Halloween in Bogota

Enter Enrique 

Halloween in Bogotá

On October 30th of 2017, I met the subject of this blog, Enrique, on a night that was already rather intense and complicated.

Earlier in the evening, I ignored all rationality and reason and gave into the overwhelming need of "trusting my gut" and told someone I’d somehow caught feelings for him. It wasn’t supposed to be a serious confession or a proposal - it was meant to be honest, simple, adult and endearing -but instead the awkward silence hung between us like a barrier, as though the fact my intermediate Spanish and his non-English wasn't sufficient. By the time we made it to a bar called Tres Pesos, we hadn't said more than 5 words to each other in the last 10 minutes.

As I looked over at him, shorter than me at maybe 5'9, weighing 160 with a slimmer but defined body, I was reminded of just how devilishly handsome he was with shaved head, very neat beard and dark eyes. He was in a form fitting white t-shirt with the words OSAKA blazed on the chest, his baseball cap backwards. He had been leaning across the from the stool we were sitting in to talk to the bartender - anytime he did this and the back of his shirt would raise, I'd be unable to help myself from checking out the underwear band - Calvin Klein light blue briefs - he rarely wore those. He stuck to whites and blacks mostly. 

His name was Cristian - and we had met nearly 8 months ago on my first trip to Bogota. We hit it off, he took me for ice cream, brazenly stole a kiss at an art museum and helped me buy a belt before spending the night with me at my hotel. We'd kept in touch since and every time I came to South America, I made a point to see him. One time I even went to South America specifically to see him. We started as friends, the kind of friendship that quietly builds routine without you noticing. Somewhere along the way, that shifted. And it was just accepted without any discussion that we were basically a "quasi dating-couple" for the time I would be there, and resume our mutual lives of singlehood when I left. But something happened. and everything had changed and I could not stop thinking about him.  For two days he noticed something was "up" and I decided to just come clean, thinking maybe the honesty would make me feel less tense and dramatic. It did not. 

We had been at "our hotel" with the pool on the ground floor, blocks away from the Museum of Oro when I finally told him. He had just arrived from work an hour before and was laying on the bed, shoes off, listening to music while telling me about his day.  When he asked me about mine, I just blurted it out of nowhere. When I was done and asked him to say something, he was polite, even kind, but clearly caught off guard. He mentioned the obvious - that we lived on different continents, spoke different languages and had a 10 year age gap between us as though I hadn’t already thought about that.

After I said my piece, I tried to reassure him it was just to share I thought he was special, not out of expectations or pressure and I wasn't asking if he had feelings for me, and I was sure they'd go away in a few days when I returned home to NYC. To which he nodded and tried to smile. We sat in the hotel room for almost an hour, trapped in the kind of awkward silence that stretches until someone has to save it. Finally, he said we should go out.

And that man I’d just confessed these feelings for had taken our drinks to a table in the back and after a "salud!" of banging our beer bottled together was now distracted, scanning the room for something - I would later learn he was looking for any familiar faces. Ironically it was that very impulse to escape that awkward somehow led me to meet Enrique. The spark that ignited how this whole story begun.

While he scanned and talked to himself in his voice that was like a perfect mixture of gravel and honey, I went back to ponder and analyze why and where these feelings had come from. I had fallen in love 2 times in my life - once when I was 24, and again at 29. Getting overwhelmed with these feelings felt nice and lovely but also strange and inconvenient at 37. 

Two years earlier I’d ended a relationship that left me uninterested in being with anyone. Since then I’d kept things easy, uncomplicated. Cristian had been in the first few months of a breakup when we had met in March and so we ere in that perfectly safe category: a handsome friend I’d party with, flirt with, sleep with and essentially be in a relationship with the during my visits. But then, two mornings ago, something shifted. I woke up and saw him differently. I noticed the dark textures to his moods, face and eyes and thought it was exquisite. The unusual way he walked, with calm authority and in complete touch with his body, as someone who has been athletic their whole life does. He had put on a white and dark blue striped sweater that complimented his tone, eyes and form. 

Worse, I caught myself feeling irrationally jealous when he texted other guys- this was something we both did during my visits - sometimes showing each other the guy and describing who they were and it was never a problem, and now it was making me upset? How could I be jealous and possessive over this person? It was absurd, but undeniable. I couldn’t stop thinking about how feelings appear like that, uninvited and hard to reason with, like discovering a song you can’t get out of your head. I could REMEMBER not feeling this way when I had landed on Friday. I even remembered I was mildly irritated with him when he had left me waiting for 2 hours while he went to find a friend - but none of that mattered anymore, all I had were these big, very inconvenient feelings. 

And so at that table at 3 Pisos as I was deep in thought in both the overwhelming waves of my feelings and at the same time, curiously fascinated by them, and as he was looking out over the bar for anything to help distract us both, he nudged me out of my reverie with a question that caught me off guard: 

"Qué chico aquí te parece el más guapo?"  (Who do you think is the hottest guy here?

I laughed because it felt like a trap, and before I could answer, he added:

"No puedes decir que soy yo!" (And you can't say it's me!) 

He had correctly assumed my intention - and so, resigned, I looked around the bar, and that was the first time I saw Enrique. 

He was tall and thin, with sharply styled hair and the kind of clothes that looked chosen deliberately to  be part of a presentation. Even from across the room he carried himself like someone aware of being seen. I didn't find him "hot" or even "handsome" - but there was something magnetic about him, the kind of presence you register before you have time to explain why. Annoyed with this question and wanting to change the topic, I nodded to where he was - guy with the light blue shirt. 

Cristian followed my gave at the same time I nodded to the man with the light blue button up shirt. He made eye contact for a moment as though he knew we were talking about him before continuing a conversation he was having with someone. 

Cristian looked on in analysis for a moment and responded with something that sounded like a mixture of genuine surprise and a hint of jealousy

¿De verdad? Qué sorpresa. Es más alto de lo que te gusta. Más delgado. Sin barba. Y no quiero ser grosero- pero el es un poco afeminado, la verdad y no. No lo digo en mal sentido. Lo conozco, salía con un amigo mío. Terminó mal, creo. Pero no tengo problema con él. 

(Really? Him??? That's surprising. Hes really thin and hairless with no beard and people think he can be stuck up and prissy sometimes. Wait - Im sounding rude. No, he's okay and, do I know him as an acquaintance - he was dating a friend of mine, and I think they ended badly - but I dont have a problem with him. Hes always been friendly and respectful with me)

I nodded, pretending to care - but instead feeling a strange reminder that he had this whole entire life without me with all of these interesting bisecting relationships and history I would never really know in depth. I thought that was the end of it just a bar game to fill an uncomfortable night and a few moments later I had asked Cristian who he thought was the most handsome or if he had hooked up with anyone in the bar and he shrugged as if distracted and eventually pointed out a shy looking guy in a red shirt and said they had gone on a date a few year years ago. He excused himself to use the restroom and I sighed and pulled out my phone, responded to a few texts and checked my flight details 2 nights later - and then an alert came through on Whatsapp:

"POR DIOS BAJA TO CELULAR!",

(Put your phone down! Jesus!)

I looked up and saw Cristian was waving at me to get my attention from the other side of the bar. Standing beside him in quite amusement was Enrique. What the fuck.

I gathered my jacket and walked over to where they were chatting and as I got close, he smiled wide, introduced himself, and shook my hand as I came over. His voice was calm, and his tone felt so polished. In the large din of the bar, I could not hear his name when he introduced himself and after the third time I asked he held my chin gently in his hand, making intense eye contact said: "ENNN- REEE- KAAAY" and smiled brightly when I got it right. 

We were also joined by his companion, an older man named Felipe in a grey pullover who talked loud and laughed boisterously and the four of us talked about life, travel, bars that had closed, and why Bogotá’s weather was so erratic. Enrique and Felipe were both fascinated that I was not only an American but a NYC native and asked the usual questions about everyone owning guns, celebrity sightings and our obsession with food and work. 

The tension had immediately passed as the conversation was easy. Both Enrique and Felipe learned the cadence of Spanish that I could understand and kindly enunciated words thoroughly a little slower so I could follow along. We were on our fourth drinks and going on 2 hours later when Enrique heightened the tension again with a seemingly innocuous question about how Cristian and I had met and was I visiting for business or vacation. Though seemingly innocuous, I could almost sense a small hint of troublemaking, as though he had somehow sensed some of the tension and wanted to confirm it. Cristian handled it expertly, describing how we had met months ago and I was special to him and he loved when I came to visit. Enrique took the hint and the topic shifted again.

An hour later as the bar was starting to close, Enrique invited us back to his apartment nearby. I didn’t know what to expect, but I followed. The place was nearly empty - bare walls, a mattress, candles burning low on the floor. Somehow it suited him. We sat in a loose circle, cross-legged on the floor, talking for what felt like hours. I don’t remember everything we said, just that the night stretched on until the sun began to leak through the windows. Around six-thirty in the morning, Christian said he had to go; we both did.

Enrique walked us to the door in socks, smiling in a way that was both sincere and knowing. He hugged Christian good-night warmly and did the same to me telling me I was welcome anytime. In the cab back to the hotel, Cristian waved my curiosity away with a plaintive request for silence as he dozed off and within moments of entering the hotel and taking off no more than his pants, collapsed into the bed and was already snoring by the time I had come back out from changing and brushing my teeth.

I woke up around 11:30, Cristian had left hours ago and left a note about wanting to go to the festivals that night and he'd be back at 5. 

I didn’t know it then, but I would extend my trip for 3 more days. Six weeks later Cristian would confess to me that he had feelings for me as well and would ask me to be his boyfriend. 

When I think back to that chance meeting - the way it lingered without either of us realizing why - I can see the quiet gravity of it. Something in us had already started to move, like magnets pulled toward a future neither of us could imagine. I wonder sometimes if we would have believed it then, or if believing it would have changed anything at all.