The Man With No Socks

Busted.

We’d just finished brushing our teeth in Todd’s bathroom when he caught me in the mirror. Caught me sneering at the empty Yoo-hoo bottle near the sink, its cheerful yellow label a taunt.

“You don't like anything I like,” he accused me with his toothbrush. “Football. Battlestar Galactica. Yoo-hoo.”

I glanced at Todd’s reflection, his face set in a scowl. He looked good even when grousing in his boxer shorts. Next to him, me: not a looker, but a reasonably attractive brunette. Todd’s U2 Elevation Tour t-shirt hung to my thighs, a pair of purple-framed glasses perched on my nose. We were a couple, for a few more months anyway.

“It's your business if you want to drink that crap,” I said airily, attempting to mask my diet-policing tendencies. I ignored the other items on his list of complaints. He followed me into the bedroom, where I crawled under the turquoise fleece of his Miami Dolphins blanket. Todd flopped on the bed next to me.

“My uncle worked his whole life for Yoo-hoo and you still don't like it,” he said, more confused now than angry. Todd was right. This bit of family lore didn't alter my feelings for Yoo-hoo, even though I'd never tasted the legendary chocolate beverage. I hated the ubiquitous bottles I found on porch rails and end tables, and under Todd’s bed. I hated its multisyllabic ingredients and rodent color. I hated it as much as I hated Todd's deep-fryer, which lived in his basement like a dirty secret, stoking a fear that he’d triple his weight after eating one too many cheese sticks washed down with Yoo-hoo.

Because the moment I no longer wanted to knock boots with Todd, I'd be forced to deal with the rest of our relationship.

I first saw Todd in the lobby of a second-run cinema on the edge of Portland. I almost never ventured to that part of town but wanted to see The Incredibles on the big screen, a break from the string of Roman Empire documentaries I’d gorged on. As I stood in the popcorn line with two girlfriends, Todd charged through the door in a blaze of masculinity that forced my head to pivot.

He looked about my age. The gap of skin between his pants hem and shoes suggested he favored socklessness, even in January. Along with broad shoulders and wavy brown hair, I found his bare ankles oddly appealing. Inside the auditorium my friends and I slid into seats behind Todd and his buddy. I ogled him discreetly until the theater darkened, my nether regions twitching. After the movie ended, I gawked as he left the theater, calling upon any psychic powers I might possess, willing him to turn around, turn around, TURN AROUND!!!! like a kid waving a dollar at an ice cream truck that won’t stop.

Except I wasn’t a kid. I was honing in on forty with a growing heap of go-nowhere encounters littering my recent past.

I hadn't seriously connected with anyone for two years and yearned for the refuge of a relationship again. I longed to share late night philosophical conversations and languid Sunday morning brunches. I pined for someone to recite poetry with, to cuddle, to dance with at outdoor concerts. That, and I was horny.

The next night I set out for a blind date my friend Bruce arranged after I told him to find me a nice boyfriend. Bruce had rubbed his hands together, looked to the ceiling, considered the possibilities. Who was taken? Who was looking? He landed on one of his ultimate frisbee pals. With the low expectations of a weary online dater I trudged through Portland’s winter rain to meet Bruce's friend at a nearby cafe.

Waiting for me in a booth was a guy who wasn't wearing socks.

“You were at The Incredibles last night,” I said, judging such serendipity as a sign we'd share grandchildren.

“Yeah I was,” he replied, apparently not astonished by the coincidence or my ability to recall a stranger from a crowd. Yet when he leaned across the table and flashed a dimpled grin, his sea-blue eyes capsized my lonely soul.

The topics were casual, fun: movies, my Spanish studies, Todd's dog, my new bike, his job in adult foster care, my job as a public school ESL teacher. We shot the breeze until the cafe lights dimmed. Todd drove me home in his Jetta and I battled the urge to kiss him, if not invite him inside and have at me. The stars were bright, even aligned. Or so it seemed.

Two days later he called and left a message asking if I wanted to meet up on Tuesday. Todd said “Tuuuuzdaay” in a slow, sensual way, ripe with intrigue. I played the voicemail a bunch of times.

On the Saturday following that Tuesday, our clothes were scattered like a cliché in his hallway as we thumped, pumped, and humped at the bedroom’s threshold. Lust vanquished us, rooted us to the floor. Todd’s waterbed stood at the ready, tidy and untouched.

There wasn't much frontal lobe action between us but carnal joy abounded in the shallow waters where we frolicked. I clung to that joy as we divvied up the morning paper into palatable sections: the sports page for him, the rest for me. I clung to it as I edited my side of our conversations to make them comprehensible. I clung to that joy when he accused me of trying to get him to read after giving him a copy of The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe's novel about the Mercury astronauts.

I thought he'd relish the book since he grew up within spitting distance of the Kennedy Space Center. Like every other Florida kid he knew, young Todd looked skyward with dreams of unearthly travels. In eastern Oregon we once spread our sleeping bags on a flat roof under the Milky Way’s unfathomable swirl. As I drifted off to sleep Todd greeted Perseus and Sagittarius like the childhood friends they were.

I awoke one night at Todd's house and found he wasn’t at my side. Light seeped from the closet, its door ajar. I crept over and discovered Todd scrunched in a corner on the floor, reading his new book like a ten-year-old clutching a flashlight and comics beneath the covers.

“I didn't want to wake you,” he whispered, swelling my heart.

I wasn't sure why he thought the closet was better than the living room for such endeavors. I didn't ask. I didn't want to break a spell that might lead him to the library.

It didn't.

I was no intellectual, but liked using my noodle. A cerebral chasm loomed between us. Todd resisted my attempts to mold him into a hot geek fantasy, a toolbelt-wearing man who’d do crosswords with me and join a writing group. I occasionally persuaded him to wear the horn-rimmed reading glasses I’d bought at Walgreens, during sex.

I tried to focus on what was beautiful: his deep love for family, the way his niece and nephews adored his playful nature, Todd’s devotion to his old dog Mazzy, his unbounded generosity.

The sex. Have I mentioned the sex?

And then there was the way I felt more attractive on his arm, as if being with someone that handsome made me prettier for landing him.

“You got yourself quite a man.”

“He looks like Aiden on Sex and the City.”

“He looks like that actor on Northern Exposure.”

“My God. Where did you find that hottie?”

My friends’ comments flattered me while my brain withered on its stem.

On an October evening at a political fundraiser, the seat I’d saved for Todd remained empty. I pretended to enjoy my tablemates’ company but the fury within swelled with each dinner course. Todd showed up in time for dessert, after the Dolphins beat the Saints.

He’d chosen the NFL over me.

“Hey,” he said and squeezed my shoulder, bending down to kiss my cheek. He slipped into the blank chair next to mine, the chair that had screamed, “You’re alone!” for the last hour.

“Excuse me,” I said and stood up, as if needing the restroom. Instead I left the premises and walked home beneath a hunter’s moon, the cool air scarcely abating my ire. Venus was up there somewhere but she wasn't shining for me.

Two days later Todd appeared on my doorstep, carrying a snow-white bakery box and wearing his tattered Gloria Estefan concert tee. The image of ultra-feminine Gloria set in faded pink amplified Todd's considerable manliness. He knew the shirt rendered me weak-kneed and a predictable lady-boner kicked in. We headed to the park and tossed a frisbee with Mazzy at our heels, all three of us yelping among golden glints of autumn. Later Todd and I ate pineapple cheesecake and devoured each other, mending our relationship in the only way that made sense.

I lifted my head from the pillow and ran my hands across his bare chest, nibbled on his earlobe, caressed his warm face. He smelled like sun and grass. I decided to suss out Todd’s future. Our future.

“What do you imagine yourself doing ten years from now?”

He turned to look at me. “Just what I’m doing now. Working at the group home. Taking care of the guys.”

Cooking for and doling out meds to residents of the adult foster home Todd co-owned was more noble and less conflicted than plenty of other jobs, including mine. I taught for a district with policies more apt to obliterate children’s curiosity than encourage it. But I didn’t know how many more meals I could share with someone who didn’t know the name of our mayor and shot a forty-minute film of a toy boat riding ocean waves while the Miami Vice theme song played on loop. Someone who didn’t strive.

“I get the feeling you look down on me,” he once said.

“You mean I’m condescending?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

He was onto me. Like Todd, I could be fun in the sack, on the frisbee field, at concerts and parties, but sometimes I simmered with awful, snarky thoughts. If I wasn’t careful those thoughts could morph into speech.

One night I sat on Todd's sofa leafing through a collection of Marie Howe’s poetry. He strode into the room and popped a tape into the VCR.

“Did you hear Ken got voted off Survivor last week?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t,” I said without looking up from the poems, mockery kicking around in my head like an irritable donkey. Who would I hear it from, besides you? Has our mayor whose name you don’t know given a press conference about Ken’s plight?

“It killed me to see him go. He was like a father figure to me. I'm re-watching, just to see him one last time.”

Todd’s real father was a spry septuagenarian living out his retirement in south Florida.

“You already have a nice dad,” I pointed out. Maybe you should call him instead of grieving for Ken.

I glanced up. On the television screen, six remaining survivors hovered around the Tribal Council's fire pit while the show’s host asked about strategy. Five of them had schemed to ditch their most senior tribal member, Todd's surrogate father Ken. Ken looked wary, like he knew it was the end of his tenure on a show where players viciously lie, collude, and backstab their way to prize money. I paced the floor after each episode, ready to punch humanity in the gut.

“Can we watch it tomorrow, Todd?” I asked. I hope you’ll forget Ken by daybreak.

He didn't reply but I heard his breath, hard and rasping. Todd continued to stare for a few moments at the group, as they squabbled for the right to stay in their hellish island paradise. Then he jumped up, bypassed the remote, and slammed off the TV with a sharp flick of wrist. He slowly turned to face me in a moment of reckoning.

It occurred to me he’d look great cast in bronze.

“We're just too different,” he announced, succinctly summarizing us. I could offer no argument. That night the tenuous threads of our relationship finally snapped, ending our yearlong mismatched odyssey. “I don’t want to keep doing this,” he said quietly.

I cried. Todd watched me with vacant eyes as I grabbed my poetry book and left.

My tears surprised me. Maybe they were because I didn’t want to be alone, even if it meant I could be myself again. Or maybe I knew I’d miss him, the way I’d miss anyone who held me through most nights of that year. Or maybe I’d miss him because he was Todd.

After four months of no contact I spotted him in a bar, each of us hanging out with our own group of frisbee friends. The booze in my Gin Rickey fuzzed our breakup’s why, catapulting me back to days of swimming on Miami’s beaches, of pickup games and movie matinees, of wildflower bouquets and even fried cheese sticks. Back to the pulse of a rain-pecked roof on waterbed nights. On my way to the brewpub’s bathroom I stopped by his table.

“Call me,” I whispered to him.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

We soon refashioned our bond into a season’s worth of booty calls, spending most of our time together indoors, under the covers. Clandestine. With more tears and pain, I broke it off altogether, knowing we could both see other people in the current arrangement. We were wrong together but that didn't mean I wanted to share Todd with anyone else, or hear about all the stuff he was doing without me. As much as I believed I only wanted Todd's body, his fun-ness and sweet nature made him the best of the batch at that time in my life. Todd was content with who he was, and I didn’t know many people who were, including me.

The following year, I saw Todd while shopping for men's swimsuits at the Goodwill with my gay friend Noah, who was visiting from New York. Todd wasn't wearing socks but it was August so no one else was either. His smile disarmed me. The conversation was light but our ruptured connection lurked just below the surface, threatening to manifest in a stammer or blush. I busied my hands in Speedos and board shorts to steady them. Despite Noah's flamboyance I hoped Todd thought we were a couple, partly because I wanted to show him I'd moved on but mostly because I knew I'd cave if he pursued me.

He didn't.

A few years later, I met a more compatible mate at an environmental protest. Eventually I heard Todd married and had a son. He probably still works at the job that suited him just fine, living a life that feels right for him. And maybe on clear nights he and his boy settle into chairs on the back porch, sip Yoo-hoo, and gaze with wonder at the infinite, magnificent stars.

-Tess Kelly

Tess Kelly's essays have appeared in Sweet Lit, River Teeth, Cleaver, Passages North, and Dorothy Parker's Ashes, among other publications. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.