You and Your Hands

I kept telling myself that using a dating site was not desperate.  Not for a gay guy living in a town where ‘gay’ meant effeminate, thin and blond, or it meant bitter, old and predatory – with nothing in between.  Still, if someone asked me where I met a certain guy, I would hesitate before telling them. 

After the complete failure of the last guy – who I never got to tell you about and probably won’t bother since it was such a non-event – I decided that the dating site would be somewhere to go window shopping, and that I would shop without any intent to buy the wares on offer.

I came across the profile of a guy to whom I was immediately attracted on the basis of his picture.  Now, anyone with a dating profile knows that there is that one photo where the light hit the strange position you happened to be in at just the right way and the result was a photo that looks too good to be you.  In any case, I decided to explore his profile a little more.

I saw that he was 27, lived somewhere in the same state as I, and seemed to either have learned English as a second language, or simply had lower writing skills.  I thought he was cute, possibly too cute for me, so I was about to exit out of his profile and keep moving when I noticed a photo of him cuddling a dog.

Now, I am a sucker for dog men.  I’m a sucker for dogs, really.  So I enlarged the picture, and was smitten enough to send the guy a message: “cute dog, cute guy.”  I was pleasantly surprised when he sent a message back saying he thought I was good-looking. 

We ping-ponged around for a while before he told me that he was deaf, and had been since birth.  I assume his hesitance in telling me this is a result of past rejection, but instead of putting me off, this bit of news was endearing to me.  For months upon months I have been talking with friends about learning sign language.  I’ve always loved different languages because to me they are a novelty-with-a-purpose , and sign language seemed to add another element of novelty while still remaining useful.
Over the course of a few weeks, we would try to catch up with each other and chat on MSN since it turned out he lives about 2 hours drive from me.  One day it clicked in my simple brain – I’m supposed to be a going to a wedding in the same town that he lives in.  I’d never been to this town before in my life, so this seemed like good timing.

The day of the wedding came, and I travelled north with my family.  The AFL grand final was on the same day, and since my family is big on AFL, they had all decided to meet at the pub before the wedding to watch the game.  I took the opportunity to organise a coffee-date with James.

My parents and sister wished me luck, and I went down to wait out the front of the hotel we were staying at.  When I saw him walking toward me I started to panic – what if my finger-spelling is shitty and he laughs at me and can’t understand me?  We greeted each other and gestured toward a coffee shop, with me constantly blundering by trying to talk to him.  After a few minutes of writing text messages on the phone and showing each other, I wrote “should I try and sign?”  He smiled and nodded.
The first thing I did was show him the alphabet to see if I had all the letters right, and he was clearly pleased when they were.  From that point on, the conversation flowed.  I would spell a word and he would show me the sign for it.  Before too long, it was time for me to go to the wedding. 

Later, at the ceremony, I kept thinking about the coffee with James and how good it was.  He was sweet and gentle without being effeminate.  He had a great smile and a great laugh, and I clearly needed to spend more time with him.  I sent him a text message telling him to meet me out the front of the hotel so that we could grab a beer.  I snuck out of the reception.
We had a couple of drinks and walked back to the reception where things were finishing.  My sister was out the front smoking a cigarette, so I introduced her to James.  She told me to bring James inside to meet everyone, and after a bit of hesitation we went inside the restaurant.  Everyone was drunk, including myself, so I thought this would be a well lubricated situation to introduce the guy to my family.  I’ve never before introduced a guy to my family, but I believe that it should be done early on and without any ceremony or expectation.  Should it be short and casual, the second meeting (which would most likely be longer and a little more formal) won’t seem as daunting.  Anyway, I digress.

As it turns out, everyone was going into town to kick on.  Including my parents.  So we all went off to the nightclub, and had a merry old time.

Later that night, when mum was too drunk to walk in an entirely straight line (or upright), James and I walked her back to the hotel.  She told me that she thought he was a lovely boy.  I was forced to agree.

With mum tucked safely away in her hotel room, James and I headed down to the foyer to walk back to the club.  We stopped for a moment to warm up. 
“I like your hands,” I said to him.  He smiled, leaned in, and kissed me.

Man, what a kiss.