Coming to terms

Photo by Martti Salmi on Unsplash

Greg, here’s the email I promised. I love our chats on Twoble, but now I want to get a little more inquisitive, and informative.

Greg, do you notice spots? I mean, do you notice spots and lines and wrinkles on people’s hands, faces, and necks? I do. Whenever I get up to give my seat to spotty men and women on the subway I wonder about them being down there at all, given how frail they must be. They’re spotty! Lately, though, they take a look at me and decline my offer, as if they see no difference between us. Strange.

I ask this because I have a new spot on my left hand. It appeared — thirteen days ago — after I wrote my profile but before you and I matched. I’m worried that if we meet and you see the spot, you’ll think I’m hiding something. I’m not!

I don’t obsess about my new spot. It’s pretty insignificant as spots go, barely an eighth of an inch above my left thumb, ovalish, very, very, very faint. Doesn’t mean anything dermatologically, my doctor says. It’s just the kind of thing that appears as skin ages. And my skin, I guess, has aged, a bit.

Of course, I don’t hide my age. It’s in my profile. That’s why we match; you prefer older men. But I imagine what you’re eager for is a vigorous man with experience, not a feeble man with spots.

I’m worried that if we meet for dinner (don’t forget! my treat!), your impression of me will be: spot, hand, old spotty man.

But Greg, I’ve lived a whole lifetime — until less than two weeks ago! — with this hand being spotless. And, let me tell you, my lifetime has had everything. Career, love, sex in every way and place imaginable, things you might think a man with spots would be too humble to experience. Heartbreak and illness and loss after loss, things you might think a man with spots would be too fragile to bear up under. But Greg, I’ve experienced. I’ve borne up.

How much does it bother me that you’d think I’m a spotty old man? Not so terribly that I’d do something impetuous to hide it. I won’t tattoo my dog’s adorable face over it, for example.

I could wear a single glove. That worked for Michael Jackson. And for that DJ at Boybar, who I met one Friday when I was twenty. He had thick brown curls and the most beautiful blue-green eyes and a lean, tanned body, and he wore a yellow glove on his left hand. That glove, and his eyes, caught my attention and led to our long weekend in bed. I’ll tell you all when we meet.

By the way, Greg, your eyes, in your profile photo, are even more spectacular than that DJ’s. I’m ready for our weekend! When you’re ready, of course.

I guess I could wear two gloves. My fingers do get chilly. My circulation doesn’t reach my extremities very efficiently, and my toes and fingers can be cool.

A sign, like my spot, I guess.

You won’t feel my chilly fingers right away when we meet. We won’t shake hands. We’re likely to have an exploratory embrace. (Greg, I know I’ll be impressed by your physique when we embrace. I think you’ll be impressed too. My profile photo is real, and recent.)

At that first dinner, if you look at my hand reaching across the table for the butter, you won’t think: That’s a chilly hand. You won’t have any temperature to note down. Just the spot.

To step back a minute: Is there anything wrong with a spot, with my spot? Of course not. It’s innocent. It has no intentions. It’s not trying to ruin my day or mock me. It is what it is, a spot lounging there just above my thumb.

You might ask, do I have other spots? I don’t know. I don’t know what you’d notice on my head or on the nape of my neck if you were to press up close behind me as we wait in line for a table. Yes, I know about the bald spot. My uncle rubbed it at my high school graduation, when it was barely visible.

That tiny bald spot predicted what would come true only decades later. Not like my new spot, appearing now, at my age, when, to be frank, I might have a lot less time.

I guess, if you were to place your hand on my chest during our first embrace, you might get the idea I could be a spotty man. Hints in my heart. You might notice how strong my blood flows. Greg, my arteries are clear for the first time in who knows how long. I have a new contraption, a stent, that has opened the floodgates. (And yet my hands are still chilly!)

When you press your hand to my heart, will you feel a tremble from the scars left by my tragedies, perhaps muffled by all my triumphs? I hope so. I hope my life will flow through my heart and directly into your hand.

So, OK. It’s not surprising that I’m becoming a spotty man. A newly spotty man, eager to get to know you, determined to keep his heart, clogged then opened, and his mind, fuzzy at breakfast but revving just fine by lunch, and his life, filled with transcendence and heartache, ever vibrant.

My heart and mind and life are all virile and ready to do more than I often think they can. Like, taking a chance and meeting you.

So Greg, the spot, if we meet, and if you see it, is telling the truth. It came along on its own and now it’s there. Just like you’ve come along and might stay. And, like my new contraption, you might expand my heart and send my blood flowing like it hasn’t in years. Maybe we can see about my chilly hands, too.