Story of Matt, Part I

These are my memories of Matt, ripened and coloured by the passage of time. Now that he has passed, they are more about my perceptions and what was important to me a quarter century ago.

I met Matt through a personal ad in The Body Politic, Toronto's gay bi-weekly at the time. I had tried meeting guys through ads before with little success and wanted to try something a bit different. It was April, the end of winter and the start of a new bicycling season, so I wrote an ad looking specifically for a cycling partner to hang out with. Chris Bearchell, a friend and member of the TBP collective, agreed to create a new ad category just for my ad - "Recreation" - so my ad stood out from the others. It didn't get many replies. A couple older guys wanted to meet me. They didn't have bicycles but they really loved Lycra....

The month passed and the ad stopped running. Then I got his unexpected call. We had a great conversation that lasted an hour, all about bicycles, travel, training and the like, and we agreed to call again in a couple days. When I hung up it struck me that it was not a "gay" call. There was no mention of personal stats, no discussion of sexual preferences or habits, no fishing around for clues of whether we'd find each other appealing. So, of course, he was compellingly appealing to me.

There were several subsequent calls over the next four weeks. I decided, for my part, to keep our calls on a non-sexual level so I could learn more without fantasizing about him. I learned that he was 25, into old blues music, locally-brewed beer, picking wild mushrooms, foot reflexology and swimming. My interest in him grew but there were still no "gay" questions raised by either of us. It was like chatting to a high school buddy. I began to wonder if he was gay at all, but how could he not be if he answered a gay ad?

He had planned a cycling trip to Guelph at the end of May to visit a school buddy and he invited me along. It was a distance of 110 km and we agreed that it would be a good measure of how well matched we were for cycling together. As the date grew near, I knew his curiosity about me must be peaking, as mine was about him, but I stuck to my guns and asked nothing "gay". It was like a staring contest, but much more fun. Finally, two days before the trip, he overcame his shyness and suggested we should meet beforehand, but by then we had other obligations that got in the way, so we didn't meet until the morning of the trip.

My heart was beating faster and my palms sweating a bit when I pushed his front door buzzer, but when he opened the door I did a double take. He was just over six feet, naked but for his cycling shorts, with muscled arms and chest that took my breath away. His arms and legs had a slight tan but the rest of his skin was white as a Canadian winter. He had a silly grin on his face, partly bashful, partly playful. He bobbed his head in greeting, shook my hand and invited me in.

It didn't take him long to finish dressing and to prepare his bike for the trip. In a few minutes we were standing in his driveway. He gave me his signature grin and head bob acknowledging that we were about to start, and then we threw our legs over our bikes and set off. He led the way and I spent the rest of the trip watching the various parts of his superb body doing their work.

Holding a conversation was nearly impossible in city traffic, so we fell silent for the first hour. It gave me lots of time to think, and I spent that time wondering what to say to him. My questions about his appearance that had played with my imagination for the past month had been answered, but they were replaced by a multitude of other more anxious questions about whether he found me attractive, how to draw this out of him and how to keep a lid on my lust until I did. When we reached the rural side roads we were able to ride side by side and start a conversation, but he wasn't offering me any clues to the answers.

That soon changed. We stopped for lunch a couple hours before Guelph on a sloped field behind a thicket of trees. I grabbed my lunch and lay on the grass. He lay down beside me, carefully resting the full length of his forearm against mine, sending a shock wave through the length of my body. A few sweet seconds later we locked fingers and started kissing. For the remainder of the trip our anxieties took a breather while our hearts soared like kites.

He cautioned me not to let on to our host that we had the hots for each other. He was not out to anyone but his sex partners. He'd only been out a year. I understood as I wasn't fully out yet either, but it impressed me how easily he could disguise his feelings for me in the presence of his friend.

His friend apologized that we'd have to share a room. We assured him that we didn't mind. Matt had a narrow foam pad on the floor and I had a folding cot. Neither one was big enough for the both of us but we were so grateful to be alone that our predicament made us laugh. We spent the night on the cot wrapped tightly in each others' arms, not daring to move an inch for fear of falling.

The next day we headed back to Toronto, still glowing from our first night together. The obvious question that plagued my thoughts then was whether I would see him again and, if so, how soon. I feared he might be only interested in playing the field. Though he hadn't been out long, he was already having lots of sex. He confessed that just before he answered his door the day before he had rushed a half-naked trick out the back door, which explained the sheepish grin on his face and why he was only wearing cycling shorts.

The day wore on and once again it was a contest to see who would be the first to raise the issue. I held my tongue but I was quietly dying to know. Finally, as we passed entered the suburbs of Toronto, he asked if he could see me again. The concern in his voice was clear, but as soon as I said I'd love to see him, he coolly added that he didn't want any commitments. We'd only see each other whenever we wanted to. How he saw our relationship always see-sawed from that moment on, between his need for me and his need to disguise this need from me.

Fortunately, he wanted to see me every day that summer.