Can You Buy A Man Flowers?

THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF ‘VINCE’S RELUCTANT NIGHT OUT’

It’s still pretty cold, which makes me wonder where this little stand gets their flowers. The bodega owners wheeled it out last weekend to commemorate the first day of spring. My eye went right to the splash of colors in the salt stained downtown, with it’s old mills and dirty canals. Any day now we would get that vernal rain which would finally wash that salt away. Not yet, though, which makes these vibrant blooms so striking. I haven’t bought flowers in so long; I’m not entirely sure what to look for. As I stand here at this cart I can’t help but think that everyone on this street knows that I’m buying flowers for a man, and I can’t help but think I look ridiculous doing it.

I’m not in any rush this Saturday morning. Typically I’d be hurrying down from Douglas’s apartment to move my car before they start ticketing. I learned early on, the hard way, that the parking enforcement officer is not a forgiving man. I didn’t stay over last night, though, so I parked where I’m actually supposed to. 

Since meeting Douglas in September we have spent a lot of time together. Corine, my oldest friend, was starting to take it personally so I told him I would see him in the morning. We, Corine and I, agreed to leave our men at home and hang out like old times. Except if it were actually like old times we would be drinking beer or smoking joints in her basement. And although she didn’t bring Guy Friend, she might as well have because she could not stop talking about him. And yes, we’re still referring to him as Guy Friend, or Guy for short. 

Like old times, there was beer involved. Only now we are more sophisticated about it. We drink it from glasses and it’s usually better than the watered down shit you get in a twenty four pack. I got to the bar first and scored us an optimal spot where we would never be out of the bartenders line of sight. Like old times, Corine was a flurry of anxious energy as she walked the length of the bar to where I was sitting. Some things never change. 

We’re a little awkward at first, despite the many years between us. Though so many things about her have not changed over those years, many things about me have. And now, where there has been some distance between us, those changes feel glaring as we wait for her beer. That distance wasn’t intentional. And it happens every time she replaces Guy Friend with a new Guy Friend. But it feels different now. I’m grateful when her drink comes and for the loosening of inhibitions I know are on the way. 

To break the ice she starts in about needing a night off from Guy and whatever it was he was doing this week to drive her crazy. Don’t ask me what that thing was. I stopped keep track of those a long time ago. Every one of her Guy Friends would eventually rack up that list. I let her talk about it a while, interjecting the dutiful agreements and mock disgust. But all the while I’m thinking to myself that it’s nothing like this when I’m with Douglas. Not even a little. I know, I know, it’s been maybe six months. But Jesus, I don’t ever want to sound like this. 

Finally she stops and takes a friendly jab at my shoulder. 

“What the fuck, Vince? Why don’t we hang out anymore?” The eight percent beer is kicking in for her. Her second eight percent beer, I should say. So is mine but come on, pull it together. Then again, she did want to hang out like old times.

I brush off her question with a shrug. “Come on Corine, have you seen Douglas?” I mock fan myself like a southern belle with the vapors. I don’t want to tell her that it’s so much more than that, though he is wildly handsome and rugged. I’ve spent years cultivating a detached, masculine persona. Ok, I use the word masculine generously. But let’s face it, growing up in a fairly red community, a gay boy had to learn to hide his heart. So I do. Still. 

We talk about the shallow stuff with Douglas. I objectify him a little, no more than he would be comfortable with if he were here though. What we’ve been up to, what movies we’ve seen. But I don’t tell her how time stops when we lay, spent, in bed. I don’t say a thing about how gentle he is despite his strength, or how it takes my breath away when I see that gentleness. I don’t mention to her the flower cart that appeared last week, or how Douglas’s favorite flower is the bright yellow daffodil with its pale green stem. 

I only know that last bit because he mentioned it in passing when we first started seeing each other. It was very shortly after meeting at that carnival when I stopped by to bring him a coffee. I just happened to be in the neighborhood and he said to come on over, he was out by the front steps. It was early-ish October and he was tending a little raised bed next to his stoop his which landlord asked him to maintain. When I got there he had clusters of holes dug among the tightly pruned boxwoods and was dropping dry papery bulbs into them. When I asked what he was planting he told me daffodils and that they were his favorite. He didn’t gush or elaborate, but it struck me that a man with such a masculine air would even have a favorite flower. And it was then that I noticed with just what delicacy he handled the dormant bulbs as he positioned them into their holes in the ground. 

I didn’t tell her any of that because this was Corine, and for all of my love for her and all the good times we had over the years I know how she could be. And I wasn’t ready for her to passively try to break him down. So we kept it lite. And I think she knew it after I evaded her probing for the third time. 

When she was sufficiently drunk, or when we were sufficiently drunk, I got her a ride home on my app, in the hopes that she would take the good deed as an amends for my distance. I was glad the night was over, being eager to get home and have it be tomorrow so I could do what I had planned. Looking at my phone in the back seat of my own ride I decided not to call Douglas given the hour, and my level of inebriation. 

It surprised me that I wasn’t hungover this morning. But it didn’t surprise me how early it was and that I did in fact look hungover. The older I get the harder it is to sleep after a night out. I am definitely not in my twenties anymore. Not wanting to look like a zombie, I drink plenty of water, as though I am one of those delicate plants Douglas so tenderly cares for. I know, I just cringed at myself right along with you. But this is what he has done to me and you know what, I don’t really care how I sound about it. 

So now I am here, at this flower stand, a coffee working its caffeinated magic on my less than rested brain and a bucket of daffodil bundles before me. Their bright and delicate petals were mesmerizing, and I get why they are his favorite. In the back of these bunches I see the one I want. They look like they have just opened and will last long enough to be enjoyed. 

Would he enjoy them, though? It’s one thing to like planting them and have them in the garden. It’s another to have another man show up at your door with a bouquet of them. I cringed, for the second time this morning, at the word ‘bouquet’. How do you give a man a bouquet? And what kind of reaction was I actually expecting? I hadn’t thought that far until just now and I almost put them back at the dawning of it. What if he cringed as bad as I was right now? 

It really does beg the question, what do you get a man to demonstrate your affections? I spent my whole childhood and adolescence watching my father buy my mother flowers and jewelry. And I don’t think she bought him anything once, except on birthdays and Christmas. Other than that, nothing. And he seemed to be ok with that. 

We’re not our parents, though. Late at night, in the tangle of his sheets, under the crook of his arm with my head on his chest, we talk for hours. Or during that long winter storm in January when we snowed in together and he surprised me by using me as a pillow while watching a movie. The juxtaposition of our differing statures must have looked ridiculous. The dynamic of two men together is fundamentally different than anything we grow up with, and the norms we are brought up in don’t always fit.

No, Douglas is not the first man I have been with. He’s not even the first one I’ve said I love you to. But maybe he’s the first one I meant it with. 

Fuck it, I think, and hand the money to the little ageless woman tending the cart. She smiles as she hands me the change and I can feel my face flush with embarrassment. Everyone on this street must know and I feel a little silly.

It’s kind of funny in a way, how I am freaking out over flowers but didn’t even blink at those three little words. They came so easily. I was at his door, leaving for work on a Monday morning. It was the first time I stayed over on a work night. As I turned to go, he pulled me in for one more quick kiss and it just came out. “Ok, I have to go. Love you.” Like I had said it to him a million times before! And I meant it, whole heartedly. It wasn’t until the words were ringing in my own ears that I froze. I could feel how wide my eyes were. But he said it right back, with a restrained smile, and without hesitation. “Love you too.”

I’m trying to find a butch way to hold this bouquet as I walk down the street. But you can’t even say bouquet in a butch way, never mind hold it in one. I’m irrationally nervous as I get closer to his stoop. As I get to the steps I see his daffodils have started to break the surface of the ground. I’m reminded again of that morning, as I watched him arrange the bulbs and cover them in rich dark soil. The smell of turned earth was his favorite smell. Another interesting surprise I learned that morning. And then we sat, drinking our coffee and talking well after our cups were empty. 

I don’t know, maybe he’ll surprise me again. I press the buzzer and hold my breath as butch as I can while holding a pretty bouquet of spring flowers.