My last night in London, this time around, I opted to have a quiet drink in the hotel bar and let the cute Hungarian bartender flirt with me for a couple hours before I hit the hay. That didn’t happen. Instead, I met a very nice man, talked for hours, drank canned gin while walking the West End streets, fell head-over-heels in love, shared all the details of our lives, drank more in a posh bar, talked for a few more hours, laughed about the funny stuff and lamented the sad stuff, polished off a bottle of wine, walked slowly, and eventually parted ways.
As I finished up a double g+t, Steven walked up and ordered a bottle of Merlot. I had to look over and see who was having the type of day that warranted 750ml on their own. A northerner of indeterminate age, with an easy smile and sparkling blue eyes, wearing a sweater…I said something like, good call, and he asked if I drank red. Of course, I drink red. He ordered a second glass and placed it next to my painting of Stonehenge. Then he left for a moment to put something in his room. Saviola, the Dominican bartender, whispered to me that the bottle was ice cold—having just been retrieved from the unheated cellar…I told her that if he’s ordering Merlot, he might not even notice the difference, laughing that he probably knew little about wine. That's the type of jerk that I am.
When he returned, we introduced ourselves, and he lamented that she didn’t even open the bottle to let it breathe. Great, he was going to be that type of jerk, I thought. Rather than let it go on, I told him about the cold cellar and added that she was giving him the option to change his mind if the bottle was just too cold. All was well after that.
We exchanged names and I told him about my Stonehenge; I make one piece of artwork a day when on holiday. Then I asked the question that needed answering, what makes a guy want to polish off a bottle of wine on his own in the Atrium Bar of the President Hotel, on a Wednesday. I asked him to tell me about his day. In a nutshell, he’s a lawyer who spent the entire day in discovery about a sad and unfortunate case of a tween who attempted suicide, and the aftermath of medical care/mishandling that followed. He was exhausted and emotionally spent. That’s how it started.
Over the next six or eight hours, we polished off the bottle, had fish and chips, and talked. What did I learn? He is absolutely beautiful, and kind, and arrogant, and smart, and driven, and so worthwhile a human being. Temporarily falling in love was inevitable.
He learned that I’m compassionate and smart, and funny, and unwittingly walk into fairly obvious sexual innuendo like someone stepping off of a sidewalk to cross the road. In those hours we were a totally complementary pair. Eventually, we grabbed some cans of pink gin+tonics and took off into the night, walking toward Covent Garden. The late-night streets were packed with people. Steven’s goal was to find me a pencil case, something to keep my art supplies safe (and look less pitiful than the hair band I had been using for two weeks). We found two, and a pair of Union Jack gloves that he pulled onto my chilled fingers as we walked. In the milling crowds—leaving the theater or entering the dozens of bars lining the street—we held hands and pushed through. Then we arrived at the crown court, the place he’d spent much of the week, working on this massive case. We stopped and he told me something about it. Then I found the perfect bench. Seated on the back of a concrete seat, with our feet resting where other people’s bottoms have been, we cracked open the cans and drank. I haven’t done that in eons. Street drinking from cans “like tramps,” as he put it. The people bustling around us were white noise, as if we were the only real things out (apart from the double-decker buses, those were extra real).
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| Sketch of Steven as Clark Kent... |
We laughed a bit at ourselves and headed back...to the Kimpton bar. This place was lavish and “full of wood”, my words. That statement got a giggle from my evening’s companion. Anyway, they were closing but let us in for one last drink, two more g+t at £18 a pop. Here we talked about not having kids and our families. I floated the idea that moms were tough and dads were cool; stated as indisputable fact. His experience was different; dad was the hard-ass, and mom was the gem. The bar staff kicked us out and we returned to the Atrium, pausing for me to roll and smoke a cigarette from the pouch I purchased in Bath. I took puffs between his heckling, and laughing we re-entered the hotel. We grabbed a couple more cans pf pink g+t and took a table in the closed bar. Our chatter awoke a sleeping staffer, who left shortly after we arrived. Steven’s hands are soft, he loves cricket, football, and American football. His team is the Greenbay Packers (poor git). His work uniform is a suit of armor, his alter ego…I was drinking, flirting, and bullshitting with Clark Kent. The memory he has frozen in time is of himself, last century, listening to music with friends and a bottle of Red Stripe in his pocket; when he told me, I could literally see it in my mind’s eye…I was there with him, with my arm looped in his, him wearing a black bomber jacket (I don’t know if he owned a black bomber, but all my own memories of those days are surrounded by boys in bombers, and me in a plaid mini kilt, with ripped fishnets…go figure).
At 3:15am, we were both flagging. We took the steps up to our rooms. I remember thinking, thank god we didn’t take the elevator. When you’re in love—even if just for a few hours—a small space like that may be what breaks the illusion. We took the stairs up, waved good bye at floor one, and I floated up to four. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and fell into bed. Two hours later my alarm rang, and my last morning in London began.
We’ll never see each other again. Well, I’ll see him in the newspaper or on video clips about the case, but that hardly counts. It’s funny, because I initially didn’t want to write this down, and instead keep it in an imaginary locket to peer into and relive those few hours at my leisure. But then I thought better of it. It’s a valuable, rare thing to meet someone and connect in such a real and unexpected way. Some people never experience that. But for me, it’s happened twice. First when I met my soul mate a decade ago and again on my last night in London.
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