Meeting a Soulmate

Joe  Ferrand in Bloomingdales.

Spring in the city was always a time of joy for me. It was the place to be to make things happen and it was the time of year that burst with possibilities. I would tour around the city looking at the windows full of beauty. Stopping at one place or another to take in the vivid colors, the glistening lights and the marvels of metal, glass, painting, furniture and clothing that made the actual shopping part unnecessary. It was enough for me to see all the amazing things scattered around like a treasure cave out of some dreamscape.

One of the places that drew me to it was Bloomingdales. In the heart of the most livable part of Manhattan spilling over with what seemed impossible foods, linens, fine kitchen articles, clothes, shoes, accessories, jewels and speaking to a lifestyle I hoped would someday be my own. It was filled floor by floor with the stuff of dreams. The clothes one wore on a trip to Italy or the shoes to dance the night away in a darkly color speckled nightclub. This day I was looking over the shirts some wealthy man might casually drape on for a sun drenched stroll along a beach resort in the Hampton’s. I stood by a tall display that had a glass cubed top placed over an outward chrome knobbed rack jutting out, descending set of hung shirts in height order set precisely by size. I stood up from my stooping inspection while dreamily wondering where that shirt I liked might go and what it would see on its travels .

I straightened up and noticed a tall dark haired man standing on the opposite side of the display from me. He drew my attention and as I looked I realized he was looking directly into my eyes. His large round dark eyes were mesmerizing. I sank into them without realizing I had spent a little too much time looking back. I had just turned twenty eight a few days earlier and was well into the years in which I knew just how long a man was allowed to look another man in the eyes without reprisal. I didn’t stop, I couldn’t. I just kept looking into a soul that I knew was a deep pool reaching inward by miles unmeasured. He walked around the display and stood in front of me and simply said “Is it you”? I don’t know why he asked that or what he had meant. we never mentioned it after that moment. I simply said “Yes” nothing else just yes.

We began to talk and as we spoke we knew we would be going on for a while so I suggested we get something to eat and sit while we spoke. He told me there was a cafe a few floors up in the store and we turned as we spoke and went on up.

We entered just after it had opened somewhere around 11:00 am and sat and spoke for so long that they were preparing to close before we realized the hours had passed. These hours were packed to the fullest for me. This may take an explanation to make clear how significant this comment could mean. The places we mentioned or the people we described or stories shared blended together our realities and each one brought up connections to other stories. Everything about the place faded into the background behind the reality of having someone stellar in front of me who took up every thought I could muster. I would like to take a moment to clear something up about how significant this last stament is for me. I have never had difficulty registering everything about a place or the people and their casual comings or goings while running thoughts about their lives, or their homes, the possible outcomes of a path in history or the futures waiting to happen. These things have always shared space in my mind. They happen all at once and never seem to impose on each other. Often a casual mention from someone will spark an additional path and should I mistakenly mention any part of it, elicit a look of, for me, predictable confusion from them. To me its a spilling out of one of those lines of thought into the world around me instead of remaining in my mind in lines of parallel thoughts. To others it seems like a lone tangent. It is not, it is part and parcel of the process of being me. Its like lanes on a highway. They co exist while running alongside one another. I have to bring this up because never before or since has this process stopped.

This time in this place it froze and everything about Joe filled my mind. I hungered to know everything he said, did, thought and lived. There was nothing but complete awareness of this one person and nothing was as important as hearing his every word with complete presence. This point being made I return to the cafe where I could not under threat describe the walls, ceiling, floor, tables, chairs, occupants, servers, counters or for that matter anything other than Joe. He wore a navy lightweight v necked blue sweater over a button down damasked white on white chevron patterned shirt with form fitting jeans and a pair of slim fit well worn black penny loafers and a chrome buckled navy leather belt. As we rose to leave he suggested we walk over to the park.

There wasn’t a second in which this marvel of a man was not completely understood by me and the same of me to him. We worked our way through the mid day crowds straight across the East side and into the park. We were casually mentioning things about this area that meant so much to either of us. I pointed out the bronze sculptures at the north end of the boating pond and spoke of the times I had passed them with friends through the years. Each one had its own history and story of how it came to be in the park. At least it did according to him. I knew nothing of them, I learned this from him and he delighted in sharing who had conceived the idea of them being there, how they made it happen and when they went into place. I mentioned my love of the boating pond and again a history of the pond and its uses, its times in which different things occurred there and why. He was a wealth of stories and seemed to know either everything or everyone. Whichever it was he passed it all along casually with no affectations or pretenses. Just the joy of sharing something of value.

We meandered slowly past the exotic trees that were scented in their blossoms as if they were rose covered. We stepped past the light green trees of spring in New York. We were savoring the time along with the company as we moved into the park and luckily for me it had just passed daylight savings time so I had one more hour of daylight with him sitting in what is now the only spot in Central Park I care to ever see again. We stopped there, an outcropping of land into the lake in the Rambles section. In it was a long flat rock with a path just above and another just below running parallel to this rock. There was a ledge high enough to lean against or if one chose to lift up could also serve as a seat. We were there from mid afternoon to the end of dusk. Our far ranging discussion was a dialog based on our families and origins, our loves, likes, joys and dreams. We learned about each others paths as if it was happening to each of us for the first time.

There was a fresh eagerness to catch up as if there had been a gap in our having all ready known each other. This was not a new person to either of us. This was two halves of the single unit that fit together and had missed each other like a missing twin. There is an odd thing that happens in Manhattan. When the sun sets in the West it shows as setting in the East. It happens because so many buildings that line the park are flat glass frames that grid the walls of the park. It was this phenomenon that all New Yorkers know all too well. You don’t see the glare of the sun only in the West. Simultaneously you see it glare toward you reflected off all those windows. You cant see the time in the stretching shadows nearly ass well as the angles from which you see a distant sun. As it broached eight thirty we realized we had to bring our evening to a close. We walked out of the park and crossed the East Side over to Park Avenue and all the way to Grand Central Station talking the entire time.

Entering the station we located my train, walked to it and spoke right up until the departure time. Luckily for me it was one of the more ancient type of silver steel ribbed trains that had doors which required a conductor come by after the train was in motion in order to close and seal. This was a true Manhattan experience in a time where you could simultaneously find all the old and all the new at the same place. The people were no different. you had the old mind set and the new but could never truly know which was which. An older gentleman could be an out gay proud introvert and a younger pleasant appearing business woman could come from a background filled with outward recrimination toward others. It was an era in which being out was by choice and being closeted was primarily a requirement. For me, being a bit reluctant, a bit too shy and a bit too defensive about my private life I decided to part ways by just getting on the train and say my goodbyes discreetly. I reluctantly got on the lowest step and was about to take the two additional steps into the upper level platform and walk to the seating area when without a second thought spun around stepped off the train dashed to Joe and gave him our first kiss. I jumped onto the train smiling more broadly and more sincerely than I can recall ever doing before just as the train began to make its slow dragging exit. I was the happiest I had ever been. I watched him as he grew more and more distant and finally gave up on looking as the conductor came into the car to close the door.

I stepped on air the entire week afterward. Wherever I went I somehow managed to not touch down and reveled in the realization that walking on air was in fact possible and had happened to me. This is how I met the most meaningful being to have graced my life. My soul was filled that day, it made me a different man. It always will make me smile to think of any part of this day.