When I first saw him, he was having sex with another man.

I have never really been superstitious about anything, like that it means seven year's bad luck to break a mirror or walk under a ladder, and have openly scoffed at the more saccharine notions like falling in love at first sight. But at the same time I've always imagined that if the latter were to happen to me it would occur as it did in the movies: gazes locked across a crowded room and then slowly, inexorably, we make our way toward each other.

But that's not how it happened. We were in the Parque del Oeste, near the Templo de Debod. This 4th Century BC Egpytian temple is a bit incongruous in the center of Madrid, where it was reconstructed stone by stone. It was given to Spain in 1968 in recognition of the help of Spanish engineers in constructing the Aswan High Dam, which inundated the temple's original site. But despite its easy accessibility, it is seldom visited by Madrileños--with the exception of homosexuals, who've used the surrounding area as a twilight cruising grounds for decades.

The man my gaze was locked with was tall and lean, with deep set eyes that were dark pools of shadow. He had unruly black hair that fell across his face, casting further shadow across his features. He stood with his legs spread apart and his pants unbuttoned; a man knelt before him, sucking his dick. I wanted to be that man on his knees. I wondered how they'd react if I joined them; if I could perhaps displace the man on his knees with my superior worship of this sullen dark idol. I felt a pang of envy as I watched the back of a head bobbing before his crotch, then a cold shiver of anger at having arrived too late, the injustice of timing.

And all the while the man watched me, quite steadily, his dark eyes finding mine again and again, and I began to realize that I might be feeling something more than just lust, although I couldn't quite identify the feeling. It was something I wasn't quite comfortable with. It wasn't fear, but I distinctly remember feeling afraid, although I couldn't identify its source.

And then there was a scream, and he and I both turned and saw a body falling from one of the buildings on Calle Ferraz that faced the park.

We stood frozen a moment, he and I. The man on his knees kept sucking, oblivious to the world beyond the dick in his mouth.

And then we were both running toward the place where the body must have landed. He managed to keep pace with me, even as he buttoned up his jeans again. I think it was at that moment that I realized I was falling in love with him, or perhaps that I had already done so. So many men wouldn't have bothered to try and help. They wouldn't have gotten involved. Or they'd have waited to come beforehand. Like that man who'd been sucking his dick, who'd stayed in the park, and perhaps was already sucking the cock of some other man, lost in his own private world of sexual need.

We plunged from the crepuscular world of the park with its trees and shadows onto the wide lamp-lit street of man-made structures. There was little traffic and we dashed across the street, falling into pace with each other so smoothly that it was uncanny. I couldn't say if he led and I followed, or the reverse, we simply both went.

And then we both stopped, quite suddenly, faced with the surprise of the sidewalk.

There was no body.

Later I realized it was curiosity I'd seen written on his face, as if he were surprised by something. Surprised that I'd run to help. Surprised that I'd seen anything at all.

But at the time I mistook the look on his face for sexual interest. I'd already been looking for sex, of course, and had been hoping for sex with this man when that scream distracted us. I think the desire for sex is a natural response in the face of death--or the fear of it. A primal, physical affirmation of life and pleasure.

So when I looked up from the sidewalk where the body wasn't and saw him looking at me with that expression on his face, I smiled at him and tried to think of something to say: the usual cruising overtures seemed inappropriate. Could one just ignore what had just happened, or at least, what we'd both just seen happen. There was no doubt for either of us as we stood there in silence. Neither one of us needed to stammer inanities to reassure our sanity; we'd both seen the body falling.

His dark liquid eyes were locked with mine as I debated with myself, and I'm not sure why but I began to blush. I don't normally get this flustered when trying to pick someone up. But all the rules suddenly seemed different. What had just happened, the connection we had without ever having spoken or touched, the unusual (for me) desire that this be the start of something more--everything seemed to indicate that our having met was of some import.

I broke the eye contact, looking down at the sidewalk where a dead body should've been. I couldn't help glancing at his still-swollen crotch, thinking about his dick, that stranger's saliva still on his cock, what it would taste like to suck his dick right now with another man's spittle still on him. My own dick was rock-hard in my jeans, and I stared down at the empty space between our feet, thinking about the strange missing body to try and take my mind off my dick for a moment and figure out what was going on. Because something had happened, of that there was no doubt.

When I looked up, he had turned and was walking away.

"Hey! Wait--" I felt again that surge of anger at arriving too late, of missed opportunity. And I was confused. Because I thought I'd been offered a second chance. And I didn't want to let that opportunity just fade away, not without a fight--or at least an explanation.

He looked back over his shoulder.

I didn't understand anything. I read desire in his look, the equal to if not greater than my own. But there was also that curious look, of surprise, or fear, or both.

He turned again and kept walking. I watched him walk away, unable to either move or think, mind and body both frozen by the tumultuous events of the past few minutes.

As he disappeared around the corner, I suddenly came to life again. I deserved more than this.

"Wait," I cried out again, following after him. But when I turned the corner, the street was as empty as the sidewalk where I'd just stood, where a dead body should've been.

I went back the next afternoon when I got out of work. First to the sidewalk, where he and I had come so close to...something. Intimacy? Not just sex but something more than that. It went beyond the physical. I couldn't get him out of my head.

I'd gone home after he disappeared, since anything was bound to be a let down after the intensity of what had happened. Even if it felt like everything had just stopped halfway to the climax, and I'm not just talking about the physical release of orgasm. It was all a mystery, an enigma: the body falling but not landing, the scream that he and I both heard but which attracted the attention of no one else, this mysterious stranger in general and the connection I'd felt with him, from the moment our eyes first locked...

It's not surprising that I went back.

But the sidewalk offered no more answer the day after than it had when he and I had stood where the body should've fallen in those moments just after we saw it plummeting.

I turned and headed toward the Temple and the trees and bushes surrounding it. It was early still, and there were few men about. By day, the Parque del Oeste, where the Temple now stood, had its share of mothers and nannies who took their kids to this patch of greenery, mostly to let them loose on the jungle gym built a few blocks from the temple while they would sit on the benches and gossip with one another. As night fell, the makeup of the park's inhabitants changed dramatically.

I strolled around the area where I'd first seen the stranger the day before, but even as I went looking for him I knew he wouldn't be there. I came to cruise by the Temple on occasion, but I don't think I'd ever come two days in a row. Of course, last night I hadn't managed to get off, at least not out here--I'd jerked off at home, thinking about the stranger, his eyes locked on mine as if he were watching me from my own fantasy, seeing how my hand flexed as it stroked along my cock...

But I came looking for him anyway, on the off chance that he, too, felt this sense of incompletion, this urgency to figure out what had happened, what was happening (this strange feeling I still felt, nagging at the back of my consciousness like an itch or a headache that didn't quite happen), what was going to happen.

I repeatedly ignored the overtures of men who tried to initiate something with me: mere sexual urgency paled in comparison to the impulse that sent me looking for my stranger, evening after evening. I had never before felt myself so obsessed with anyone, and on such scant basis. After all, we hadn't had sex. We'd not even touched. Except perhaps, and I know this sounds freakishly new age, soul to soul, when our glances locked. Or when that man screamed, that body fell, and no one but we saw it.

I didn't lose interest, but after nearly a week of fruitless searching, of desire unfilled, of mysteries that would remain unsolved, I began to wear down, like an old battery whose charge is failing. I wandered up to the Templo de Debod and stood between the two long pools of water that extended from its front door, staring down to watch the sky reflected above me. I looked at my own shadow cast upon the water, tried to imagine the shadow of that stranger appearing behind me... but it was no use. If force of will alone could have summoned him, I would've resolved this aching emptiness a week ago.

Bitter and angry, I turned away from the temple and headed for the bushes, resolved to forget that stranger in the embrace of some other man or men, to exorcise a phantom with pure physical release.

I didn't have to wait long before someone approached, and looked at me with want. The intensity of his gaze was a pale imitation of my mysterious stranger, but this man was present, and I followed him deeper into the greenery, and tried not to think but just feel as he knelt before me and unzipped my pants.

I was still being sucked off when another man appeared, and watched us. Watched me, really, since he hardly glanced at my crotch, the glimpse of cock sliding in and out of moist lips, at the "action" that a mere voyeur would've focused on. His gaze sought my own, and I had an eerie sensation of dislocation, of roles being reversed, a sort of deja vú of that moment when I had seen my mysterious stranger. This new man who watched me did not resemble either myself or that sullen dark idol I'd been obsessed with these past days. But that feeling of semi-familiarity remained, a suspicion that I had seen him somewhere before, or had been in this situation before. The man who was sucking me paid no attention to the interloper, and for a moment I wondered if it might be the same guy who had been sucking off.

And then I heard a familiar scream.

I wasn't sure, at first, if I was remembering having heard it or if I were actually hearing it now. But the man who was watching me turned his head, and my gaze followed his, and once again I watched a body falling from a building on Calle Ferraz.

Before I knew it, I was running toward the sidewalk, the cocksucker forgotten, even the new watcher forgotten. My attention was focused on that man with sunken eyes who I felt certain would be waiting at the sidewalk where the body should be but wasn't.

But the sidewalk was once again empty. No body. No mysterious stranger.

Only, a few seconds after my own arrival, the new man who'd been watching as I was being sucked off.

I felt almost dizzy with uncertainty. What did the falling body mean? Whose was it? And where did it disapepar to? Or appear from? I had no idea what was happening,--all emanating from that encounter. Was he harbinger or catalyst? How and why had I become involved with all of this? And now this new stranger...

I felt almost as if I were expected to now walk around the corner without saying a word to this new man who had been watching me, who had become the "me" from the last time this scenario played out.

But before I could decide anything, the man spoke.

"Shit, that was freaky. I could've sworn for a moment that I heard a scream and saw a body falling."

The world was suddenly back to normal. I felt calm, like the sudden hush that happens in the eye of a storm.

"Yeah," I replied. "Bizarre."

We stayed a moment longer in silence, gazes locked. I didn't think about anything, just looked.

He broke the silence again, "You didn't finish back there."

I realized that somehow I had my pants on properly again, zipped up without having any memory of the action. Which must have happened while I was running.

"Maybe you'd like to finish off with me?" I didn't respond, but I looked him in the eye, and my lack of an immediate denial was enough for him to proceed. "We can go back to my place. I live here. In this building.

That's why it was so freaky to think of a body falling. For a moment, it had looked like it was falling from my balcony." He laughed, a nervous chuckle to try to reassure himself, to lighten the mood, and moved toward the doorway, pulling a set of keys from his pocket.

I still hadn't moved, trapped in that calm of final realization.

I remembered that curious look on the face of my sullen, dark obsession as we stood in this same spot. The look I'd confused with desire, or fear, and which I realized now was curiosity mixes with surprise. That I'd heard something, seen something. Something I shouldn't have seen. Something which hadn't happened.

Something I was somehow involved in.

"Sure," I said, and followed him into the dark portal of the door he held open, toward an inexorable destiny.

 

©2002 Lawrence Schimel - Contributor's Bio