- 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.