“Yes, absolutely. I fell in love with maple syrup while I was in medical school and miss having the good stuff.”
“Where did you go to medical school?” I asked, curious to know anything about the stranger I had slept with last night and taking the obvious opening.
“Harvard.”
“You went to Harvard Medical School?” I asked, somewhat disbelieving.
“Yes.”
“Harvard? Cambridge Harvard?”
“Yes. Why? Something wrong?”
“No. Nothing. It’s a good school. But I thought you said you were from Oklahoma.”
“I am. What? Can’t an Oklahoma boy be smart enough to get into Harvard Medical School?”
“Sounds like someone is a bit defensive.”
“Sorry. You wouldn’t believe how often I get that. ‘You went to Harvard? Wow! Did they have some kind of quota they had to meet? Did they give you a free education?’ No! If they did I wouldn’t have $250,000 in student loans to repay!”
“Hey! Calm down!” I said, placing one hand on one of Kyle’s hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”
“Sorry,” Kyle apologized.
Desperate to change the subject, I asked, “So what were you reading in the newspaper that grabbed your attention so much?”
“Long editorial by some nut job about overhauling the Social Security system by cutting benefits, raising the retirement age, and putting means testing in place. No one should get a say in restructuring the Social Security system unless they depend on it to survive!”
“That seems like an entirely reasonable idea to me.”
“Thank you. I can’t tell you how many people we get coming into the ER who have just Social Security between them and the street.”
Suddenly Kyle stopped, looked up, and said, “Hey. Wait a minute! Why aren’t you at work?”
“I took the day off so I could spend it with you.”
“You did what?” he asked.
Kyle’s usually animated face was suddenly entirely neutral, with the result that for once I couldn’t read him.
“I took the day off so I could spend it with you,” I tried to explain once again.
The neutral expression on Kyle’s face faded. And unless I was reading the situation entirely wrong, I was afraid that Kyle was actually going to cry. Trying to lift things up a bit, I said, “So what do you typically do when you have some days off?”
Kyle composed himself once again and answered the question. “Well, I lead a life straight out of the lives of the rich and famous. Be careful about trying these things yourself without adequate training. I usually do laundry, wash dishes that have accumulated while I worked like a big dog, catch up on medical journal articles I wanted to read, respond to some of the e-mails from my family that come in faster than I can follow, go to the gym. If the weather is nice, I go for a run in the park. Stuff like that.”
“You’re right… shouldn’t try those things without adequate adult supervision. So, to spice things up a bit today, we could go running together and then maybe go see a movie.”
The suggestion was met with an absolutely blank stare from Kyle. “Sorry.” The man looked down at his lap in what appeared to be embarrassment.
“What’s wrong? What did I say?”
Shyly and hesitantly, Kyle answered the question. “I’ve never seen a movie in a theater.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Kyle shook his head. “No.”
“Why?” I asked in disbelief at what I was hearing. I had never heard of anyone who hadn’t been to see at least one movie at some point in his life.
“My parents were very strict and thought that movies were tools of the Devil and would only lead me to do something evil.”
“So you weren’t exaggerating when you said you were raised by ultraconservative fundamentalist parents, were you?”
“Nooooo! You look in the encyclopedia for ‘conservative’ and you’ll find a picture of my parents. I love them, but they are not very worldly in their views.”
“How did they react when they found out that their son was gay?”
Kyle didn’t meet my eyes.
“They don’t know, do they?”
“No.”
“So how do you explain being as old as you are without having been married and divorced a couple of times with a passel of kids?”
“Divorce is not an acceptable option for a married couple.”
I stared at Kyle, not believing what I was hearing. “So… so… let me see if I have this. I’m thinking that your self-esteem issues and your feeling unworthy of love are psychologically tied in to not being able to share with your family who you really are. And you’ve probably internalized a lifetime of teaching that gay is wrong.”
“Not wrong—evil.”
“Evil? We’ve been elevated from wrong?”
“Yes, some time ago.”
“I see I’ve let my conservative credentials lapse. So they don’t know?”
“Absolutely not!”
“How are you gonna keep them from fixing you up with some unsuspecting woman who wants to be a good submissive wife—a baby-factory-type woman?”
“They’ve tried. They think I’m in the belly of the beast at the moment, living in New York City. It was bad enough when I went to Massachusetts for medical school, but New York? They view New York as Satan’s waiting room.”
“If this is the waiting room, where does the guy reside or work?”
“New Jersey, I assume,” Kyle said with a smile. “I mean, dude, have you been to Jersey?”
We shared a hearty laugh.
“You really took the day off today? To be with me?”
“Yes! You big goofball! With you! I like you! A lot!”
“This is all so new to me. No one’s ever done something like that for me before. This is really new for me.”
“I can tell,” I said.
After refreshing Kyle’s tea, I returned to the table and asked, “Do you have any siblings? You know, brothers and sisters?”
“I know what ‘siblings’ means!”
“Fine. Poor choice of words. What can I say, I’m used to dating dumb guys.”
“Clearly.”
“So?”
“Oh, right. Yes, I have five sisters.”
“Five!”
“Five.”
“So, no brothers?”
“No. I’m the only son. My parents are sort of counting on me to carry the family name and legacy into the future. To keep the genetic line happy and healthy.”
“To go
