As the only homosexualist who does not go to the gym (yes, I’m the one), it seems like a distant memory that I was ever a member of the Y. But I was, for the better part of ten years.
Perhaps in the late ’90s, I was pointlessly doing situps on a mat plopped down in an alcove by the landing of a staircase – the Metro-Central YMCA was an early case of hacking the built environment for different uses – when who bounds down those stairs but a handsome, athletic, apparently perfectly built black dude. We had an unusually long moment of eye contact, which could mean a number of things but always starts out meaning one thing.
Not at all by coïncidence, I got to know this lad, at least well enough to have a normal conversation at the gym. He was often seen playing basketball with other black dudes, and claimed to work out with the RyeHigh basketball team, who needed extra “guards.” This was that rare specimen, the gay natural athlete.
I don’t have a clue how I managed it, but he and I went out to a movie one time, which was interrupted when he happened across an old friend – hearty Hey-hey!s all around, exchanging of phone numbers, the lot. This other guy seemed a tad bookish and ambiguous in retrospect and was, of course, white. I recall that my guy was dressed to the nines and he really filled out those clothes, let me tell you. And this was during the era of his attempted acting career; the only role I know he got was as an extra, a drug dealer, in a cheap American comedy that was shot here.
I also somehow managed to get invited over to his place, a student apartment improbably located on Spadina Circle, once or twice. His room was decorated with department-store posters of Michael Jordan. He refused to take his shorts off, complaining “It’s belittling.” “There’s nothing little about it!” I said. This was merely a prediction on my part. And wow, batting a thousand with that one, as it turned out.
I would grow weary of his closet act and I nagged at him. Once too often, apparently, since it resulted in a nice firm punch on the shoulder on the steps of the Y. You lose, kiddo. Now I get to watch you with bemusement and superiority.
I was later surprised to see personal ads from him on the various “dating” sites, including one that explained he had a boyfriend unit, a white homosexualist with a name that might or might not have been French. He always said hello when he walked past me as I enjoyed a dip in the hot tub at the local bathing establishment (unironically the purpose of my visit). It eventually stopped being weird to find him at the local bathing establishment, where he almost never seemed to achieve everyone else’s ostensible purpose of a visit to an LBE. (What were they waiting for, a singing telegram?) Also true to form for minority homosexualists, he never showed the slightest interest in other blacks, nor they in him.
My guy’s last known whereabouts were Victoria, where he was surely the only member of his species. Did the possibly-French bf unit come along? Well, who knows? He opened up his own personal-training business, with its own Web site and proprietor photo. I presume he pursued another of his hobbies, duathlons (duathlism). They combine running and biking legs, dispensing with triathlon’s swimming leg. Too bad, because I was just trying to imagine the ill-suppressed reactions to a tall, handsome, intelligent, perfectly built and impossibly hung black guy… in a Speedo… in Victoria. Am I projecting here? Or would he really be the only member of his species?
Now, what is the next logical step with a history like this? You might have guessed it, but I certainly didn’t, and was shocked out of my gourd for the first three seconds to discover that my guy has “acted” in “adult” films. Since you never get to appear on camera without permanently releasing the producers to duplicate your likeness, and since such likenesses are depicted on publicly-available Web sites, here’s the perfect time to make an introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, Mom and Dad, I bring you Randy Gunz. “NSFW” seems painfully inadequate. As does he.