As... Or How I Met Stevie

I fell in love with Stevie Wonder when I was nineteen years old. I knew I was in love with him the first time I listened to him. Sure, I had heard his songs before; I even knew some of the lyrics to his most popular tunes, but it wasn't until I listened to him for the very first time while falling in love did I fully began to understand the man and his unrivaled gift.

I met Stevie when I met Peter. At nineteen, I was a wide-eyed young man experimenting in a new and different world; a distinct subculture that was all about finding a way to exist fully in a world that hadn’t make space for you: The Life. I had heard stories about it, saw a few late-night documentaries on television about it, but honestly, I knew nothing about The Life or its inhabitants. Peter changed all of that.

We met in lower Manhattan the summer following my first year of college, on Water Street. One sunny afternoon, while enjoying my lunch on the pavilion overlooking the FDR Drive and the Brooklyn waterfront, I saw him. He was standing, leaning against the rail with a dark blue pinstriped suit, white shirt, and blue and red paisley tie, with his head pressed sadly into his hands. I watched him for quite a while before boldly making the journey to where he stood. The trip caused all types of anxieties to arise in me. What was I going to say once I reached him? What was he going to say? Despite my mind's concern, I continued on until, seconds later, I stood next to him and too began staring off into the distance. Seconds later, I felt his eyes watch me briefly, then quickly turn away.

"Are you okay?" I asked, turning to face him.

"Yeah…" he answered quietly. "I'm cool."

"Are you sure?" I pressed, then smiled. "It looks as if you were about to jump."

He laughed, then shook his head. "Nah, I wouldn't do anything like that. I was just thinking, that's all."

"Damn, it must be some serious shit."

He nodded, indicating it was.

"Well, this is a good place to deal with it. I come up here a lot myself to think. It relaxes me."

"Really?" he said with a look of surprise. "I've been working around here for about a year and I've never seen you up here before."

"Ahh…that's because I'm in school. I'm doing the summer-job thing."

"I see." He smiled. "So what's your name?"

"Chris." I said, extending my palm. "And yours?"

"Peter." He said, taking my hand.

Peter was gorgeous, and so I imagined it wasn't hard for him to tell I was attracted to him. We spoke for about a half-hour more before we casually exchanged numbers. The intent: to hang out before I went back to school in a little less than a month. I wasn't out, and until him, I had only slept with one other openly gay man, so our exchanging of numbers was innocent, although my loins hoped for more.

Three days later, on a sweltering Friday evening, we hooked up. The two of us sat in my car, nervous as hell, driving through Queens looking for something to do, while masking our true intent: trying to figure out if it was okay to like each other. Twenty minutes later, after exhausting nearly all of our options, he brought up Hatfields.

"Hatfields?" I glanced at him before returning my eyes to the road.

"Yeah. It's a bar, but…"

"But what?" I asked, intrigued.

"But…" he paused and exhaled heavily. "I'm not sure if you'd like it. It's a place," he hesitated, "where guys go who like guys." He said quickly, like getting it out fast made it easier.

He'd done it. He'd said what I'd hoped he'd say since the first day we met. I smiled warmly. "So, how do we get there?"

Our relationship exploded onto the scene. He was my everything, and though it's been thirty-four years since that initial meeting, I still remember how safe I felt with him that night. At the time Hatfields was the kind of place where you could find your people but also be tested by them. It held both belonging and risk, expression and exposure, and care and conflict. He protected me and schooled me about The Life I was entering. He warned me of the shady types: the type that played with your heart; the type that wanted nothing, and as a result would never have anything. The type that spent their week preparing for the weekend and their all too familiar haunts like Kellers Bar. Peter loved that place, and we spent many a weekend there throwing back drinks and grooving to the sounds of Martha Wash and Izora Armstead singing “Just Us”. Unlike Hatfields which was predominantly Black and Brown, Kellers was shaped by the 70s and 80s white male bar culture, and except for a few nights when diversity found its way in, it read and functioned as a white space to many. But on those rare nights, it was a great time to be young. I was happy. I was safe, and I had finally been found.

Enter Stevie.

Stevie entered my life through a mixtape Peter had made at his ex's house. I kid you not, all the greats were on this tape, the love doctor Teddy Pendergrass, the band of all bands Earth Wind & Fire, the sister that made us all long for home, Stephanie Mills, and of course Patti LaBelle, Luther Vandross, and the groove-driven Rose Royce made their appearance. But none of them spoke to me the way Stevie did. Unlike any artist before him, he had a way of capturing my emotions and holding them captive. The first time I heard "As," I thought he'd found his way inside me. The way he described my love for this man, and how I knew I would always love him, frightened me. How did he know? How the hell did he know?

And then, when he whispered, "You, you, you, made life’s history, ‘cause you've brought some joy inside my tears", I knew for sure Stevie and I were soulmates. How else could one know the inner workings of my heart so well? Peter didn't know. He tried—he really did—but he just didn't know how to love me. Perhaps it was our age difference, he was ten years my senior. Or perhaps it was his allegiance to his friends and the habits they’d developed and nurtured over years at places like Hatfields, and Kellers, and Two Potatos and The Duplex that got in the way. Because no matter how many ways I tried to explain what love looked like to me, he still couldn't get it. But Stevie did. He was the only person at that point in my life who understood it all, and I fell, head over heels.

I started buying his music in droves. I wanted to sample everything this great mind created. I went through each find with a fine-toothed comb and handpicked my favorites. Soon I discovered a Stevie song for every situation I was going through.

Eventually, one summer day in July, I found myself alone in our apartment waiting for Peter to return from paying a bill—a ten minute walk from our front door. I straightened things that didn’t need straightening. I checked the window. I played Stevie. I’d recently learned something about Peter that I hadn’t known before, something that reframed a hundred small moments I’d filed away and tried to forget. So I waited, telling myself I was wrong, that a bill was just a bill. But when the afternoon light shifted and the room began to darken and he still hadn’t walked through the door, Ordinary Pain stopped being  just a song. By the time the sun went down I understood. We argued when he finally made his way home. The next morning, I packed what I could and left.

As I look back over those years, I can see how young and naïve I was, how bold and impressionable I was, but also how resolved I was to not take on the compulsions of others. Peter had my heart, but my mind was strong. I knew then, as I know all these years later that the only love worth struggling for, was my own.