Issue 14 - September 2007

The Ring by Alex Geana

It's at The House of Harry Winston. First we pass the steel doors of Tiffany; Robin is sweet, "I'm really happy you found someone." She shows rings set in platinum but the diamonds are too small. We want something big, round and brilliant but can't find it in the hallowed walls of mass luxury. The clerks at Cartier don't look at us; we wait, shift as no one notices two young men looking at the sparkling jewels and rings that twinkle. Bvlgari feels like a chic bar, we walk out as soon as we come in. The selection of male engagement rings is sparse.

My best friend Michael is by my side, a wonderful person who cares about me; he knows how to surround me with luxury and expensive things.

We finally walk into the little Harry Winston parlor without jewelry cases, only well worn black velvet tables. There are four in the salon. We sit in front of Tim who smiles warmly and shakes our hands.

Michael begins to tell him what I need.

"A big ring - we've been looking but haven't found one big enough."

"I'm glad you're here" Tim replies.

Tim explains that every Harry Winston is made to order uniquely for the client; the finest clearest diamonds are exclusively employed and only platinum is considered.

He goes through a hidden door, comes back bearing three possibilities. I'm on the edge of my seat trying not to salivate, never before seeing gems so large and weighing so heavy on my hand.

My friend is calm, stoic even.

Each ring is bigger than its neighbor. One has a monster pearl insert with emerald-cut diamonds surrounding its cradle. The larger ring bears a simple titan teardrop as the headstone, with small studs as the band. The third sparkles from a simple stone circle.

"I want them all," I whisper to Michael. "Isaac wants me to get an expensive ring,." I say.

"These should do." Michael explains as he looks at Tim "How do you actually pay for a thing like this?"

"The money is wired; I'll give you the account information after we've made a selection."

"Excellent."

I squirm, unable to decide.

"We can make anything you want." Tim reassures.

"I'm afraid Isaac won't think it's expensive enough." I ponder. Tim's face lights up, his smile already broad, turns broader.

"I like the pure diamond band. How much is it?"

"Sixty, give or take; we can't give you a true price until the ring is made. This is only an estimate."

It takes me fifteen minutes to decide on a simple band with lots of stones.

As we leave the boutique Michael mutters something, wondering if the Hope Diamond's passed through some chamber of this shop, after making a wretch of a poor girl called Evalyn Walsh McLean.

We walk down Fifth Avenue arm in arm looking at the shops.

I've dated Isaac for about six months. I'm in New York and Isaac is in San Francisco, I am twenty-two and Isaac is twenty.

After The House of Harry Winston, I leave a voicemail for the boy.

Michael asks me "Are you truly ready for marriage?"

"I think so. I like him."

We enter Armani, taking a brief walk trying to understand the finer things. I never walk down Fifth, actually refusing to do so. I live in a one room hovel in the East Village. I can't even fit a full size bed in the place so I take a twin instead. I'm happy I don't have to impose this on Isaac.

"I'm also looking for an apartment. Isaac wants to have an apartment in the city."

Michael starts to tell me about penthouses in hotels. You can order room service from your apartment and it's brought on silver, china and crystal. Doormen know your name and you never post mail for yourself.

I've been dating Isaac for six months. He just inherited a fortune, I've been spending hours on the phone talking and telling him ways to deal with his father's company. A month ago after a heart attack, his father was found dead at his walnut desk. The secretary discovered him in the morning. Harold, Isaac's father, owned a forensics company and taught at UCLA. Nancy, Isaac's mother, died young. He's now a rich orphan. Isaac did a lot of crying. For a week at least, I kept on talking to him and telling him he needed to deal with the Estate. He needed to keep the sharks at bay.

Isaac was also an intern at a local area hospital. He needed my support and I provided as much emotional understanding as I could; we spent hours talking on the phone. Hours and hours. The first month we made fish noises and made people around us roll their eyes as we called each other by an endless list of pet names.

During this time Michael gave me Jack Welch's book, I learned all I could from the former Chairman of GE and then I told Isaac all I could about management. He didn't have enough time to read the book himself.

I met this magical boy through a friend; I was in trouble, having lost my cell phone and needed to replace it. That's when a high school friend introduced me to a guy who needed to spend four thousand dollars a week to fend off taxes. The call was placed and an affair started.

The money for the cell phone never came. Isaac had problems wiring the money; my mom eventually sent it because I couldn't get any more from Michael. I started talking to Isaac almost every day after that first conversation. It was love at first 'sight'; my heart beat faster when I saw his name on the caller ID. He told me about vacations and grand houses and slowly started to mention that he wanted to have a boyfriend, a husband even.

I started to hear about his private jet and how he loved flying to Tokyo for sushi, but was annoyed that the plane always seemed to be in the hangar for repair.

I soon stopped collecting numbers. I love sex by the way. Hot Spicy Me; that's what they call me at the gay bars. I think I've had them all. I like old ones, young ones, not so cute ones. I like having a dick inside me, maybe even two at a time. I'm never satisfied.

After a month with Isaac, I started telling people "This one's for real, I know it; I don't want to fuck it up."

After talking to Isaac for half an hour I finally decide on a ring. It's to have a big rock in the center of a platinum band circled in diamonds. I told Tim and it was set to be produced, once the money was received.

Isaac said he would wire the deposit in twenty four hours.

I've never had sex with Isaac; I can't wait to feel him pumping inside me. I can't wait to get off the plane and feel his wet kiss on my lips. I want to have his powerful arms wrapping me. He's six-five, has blond hair and his parents were Swedish. He somehow finds time to get to the gym five times a week; he sent me pictures and I love them.

Some people take a long time to develop a relationship; I dive in and find my saviour. For some reason I've always met guys that have nothing in their heads but muscle. I date them or have a non-relationship, then they go away, usually on their own or I push them slightly away. Diving in, I found Isaac.

Some are natural time wasters, just sucking the natural need to feel love; once they have it they go to the island of lost men.

It was Sam that lasted the longest; eight months. I had hopes. We lay in bed and used the "we" word when we went out. I knew what he liked in his coffee; he was ticklish on the thigh. The last month we were together was the best. I woke up next to him each day and felt the warm bed as I made it. Sam was scared he might be falling in love. I was too happy; that's why it probably ended. It takes a strong man to accept love and quit the chase, letting it build till it gushes. It's that power he can't control that he's afraid of.

A friend of mine has a glory-hole to keep him away from actually getting involved with a guy. The dudes come in and drop their pants, take care of business and leave without a word. He's never had a boyfriend and I never see him on a date. He uses the word 'discreet' like it's one of the commandments. He separates himself quite clearly from the world that comes knocking on his door; he separates it with a ten foot plywood board. I take the world head on.

I actually wanted Michael. I wanted him to love me but he kept me away. I saw him across the room and found him delicious. I needed a place to stay when I was in between apartments. The first night I wanted him to take my body but I had to jerk off on the floor instead. I couldn't even sleep in his big bed. He's been in my life a few years. I'm glad we turned into friends, not lovers. He's still in my life after ten boyfriends.

When I was dating Will, we didn't get out of bed for a month. The relationship lasted about a month. I timed his breath to mine. We knew each crevice of the other's body and could drink in our breath. We both woke from our makeshift bedridden world at the same time, finding we couldn't actually talk to each other. It was odd. We just stopped having sex; we didn't utter a word. He took his clothes and walked out of the apartment one day and I never saw him again.

When I get this ring I'm going to the bars. Michael jokes that a bodyguard should follow me around. I'm going to each person that I know. I'm going to play with the ring. Scratch my eye while the ring is on my finger. I'm going to do this over and over, over again until all of New York knows that a twenty-two year old kid has a rock the size of Gibraltar on his hand. Considering no one has met Isaac, the ring is my trophy, my reality. They can't see his six-pack or his blue eyes; the ring must suffice. It will tell everyone that my love is real.

Michael tells me that I should fall in love for the sake of love; I tell him I want the whole package, now I've found it.

I dated Tom for a while. He was my first "I'll date you for your personality and not for your looks." He was older, with a receding hairline; he was twenty-six. He hated having sex because he didn't want to be naked around me. He also ended up cheating with a guy he found online. It felt strange and empty because I usually did the cheating on boys. Cheating was the first step to making room for Mr. Next.

The Ring is supposed to be out of the shop in a month. The payment still hasn't gone through.

I try to envision the first time Michael meets Isaac. How Michael will be jealous of me with a husband on my arm. The minute my husband's jet touches down at JFK, my head will roll back and laugh.

I will parade my romantic love of yesteryear; a great romance in the age that discourages great lovers. I pine for this man I know through emails and long midnight calls. I know how he thinks; now I want to know how he smells and how he might touch me. I imagine all these things and keep him near. I read his letters when I don't talk to him.

The Ring comes in a small black box; it comes by messenger not by shipper. There is a special firm that does the delivery. An armed man comes to your door; he doesn't even tell you the time he is coming.

I call Michael. "He still hasn't put the payment through."

"Maybe it'll happen tomorrow," he says.

I have been talking to Isaac for six months. Why would he lie? I've helped him with family; we've made smooching noises on the phone. He proposed marriage.

"Yeah, probably. You know, I'm starting to have my doubts." I say.

"About marrying someone you've never met?"

"Yeah, but I got my faith, man. He'll come through; he's had good reasons."

"It seems like he's all about good reasons. When are you going to San Fran? Has he booked your flight yet?"

"We still haven't decided if the ring is going to be taken to him or if I'm going to pick it up in New York. He said he wants to kneel when he asks me to marry him, diamond in hand."

"How's his internship doing? Did you call the hospital to ask for him?"

"Yeah, I did. He wasn't registered."

"What did Isaac have to say about that?"

"I haven't told him yet"

Don't get me wrong, I've been involved with sane men, yet they bored me. The last dude I called boyfriend after a day, I tossed him aside in three. It was not the clinging but his talking like rain on a tin roof, constantly tapping, that did him in. Actually, I kept him around mostly for entertainment. Another man I met at a party; the guy was on vacation from Arkansas. I spent a good two months trying to get him to come back to New York. He finally stopped returning my phone calls.

Michael said I dated "everyone from sugar daddies to the homeless". I was shocked to find that homeless people date, but they do. I did fall in love with a homeless man's hands once. Weather beaten and masculine, he touched me like I was the only thing on earth that mattered.

Last dude that broke my heart had red wine thrown in his face; he called me unstable. Another was found cheating and was followed and finally confronted in front of a movie theater. Officer Stan had to break up the fight. He pulled us to our corners and told me to just move on with my life.

When I was a kid, my big sister used to throw punches and break my lip. I kept on getting up. She would tell me to clean my room; I made it messier and messier. I resented her spit-out orders; she called me an ass.

It was love that I wanted to feel deep inside me. I knew how the lack of it felt, how it made me thirst inside. Love would fill and feed my pains of emotional hunger. It would quench my thirst for touch.

Michael freaked out so easily; he refused to fall in love. Taking it slow was his mantra. For him the word boyfriend was weighted with cement bricks. He told me about wanting to get married in Massachusetts. I had this whole conversation with him about small things. Questions such as: how quickly should a phone call be returned? How many dates before you leave a toothbrush at the new beau's apartment? When are you really a couple? Is monogamy truly necessary? Those trivial questions came up. I don't know why he bothers. I feel like a walking sex encyclopedia.

I find it easy to talk to Isaac. We know what we want; when we turn thirty-five we're getting a house-boy to spice up the marriage.

He has a house in Massachusetts. I think the ceremony might be in a country inn.

I think about Isaac every day and I can't wait to meet him.

I long for his breath on my face.

One day my life changes. Outside it is hot as blood; the clouds trickle in from the ocean, scraping the skyline. It's crowded on the train, packed shoulder to shoulder.

I pick up a call from Isaac and notice the caller ID displays a number. This never happened before.

I call it and a lovely lady picks up the phone.

"Hello," a sweet voice answers.

"Is Isaac in?"

"Sorry, no one's here by that name."

"Someone just called me from this number."

She stalls and doesn't make a sound; doesn't move to hang up. It's a mother waiting. The silence sounds clear and present; she wants me to say something.

"Who is this?" I ask.

"Ms.Callen actually. Young man, you really do have the wrong number."

"Is your son six two and blond?" I spurt out, then I hold my breath.

"Yes."

"Do you recognize the number 525-554-3282?"

"Yes, it's Ben's number; he's my son."

I go on to describe her son. His name is Ben, not Isaac. He is eighteen, not twenty. His father works at a local factory and his mother is alive and a school teacher. They live in a two bedroom house with a picket fence.

"He's done this to a few boys. I'm sorry. My son is very lonely and doesn't have many friends. This is the most elaborate story he's ever come up with, though."

During that conversation each word floats in the air and refuses to be caught. I don't want to catch the troublemakers, distillers of my illusion. I don't want to believe these things, that Michael was right.

I deserve love. Real love, the type you can sink into like a warm peach in June. I want that old love that caused people to wait and pine year after year. I want the old love that causes people to write letters in droves and wait for the mail man to come carrying a letter from their beloved.

This is the picture of love.

I thirst for it as it crumbles down; as Isaac turns into Ben and his riches turn into imagination.

I believed every word of his stories.

I thought I could embrace love and take it into my marrow. I allowed myself a great fanciful romance. I heard this story of a couple meeting among the notes of One Hundred Years of Solitude. One day a man checks it out from the library. The book has red ink scribbled in the margin. The notes entrance him and he wants to track down the reader that's left such thoughts in the margins.

He bribes the librarian who sends his first letter to the address in the computer. A lady responds. For a year they write on silk paper and find their thoughts in common. They decide to meet and say they'd know each other after they step from the train by the red rose in each others lapel. They haven't exchanged pictures. Was he tall; was she blond? These thoughts swim in their minds about their would-be lovers. Nightly, they have dreams about the many forms that love can take.

They have expectations; their minds weave spectacular dreams.

The beautiful lady that wrote the notes has been chased by many men; she turns heads as she walks off the train in a white dress, her hair swimming in the dusk. It's her heart she needs to guard. She steps off the train, wanting to be sure that her lover doesn't care about her beauty. She places her red rose in the lapel of an old lady that walks by.

The man approaches the old lady. He talks and thinks that a great friendship can start, if not an affair.

When she sees the man talk and walk away with the old lady, she approaches confessing her sin; that she was scared and one of the walking wounded. They embrace as they fall in love. They gaze into the other's eyes as they read each other's thoughts, thoughts from letter upon letter waited patiently for.

I want this jealous love, this devoted unexpected love, this love built on expectation. I demand my prince charming.

When I hang up the phone with Ben's mother, Ms. Callen, I lie on the floor unable to move, wilted. I don't move till the sun rises the next day. Neither do I sleep. A waking translucent nightmare fills me.

My parents have sent me a plane ticket back to Fresno. They want me to leave New York and come back to the family.

I wait a month before I board the plane.

In that time I continue talking to Isaac; we still have hour long talks. He stops making excuses about not sending the money to buy the Ring. He stops making excuses for not being able to see me. I question him and help him and still fill the role of far away lover. I still love him. Yet when I end the phone calls, the love seeps into the ground instead of filling my skin with gooseflesh.

A night after I find out the truth, Hot Spicy Me hits the town. I meet a man with a ten-inch cock and enjoy every moment of it. He uses me in ways I dreamt Isaac could. I leave as the sun rises; I leave with a slight limp. I leave without even knowing his name.

Life stops burning as bright as it used to; I don't take the calls from Isaac seriously anymore. I wait longer to return calls and I don't rush to pick up the phone.

I board the plane and get off to the open arms of my mother.

It's a month before I start looking for Isaac; I mean Ben. I begin with phone records online. His address is found. I think about meeting him. How it would be to look in his window and see who he really is. How he moves and inhales. How he is as a real person. Not the mythical Isaac.

It was Isaac who Abraham and Sarah waited for: for the angel came to them and promised a child to barren parents. That child came to laughter and disbelief; he was a miracle that founded a nation. His name means laughter. It was God who told Abraham to cut wood down and take Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah. The father built an altar of stone praying that the Lord would send a sacrifice, for he was to bind his son. Finally Abraham told Isaac that he was to be the sacrifice; with obedience he accepted his fate and was bound with rope as he lay on wood and stone waiting for the knife to fall and open his gut.

As the knife fell, God's voice crashed through the air and told Abraham to slaughter the ram caught in the bushes near by.

They wept and laughed as the knots were untied and Abraham held his son. They thanked God for blessing their obedience.

The Jews in the West Bank call it the Moriah complex, settlers that let their children play on the bombed streets as Arabs try to kill them. They want to match the devotion of Abraham.

Isaac's name means laughter. But I am looking for Ben.

I finally get the courage to walk up to Ben's house, after gauging from a distance how small and timid I feel. I see his mother leave in their Honda. The sun rises as I wait for Ben to go to school.

He finally leaves and walks to school with a green backpack over his right shoulder. He wears a simple green tee-shirt and jeans.

I wait an hour for the house to be still. I step to the stoop and the back door. Wiggle and play with the knob until it falls open. They have plain wood floors and plain wood furniture, the type that all plain suburban families have, the type you buy at the local chain store. Everything is beige, hideous beige up to the sunken lack-luster couch.

I walk into Ben's room, careful that the door doesn't screech. His computer sits on a large oak desk, I want to spit at it, take a club and bash it in. I head to his closet. The underwear in his dresser is in neat little rows above the shelf that has his socks. It's full of high-school clothes. He has straight porn in his closet. I turn on his computer and am interrupted by a password.

The twin bed feels like mine; it sags in the center. I go to the desk; find paper. I leave a note that reads:

"I would have loved you even without the millions."

I leave the note on the pillow of his bed.

He has told me he sleeps in bed naked. I reach down to smell his sheets. Musty from the many times he's rolled in bed, they smell of cedar and flesh.

I go back to waiting.

At four pm he comes from school. I watch as his parents return under the setting sun. Nothing seems to have changed.

I just watch the house; toy with the idea of going to the window to look in. I want to see the look on his face when he spots the note. Will he ignore it or maybe his heart will stop and his hands will turn pale? Will his skin crawl up his arms and his body turn cold? It's these things I wonder about and want to see.

I look at Ben's phone number; want to use it to simply hear him exhale fear.

I finally get home late; tell my parents that I'm at a new friend's house. I wake at noon the next day.

I think about Michael. What would he think of my stalking?

I want to meet Ben. I want the love he promised me. I want to love him, hold him and smell his sheets as I sleep next to him. I still love him; he might possibly still love me.

The sun rises and sets seven times before I find the courage to return to the beige house.

I stand on the steps and muster the courage to ring the door bell. The bell is gray and is surrounded by a silver ring. It's smooth to the touch. It needs to be re-finished. I finally push it. I push it three times.

A woman comes to the door.

"Is Ben home?"

"Who are you?"

"Please tell him Clark is here."

His mom calls into the house "Your friend Clark's here. Come answer the door."

To me: "I'm glad to meet a friend; he doesn't get many visitors."

She disappears.

It takes him a while to get to the door. I imagine he needs to draw in as much courage as I did in coming.

Part of me wants to find the Ring. I searched for it in his room.

He finally comes to the door; he isn't smiling. I suppose he doesn't want to tell his parents what he's done. Maybe they don't even know he's gay. He comes to the door and stands tall.

We stop and look into each others eyes, simply staring, each trying to figure out the other; seeing the other for the first time.

A few cars drive by, then a large van. Someone honks and a dog barks. I can feel the wind on my cheeks as they stay blush red.

"Aren't you going to invite me to your room?"

"Maybe, actually.... let's go for a wal,." he says.

"Mom, I'm going outside," he screams into the house.

"Okay, honey; be back by eight. You have homework."

The door shuts.

Without a word we start to walk. It's a few blocks until we actually start talking. The questions begin.

"So, what's your name?"

"Ben."

"How old are you." I ask.

"Eighteen."

"Who do you live with?"

"My mother and father"

"Why?"

"Because they're my parents"

"No! Why did you lie to me?"

"I wanted you to love me."

It's an odd conversation. He never mentions the note I left on the bed. I guess it gave him time to think and order his thoughts. I don't know if I should believe what he's saying. I don't know if I should dismiss his words. Months ago, I was in Harry Winston picking out a ring.

Ben starts telling me stories.

About the five schools he's been to, starting at six. Every few years his parents have moved to find work. He reached out again and again. The children, vicious little vipers, turn him away, shunning the new kid, making fun of his clothes. He loses the energy to be the new kid by the third move. By the fifth he's in a corner, crouched over making sure that no one notices him. He hid in a teacher's room at lunch. He walked into school wanting to be a different person. .So Ben began weaving stories around himself like armor. He read magazines: People, Forbes, Business Week, The Economist, The New Yorker. His new religion became seeing how the fabulous people lived.

One day he began calling people at random, pretending to take a poll for a local paper. He met Elizabeth, an old lady of ninety. She was one of the forgotten. Her family was in New York; she was in Nebraska. She liked answering his questions.She's lived a long life; she remembered the smell of leather on her dad's beat up Model T. She sometimes still heard the roar of the two cylinder engine. The smell of her childhood was burnt oil and horse manure. Elizabeth talked for hours as she shared her stories with Ben.

She was the first. She was the one that had him addicted. He would come up with new questions each week and call on Tuesday night, for three months straight. It finally ended when the parents noticed the phone bill. The phone calls to Elizabeth abruptly ended one day.

This was the time that Ben turned into Isaac and got a cell phone with an unlimited plan. He found chat rooms and made friends. He became one of the fabulous people he'd always wanted to be. It was Brad in London whom he had long conversations with. They would instant message late at night and plot. Brad was exciting and fresh; he told stories of the London Underground and tabloids and ran with rowdies that tore up people's apartments for the fun of it.

Ben also started making random friends in Fresno, turning into the rich kid that had to spend four thousand a week to fend off taxes. It took a while to get the act down. He loved the attention and got a kick out of seeing the guy's name appear on caller ID. He would sit down and turn into Isaac and during the phone conversation his world would change. He had the plane and the Porsche and could wire money instantly to New York.

I listen as he tells me about all the poor souls he touched.

"We've talked so much; it's odd meeting you like this. I had so many thoughts and fantasies about how we would mee,." I confessed.

"I never thought we would meet," Ben giggled.

"I was curious. I want to know who you are."

"Why?"

"Because I love you, I reached into my heart and found love a thousand miles away."

"Why?"

"Kiss me."

I sleep the night in his room. He wraps his arms around me in a big bear hug and doesn't let go. It feels good having his breath against my neck. I sleep well.

Not yet thirty, Alex Geana has already written several well-received short stories and is in the process of completing his first novel, The Ring is an excerpt from the work. Alex is also a contributor to Huffington Post and penned the blog One Gay Date at a Time. His first play "Three Tables" was successfully produced this fall. He also freelances, when possible as a slightly snarky blog writer for hire.

He has a sensitive eye for the flora and fauna of the Big Apple. As a consummate lover of people and their stories, he is able to bring interest to the most mundane experiences of living.

Alex started out life in Romania and came to the states at an early age and has been here ever since. He went to school for luxury hotel management which gave him his eagle eye for people (and food). He is now a confirmed Manhattanite, possessed of a shrewd yet compassionate outsider perspective on contemporary society.
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