There he was, grinning and waving hello to me as I sat behind the information desk helping some customer find some book. At first, for a brief second or two, I wasn't sure who he was, and then some neurons made some connections and I grinned also, probably grinned far more than he was, and waved hello back at David, this boy who I was obsessed with when I first moved to New York, who had a boyfriend, but who still came home with me one night over a year ago.

Right now, at this moment, I still can't even stop grinning, thinking about him. There has been a very long stretch of time recently where I have not smiled this giddy smile, this I-have-a-crush-and-life-is-goddamn-motherfucking-awesome smile. I have not had a serious crush in a long time, certainly nothing close to what my David crush was. When I like someone, I cannot keep it secret. My face will always give my secret away. And sure enough, last night, even though I had not seen this boy in months and months, I was smiling ear to ear while talking to him, looking at that stoned expression he always seems to have, that relaxed smile, eyelids that seem a little too heavy, all of it too familiar, his corporal self, the one standing in front of me, lining up exactly with the half-sketched memories of him I still had, now sketching in the forgotten parts. I told him about the Queer RNC meeting tonight, which he said he would attend. He left, saying "See you tomorrow" and high-fived me. I think I smiled for about the next straight hour, lost in a reverie of cute boy thoughts, thinking back to the encounter that just happened, the smiles on both of our faces and what it could, might mean.

In my memories, David tends to be disembodied head, and perhaps not even a full head: a beatiful, big nose, droopy eyes, and nice brown hair. Sort of like the pieces that you attach to Mr. Potato Head, unattached, floating in a cosmic blackness occasionally puncuated by bar lighting, by someone dancing in a strobe light. These features floating against those alcohol soaked memories.

Two days ago, my memorey took on another disembodied body part to its already full inventory of them bouncing around my head's interior. A gropping hand, kind of hairy, with a gold ring on one of the fingers (wedding band?). I had left our union meeting out of frustration and boredom, but didn't feel like returning to work yet, so stopped at Circuit City so I could go potty and then listen to CD's in Virgin. I went into the one empty stall, sat down and noticed the person's feet in the stall next to me. They were bouncing up and down. Every so often, the bouncing would pause, and his legs would be arched with the pressure on his tip toes. I was sort of shocked that someone was masturbating so blatantly in the Circuit City bathroom. I didn't even go the bathroom. I sat there astonished, turned on by this person having pleasure so publicly, voyeuristically watching these gyrating feet. Soon he had both of his feet pointed in my stall's direction, and I lost perspective of where I was or what era it was. It seemed like what I imagined gay life to be in my teens when my only exposure to it was through Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, describing crusising bathrooms in the fifties.

I was hard by this point and stroking my cock quietly while I watched these feet, these feet saying something, a code I wasn't sure I understood. Then there was a hand, that disembodied hand I will probably always remember, which reached underneath the partition between our two stalls, that gropping hand, gesturing either come here, or put something in this hand, or both. I knelt quickly, and he started stroking my cock underneath the partition. I was very nervous that someone would come into the bathroom, way nervous, ready to jump to my feet at the first sound of a creak, and so I came as quickly as I could (probably in about a minute or two), and then started to pull away, but he motioned again with his hand, and so I let him squeeze out some more come into his palms. I stood up, and bended my sticky penis into my jeans, not caring about jizzing my pants or the bulge, just wanting to leave quickly. And I hurried out of the bathroom and out of Circuit City before I had to see what this man looked like, before he could see me. I wanted to leave it as the faceless encounter that it was.

I then went into Virgin and listened to the Best of Talking Heads album just put out by Rhino, thinking about that hand, how I didn't want to see the body attached to it, ever, and why that was.