On Models, Love and Part Two of the Story of My Greatest Heartbreak

April 2001.

Ryan passed the catalogue across the table to Marcus, pointing out an exceptionally waxed and chiseled model wearing nothing but a blindingly bright pair of pink underwear. The material clung to his package, outlining ever nook and cranny. His chest appeared to have been sculpted from bronze. His legs were muscular and taught, with just the right amount of hair dusting them. Ryan and Marcus drooled over the picture as I sat quietly.

Looking down, I could see my t-shirt clinging to me in all the wrong places. My own thighs looked like tree trunks in my khaki shorts. I knew that hiding beneath all of my clothes was a lot more than a light dusting of body hair. I silently glanced back at Marcus as he continued to stare wide-eyed at the catalogue.

Later that day, when Marcus and I found ourselves alone in his bedroom, I was unusually resistant to his sexual advances. My mind kept landing on the model in the catalogue and I couldn’t help but feel that I was not the kind of man Marcus really wanted to be with. Picking up in my mood, Marcus asked me what the problem was.

I told him how I was feeling. I asked him if he would rather be with someone like the model in the catalogue. I expressed to him that I felt inadequate.

After hearing me out, he reached over and pulled me to him. He kissed me. “That guy in the catalogue was gorgeous,” he said. “But so are you. And you are the only man I want to be with. I may like to look at those guys from time to time, but you are the man I love.”

My heart leapt. We had been dating for over three months, but we had never said that we loved each other. I had wanted to say it to him on a number of occasions, but had always stopped myself. And now he was finally saying what I had been waiting for so long to hear.

I thought back to a Sunday a few weeks before when I had been working on Marcus’s computer. He had been in the kitchen, half cooking and half watching me. At one point, for no apparent reason, he had walked over and had squatted next to my chair. A moment or two had passed in silence before I had turned to ask him what he wanted.

“Do you have any idea just how much I …”

His voice had trailed off and he had abruptly stood and walked back to the kitchen. I had never pressed him to continue. I had never brought up the moment. But I had waited for the day when he’d be able to say it.

And that day had come.

“I love you too,” I said in a quiet voice. He didn’t respond, but didn’t need to. It was enough for us to both know that we both felt the same way.

That night we made love and I never once thought of the model in the pink underwear.