Brett and I went to see "The Broken-Hearted Club", a gay romantic comedy, last night. It's been playing at the nearby Embarcadero Cinema for weeks now. I've seen the movie poster each time I pass on my way to Fuzio to pick up a take-out dinner, and each time, the sight of cute Andrew Keegan (those lips, those eyes, those cheekbones!) in his softball outfit has made me think for a second about going to see it. But it received such a horrible review from the New York Times, that I've always decided against it.

I took Brett out for his birthday dinner yesterday at our favorite restaurant, 2223. Aftewards, Brett asked if I wanted to go see the movie. It's funny how neither of us even voiced the idea of going out to a bar or a club instead. After all, here we were on a Saturday night in the heart of the Castro, surrounded by guys whose eyes were lit up by the feeling of seeing and beeing seen, and It was only four years ago that Brett and I used to to out to the Cafe pretty much every Saturday night. But neither of us have any desire left for that anymore.

So we drove back down to the Financial District, which, after the Castro, felt like a different world, and we parked in my building before walking over to the Embarcadero Center. It was a strange evening - a strong, warm wind had whipped up over the Bay, and leaves were showering down from the very few deciduous trees in the neighborhood.

In the cinema lobby, there was a long line to buy tickets. I took a quick walk down the line to see if our movie was sold out - it wasn't, but judging by the number of exposed, firm biceps in the ticket line, most people were going to buy tickets to the same movie as ourselves. :)

We got our tickets and took our seats, scoping the crowd automatically for cute faces, and firm bodies. We may be out of the bar scene, but we still have all our hormones intact.

One result of the movie is that Brett and I discovered a shared, secret fondness for "The Carpenters"! I can see, though, why the New York Times called the movie contrived, silly and melodramatic. Few of the characters are more than caricatures, and at least two personalities execute swift about turns in their fundamentals during the course of ninety minutes. Every conversation is laced with bitter one-liners mostly based on movie lines or television plots, and there are the expected tearjerking moments: funerals, catfights and hospital bed scenes.

But I confess that I enjoyed it, despite all that, although I think a major part of my enjoyment came from a kind of tender regard for the character played by Andrew Keegan. He played a naive young guy who was just coming out of the closet, who falls hard for a jaded older guy (the older guy was actually only twenty-eight - makes me feel old!) The puppy love in his tearing eyes, and the rush of blood to his cheeks certainly elicited my sympathies. I could have happily spent an evening nibbling on him :) But more than that, it provided a moment of recognition. I remembered what it had been like for me, just coming out of the closet, venturing into the difficult terrain of dating for the first time, expecting a trick to be the love of my life.

For at least a year before I came out of the closet, I'd go to the video store round the corner and hope that a certain desk-clerk would be on duty. I'd make sure I got in his line to rent my video, and would simultaneously hope that he'd comment approvingly on my choice (I was going through Woody Allen's ouevre for the first time), while shivering with dread and anticipation lest he truly did speak to me, and I'd be too nervous to speak back. For this guy was a beauty - only a few years older than me, big brown eyes, cheekbones for days, and the most perfectly-proportioned, smooth brown arms you've ever seen.

A year later, and I was still swooning whenever I went to the video store. I'd been this way for two years now! What a head case I was. Anyway, at least by now I was out of the closet, had had my first few sexual (mostly forgettable) experiences, and had started to build up a network of gay friends. One steamy Philadelphia Sunday night, I was dancing somewhere in one dark corner of a nightclub called Revival, when my lesbian friend Mara pulled me to one side, saying she wanted to introduce me to someone. I turned round, and it was ... suddenly I felt completely faint, and my cheeks flushed beet red (fortunately the lighting was so dim that I doubt anybody could make it out). Yeah, it was the guy from the video store. His name was Hunter, and now his big, bedroom eyes were trained on me!

I'll fast-forward a little here, since I honestly don't remember the interim. We ended up soon on the floor of my living room on Pine Street. For reasons I don't recall, my friend Jim was sleeping in my bed, and I was left with the living room. Hunter and I spent a long, physically uncomfortable, but, for me, emotionally euphoric night on that floor. That boy Hunter did things to me I'd never even heard of!

You can probably guess the rest of the story. Although we exchanged numbers, and I called him and called him, he never got together with me again. Somehow I assembled the courage to go to the video store one night and ask him why he'd lost interest in me. And he looked at me, with a sort of patient, kind , but infinitely grown-up smile, and said, "Hey, Keith - it was just a fling.".

It was the start of the growing up process. Something that I think a lot of gay men go through belatedly. By now, I suppose I've taken my place as the jaded older guy. The coda to this story - a coda which shows that real life can be just as melodramatic as the movies - is that Hunter died several years later, of AIDS. He was so incredibly young ... after all.