Gay Bar Pickup

April 9, 1997, I was sitting at the bar of a new club in Fort Lauderdale with my best friend and drinking buddy, Dennis. There is one thing about having a good friend to drink with, they can always act as a second pair of eyes. Dennis nudged me and pointed to a man standing only a few feet away.
"Take a look at that guy, he's cute."
He was cute. Tall, lean, with a handsome face and a dark  complexion. As I sat there staring at him, he turned around and our eyes met. Now sometimes that's a good thing, but this evening I didn't feel like going through the ritual, so nothing came of it. Four days later, Dennis and I are in the same bar.
"Alan, there's that guy again."
Sure enough, he was standing across the room sipping on a cocktail, and looking very available. I excused myself, and walked over to him. I'm not quite sure how I started the conversation, but I'm sure it was something fairly clever, such as.
"Cool Video, huh?"
He took his eyes off the video monitor behind the bar and looked at me. He smiled and said,
"Uh, it's okay."
That's how I met Mark. Isn't it romantic?
After a few drinks and some conversation about our jobs (turned out we were kind of in the same computer business), I suggested he come over to my house.

About a week later I was leaving the super market, and there was Mark, standing out front with his bags of groceries, waiting for a taxi. That was when I stopped my car and uttered those fateful words.
"Hey, remember me? Would you like a ride?"
That ride led to being invited over for dinner, and that dinner led to another date, and on, and on.

I think back about that often. If I hadn't offered him that ride, but just said hello and kept going, I wouldn't be living in this house full of clutter. I wouldn't have to strain to hear the television while a negro man sitting next to me shouts back at it. I wouldn't be forty pounds overweight because he stuffs me full of fatty foods. He often makes me do what I don't really want to do. I wouldn't have had to walk up 284 steps to get to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. In fact I wouldn't have even gone to Paris if not for Mark, nor Amsterdam, Rome, Venice, Florence, or Prague. I wouldn't have driven across the United States with my dog if not for him. I wouldn't have redecorated, and remodeled my home. No, I'd probably still be living in my little place here, decorated as Mark said, "like a bad dorm room".

Mark has a lot of flaws, I of course have none. Life without Mark would have been vastly different from what it actually is now. But when I weigh what my life would have been like if I hadn't offered him that ride, if I hadn't walked up to him and let loose with that cool pick up line, I think it might have been quite a bit emptier.