Blind Faith

"How are things going with Tim?" Benjamin asked me as we walked hand-in-hand down Seventh Avenue. We were nearly to Chelsea, where no one in his right mind was going to give us grief for being so affectionate with each other. This was how we always walked: arm-in-arm or holding hands. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. We hadn't been involved for years, since that fateful night in college, really, but we always sprang back to the way things used to be. Ben looked over at me, the conspiratorial look that was always there glinting in his eye, and waited.

"They're, I don't know, going," I said. I was hesitant to give an answer, guarded in what I'd tell him about this new man that I'd just met. Things with Tim seemed to be different. I didn't meet people anymore who made my heart beat faster; I didn't get nervous when I dialed their phone numbers or got ready to meet them for coffee. I hadn't for a while, in fact. And then I met Tim, who had started to work into my head in a way that I'd nearly forgotten was possible. So when Ben nonchalantly asked me how things with him were going, I didn't know how to put it. But I knew that I wasn't ready to share.

"OK," he said, "it sounds like you're not impressed. So what's the problem?"

"There's no problem," I told him. And then I told him about the butterflies I'd been having when I thought about Tim, about the way that I couldn't seem to get him out of my head. I braced myself for the inevitable, the look that says Uh-oh, someone's stupidly fallen in love again or Who's the flavor this week? I should've known by that point that that wouldn't have been Ben's reaction. He was the only unflenchingly romantic gay guy that I'd ever met. He'd been with his partner for four years. If anyone was going to be in True Love's corner it was him.

"I just don't know how to deal with this," I said, releasing his hand and crossing my arms over my chest. "At the end of every date we have, I just want to see him again. This guy's funny and smart and he reads and writes. I've been so in control in the last few relationships that I've had. I've always had one foot on the ground, I guess, and feeling like this just really scares the shit out of me."

If there was one thing I'd learned about dating in New York City, it was to not put all of my eggs in one basket. Everyone seemed to have their eye on the door, looking for the next big thing, the next person that could do something for them. Or maybe that's just how I perceived it because I still felt like an outsider. I'd learned, though, not to expect monogamy--either emotional or sexual--until you'd had a conversation agreeing to be monogamous. For better or worse, I assumed that people who I dated were seeing other people. To be fair, I usually was, too.

But when I met Tim, still following the rules of New York City dating with its perpetual casualness, suddenly I was sick of being casual. Something very rare had happened: I had stopped looking around at what else was out there and started looking in only one direction. His. And that scared me. I'd learned to say, even when I was so secretly excited, that things were just ok; that things could be better; that we'd see what happened.

"This is your problem in relationships, Robert," Ben said, proud to have diagnosed another one of my quirks. "You always have this Doomsday prophecy." I didn't want to hear it, but he was right. I was always waiting for the end, predicting the worst. "But I want you to try something. This time just go with it. I know you're jaded and that you have a hard time believing that things could actually work out for the best. But hear this: sometimes you need to have faith. Faith that you can be happy. Faith that sometimes relationships do actually happen, and that this could very well be the start of a great relationship."

I'd never been one to have blind faith in anything--be it the good of man or the kindness of fate--but I thought it was time to give it a shot. I'd put both feet on the ground and face whatever was going to happen dead-on.