I’m casually dating a guy in San Francisco, and he could be gay, straight, married, or just a metrosexual commitment-phobe. I don’t know.
When I list his idiosyncrasies, I get the same two reactions from everyone: he’s married, or he’s gay. And after six months, I don’t feel any closer to an answer.
He is older, over a dozen years senior to my 25. A bachelor pushing 40 in San Francisco isn’t uncommon, but it can still raise a few eyebrows. But with his typical Northern Californian beard and minimal gray hairs, his true age even threw a comedian doing crowd work with us on our fifth date.
While he could pass for 28, his maturity is evident to me. My emotions don’t scare him off. He doesn’t pull away when I want to discuss our relationship. He wasn’t awkward when I teared up after a hard week. I’m not worried that sending him a text that reads, “I miss you,” will be too clingy. He reciprocates in articulate ways I’m not used to. The men I have dated who were closer to my age deflected or ghosted when emotions were put on the table.
But he won’t friend me on Facebook. My friends roll their eyes at me. “He doesn’t want you to see the pictures with his [insert wife or boyfriend here],” they say. I retort that we follow each other on Instagram. But when you’re trying to win a debate by comparing the different social media you’re allowed to access, you’ve already lost.
We aren’t Facebook friends, but one night, with a head high, I was curled into him as he stroked my back. I felt safe and calm in a way I had only ever felt in my mom’s arms. I looked up at him and said, “Something about you feels like family.”
But he won’t let me know where he lives, and he won’t sleep over. I’ve never been to his house, and every hookup ends with a kiss at my front door around 3:00 a.m. When I ask if a girl is an ex or a friend, he will respond with a chuckle, “She knows where I live, so she’s a friend.” In the middle of a Lyft back to my place, he panically checked his phone. When I asked what the problem was, he laughed that he thought he might have put in his address by mistake.
And then there are the other things. The things I know are just stereotypes that I should ignore. He dresses well. He sometimes wears leggings and is always in black briefs—not boxer briefs, just briefs. He has body-image issues. He occasionally calls me “gurl” in his slightly effeminate voice. He bought a cock ring with me. And we are in San Francisco, after all.
Even with all his secretes, this relationship is the most honest and vulnerable I have ever had.
I tease him about his rules, and he acknowledges that it’s weird and crazy. We have a bit about getting him home before his wife or husband gets upset. There’s also a running joke that with each date I have more information and will soon be able to get his apartment’s location down to a three-block radius. As of now, I know that it’s a 10-minute drive from the Planet Granite in the Presidio and located in lower Pac Heights, and that it costs him $10 for a Lyft from my place. Even the parts of himself he has hidden from me we’ve talked about openly.
This is the most sexually open city in the country, and I would accept any explanation for his behavior. Bisexual? Fine, let’s get a threesome on the books. Open marriage? OK, well, at least he isn’t cheating. But the lack of any rational explanation from him makes me default to the simplest one.
So I convince myself a gay guy couldn’t love going down on me as much as he does…right?
