Epilogue

So here’s an odd follow-up.

Remember the guy from September 11? Remember how he and I walked around the city together? How romantic and cinematic it was? We hardly knew each other, and yet here we were, keeping each other company, roaming lower Manhattan together on this awful day of death and destruction, spending the entire day together (and some of the evening) before finally parting at night.

Well, the following weekend, I called him and left a message. I got no response. A couple of weeks later I called and left another message. No response. So I figured I was never going to hear from him again, that it was one of those gay things, a one-time deal only. Our magical day would just remain an isolated mythic moment. “And I never saw him again.”

But then, a few weeks later, I got an e-mail from him.

Just figured I’d write and say hey, got your voicemail :-P just give me a call at your leisure :-) would love to see you again :-)

I thought it strange that after several weeks, he was finally writing me. By that point I’d moved on. I was also pissed that after telling me he hoped to see me again, he’d ignored me for a month.

So after reading his e-mail, I never wrote back.

But I still kept the message. And because yesterday was the three-month anniversary of the attacks, I was thinking about him again. I thought it would be nice to get back in touch and see what he’s been up to these three long months.

So today I opened up his e-mail again, and now I noticed that his signature line contained a URL. I hadn’t noticed it the first time.

I decided to check it out.

I started to surf around his site, and then I read a sentence that caught my eye. No, that couldn’t be right. So I read it again. And then again. Was I reading this correctly?

I had been in NYC one week when the WTC disaster happened, but I feel very connected to New York City now, and I feel very fortunate to have escaped, thank whatever I was on the lower floors when the plane hit.

Huh?

I checked out the “photos” section of his page. The photos were photos of him. So it’s definitely his page.

So: excuse me?

You weren’t in the World Trade Center on September 11. You weren’t even anywhere near it. You were in bed with me in your apartment on West 10th Street, and we lay there completely oblivious to Armageddon outside. In fact, at around 10:30 in the morning, the world was falling apart, and you were giving me a blowjob.

Is this guy a pathological liar or something?

I remember him telling me that he has no thyroid. He had thyroid cancer, so his thyroid was removed, and now he takes hormones.

Does the thyroid perform some lie-preventing function that nobody knows about?

This is really weird.

Does he mean that he’s glad he was on the lower floors of his apartment building, so he didn’t have to worry about another plane flying along and crashing into his building?

That’s the only weird sentence on the site. There are no other sensational phrases, nothing that’s so exciting that it might be a lie. So why would he do something like this?

Perhaps I should have left it alone.

Perhaps I should have let myself be satisfied with the memories of a romantic, scary, strange and surreal day.