster in my bed

We French kissed on a subway train

He tore my clothes right off

He ate my heart then he ate my brain

We eventually made it to my hometown in Louisiana. I introduced you to my family, to my childhood home. I tried to describe how I grew up, to explain why I was the way I was, but I just kept returning to the same sentence , “I was unmoored.”

As a child, I knew nothing of solid ground; trust, a rip tide that pulled me under; love a lighthouse warning me away. I had no one, or at least that’s how I lived my life, fiercely independent and ignorantly self-contained. Trauma captured my memories in third person, the point of view of the cameraman. I didn’t live in my skin, but floated loose instead, tied to nothing.

Until you.

In your stubborn love I found purchase. I landed not softly, but in a roiling ball of insecurities and fear. Your steadfastness in us calmed me, your belief in me warm and comforting and dangerous. Your strong arms held me as I thrashed like a drowning man. Until finally, in an exhalation of pain, I settled, snuggly, beautifully, in the embrace of your love.

It was true that day by the pool fifteen years ago and truer still today. I am

Marooned no more.

Happy Anniversary, Matthew. With all of me, I love you.