The world's worst pick-up line

Zack Huggins

I was fifteen in Boulder, Colorado, and had just come out to my closest friends. Boulder is a curious town — artsy and cultured enough to feel decent-sized, but still actually very small. This left me in an odd position; I had the parental support, sympathetic environment, and (shaky) self-confidence to be this sexually adventurous young twink, but no one with whom to actualize my dreams. So I contented myself to wear tight T-shirts, furiously masturbate, and dream of college.

Until one summer afternoon, when I was sitting with my friends on the outdoor patio of a hippie coffee-shop downtown. We were often there, smoking lots of cigarettes, abusing the endless-refill policy, and fucking around. That day, out of the blue, a man walked across the patio, approached our table, and said, "My friend over there wants to sleep with you." He looked at me, and then gestured back over at his table, where his buddy waved. They were twenty or twenty-one, an age difference that seemed huge then (and kind of still does).

"He's having surgery on his hip tomorrow and the doctor says he won't be able to have sex for six weeks," the guy said. When I didn't immediately agree, he added, "Plus, he thinks you're beautiful." 

I requested a minute to think about it. He walked back to his friends; mine, giggled madly, suggested yes, suggested no, told me it was clearly just a line, said I'd get my heart broken, and offered all sorts of wisdom about "one-night stands" that they had no experience to justify.

Pretty soon, the older guys dragged their entire table over. We all ended up sitting there until after dark, at one point slipping off to a nearby alley to smoke some pot. They never brought up sex again. At 10 p.m. or so, the guy, Chris, got up to head home, and in burst of courage I'll never forget, I ran after him. I'd been shy, and we'd barely exchanged a word all afternoon.

He opened the passenger-side door of his car, drove us to his house, and fucked me — more or less without exchanging a word. When we were done, he told me had to be up early "for the surgery," told me he'd call, and asked if I could walk home. I'm not a crier, but I cried that night, walking home from his house in the dark.

But here's the weird part. He did call. The surgery wasn't a line, it was real, and he'd actually been nervous about it. For six weeks I came over every day, and we developed a strange economy where chicken soup and back-rubs were traded for blowjobs and and advice about how to be a gay man. Our relationship — half boyfriend/boyfriend, big brother/little brother — lasted for about six months after he recovered, but it's still one of the best I've ever had. — Josh Wilson

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