Cahoots, New York

It was (really!) a dark and stormy night. Ty (working the overnight Foreign Desk at United Press International) lived chastely way up by Grant's Tomb near Columbia with an Italian woman/professor of Chinese, on academic fellowship, happily estranged from her homosexual Neapolitan husband and then distant from their three kids, now grown into adult lawyers and one of Italy's premier television hosts.

Having had no time nor luck in meeting any guy to my liking in limited NYC subway cruising, I decided that night (knowing I had to be at work in 42nd St Daily News building the following midnight) to walk the 20 or more blocks down to the one well-lighted Columbus Avenue gay bar (Cahoots, across from Museum of Natural History) I had liked in just a previous visit or two. I was wearing an Eastern Mountain Sports long raincoat "cagoule" knowing it would turn off most guys. But it was rainy.

I walked into Cahoots and immediately was stricken from across the small space by this handsome dark guy. He was also looking at me.

So, I approached him, saying: "It's not polite to stare."
To which he answered without explanation: "What do you think of the Edward Hopper exhibition over at the Whitney?"

Pulling the brochure from my back jeans pocket I said: "Well I was just there this afternoon and was impressed with his comment that it took him ten years to get over from moving back to America from Europe.

This guy (James) then asked: "Why's that to you?"

I answered: "Because I just a year ago moved here from Rome."

James (the guy I knew right then I was forever in love with) said: "Allora, parli italiano? 

And we've been speaking Italian (with one big breakup me off to Napoli and reunited in same year of our meeting) ever since, he doing design there and I writing of that nation with lots of trips back among friends. But melding this history into life in LA. — Ty G.