Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2012 06:35:43 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Palazzo <apalazzo198@yahoo.com>
Subject: vintage thrills;  31. So Long Pete

31. So Long Pete: Peter Warmly Remembered

            My relationship with Peter was perhaps the closest I've come to
a real sexual and emotionally intimate relationship with a man.  It was not
really a long-term relationship, since we actually were together only
perhaps five or six times total.  But as we were breaking up, Peter
reminded me that we had had a false start a year or more before we actually
met.  Peter had actually phoned in response to my first newspaper ad,
although a bit later than was requested in the ad.  As a result, we didn't
connect at that time.  Later, he reminded me that we had corresponded
briefly, without following through with a meeting.  It was only on our
third attempt, following my second personal ad, that we successfully met
and began our real relationship.
            I loved being with Peter, despite the maneuvers it sometimes
required at work and at home.  He was, and I suppose still is, a
magnificently generous person with himself and with material things as
well.  Soon after we met he gave me a beautiful fountain pen which I still
use and love.  For Christmas Peter bought me a great Cashmere pullover
sweater from an expensive Manhattan department store.  I never shopped
there, and was concerned that my wife would wonder how I got such a
sweater, so I cut off the label.  In telling what I did in group therapy
one of the guys suggested I sew in a label that said "K Mart Cashmere," so
that my wife wouldn't wonder about the sweater having no label.
            Both Peter and I were extremely skittish and cautious and
insecure concerning male to male relationships.  Neither of us were truly
committed to the idea of making a long term relationship work.  I broke it
off, one evening just a few months after we had first met.  Following sex
at a midtown hotel, I sat on the side of the bed and explained to Peter
that the relationship was too draining for me, and that I didn't feel that
I could continue.  He accepted my decision unquestioningly, but he gave me
two telephone numbers to reach him at if I should change my mind.  I kept
those numbers for a very long time.  Several years later at a conference,
speaking with a physician from the same hospital that Peter worked at, I
casually asked if he happened to know him.

"Oh, yes, wonderful guy.  Haven't seen him in a while.  I think that he
might have retired earlier this year.  He has a niece interning with us
now."

      I truly hope that Peter is having a great retirement, and yes, I do
hope that he has thought of me once or twice.  Peter was one of the best
things that has ever happened to me in my forays into gay sex.