The Nanny's Conference

The tote bag was the first sign this trip was going to be a waste of my week. I'd been in the hotel lobby for maybe ninety seconds when the woman at the registration table handed me a canvas tote with a cartoon lightbulb on it and the words "Synergy Forward 2024" printed underneath. Inside the tote was a stress ball shaped like another lightbulb, a cheap pen, a lanyard, and a notebook I wouldn't write in.

"Welcome aboard!" she said, way too loud for a lobby.

"Thanks," I said, and took the tote because saying no seemed rude.

Let me back up. I'm Mick, I'm thirty-four, and my actual job is being a nanny. I watch Rich's two kids, Ella and Sam, and I've been doing it for about three years now. Rich runs some kind of corporate training thing, I still can't explain it to you if you asked, and every year his company has this conference in downtown Cleveland. This year, at the last minute, his regular sitter bailed on him, so he asked if I'd come along and help him run the registration desk for the first morning. He paid me for the days, we settled the money before I ever said yes, and I figured three nights in a nice hotel with someone else paying was better than three nights telling two kids it's almost bedtime.

So here I was, holding a lightbulb tote bag, wondering what I'd agreed to.

"Mick! Over here!"

Rich was standing by the elevators with a guy I'd never seen before. Rich is thirty-six, built like someone who plays in a weekend softball league, and he had his conference lanyard already around his neck the way a child wears a name tag at a birthday party.

"You made it," he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. "This is Rod. He's on my team. Rod, this is Mick, the guy I told you about."

Rod was maybe thirty-eight, tall, kind of stiff in the shoulders, wearing a button-down shirt that looked ironed with a ruler. He stuck out his hand and shook mine like we were closing on a house.

"Nice to meet you," he said. "Rich talks about you a lot."

"Good things, I hope."

"Mostly that you make better coffee than the office does."

"That's true," Rich cut in. "It's extremely true. Anyway, we were about to hit the bar. Come on. The company's buying."

And that, kids, is how I ended up in a hotel bar at six in the evening, wedged into a booth with a lightbulb stress ball in my jacket pocket and a vodka soda in front of me. The bar had fake wood paneling and jazz music that was trying way too hard. Rich had gone off to say hi to some people from the Chicago office, which left me alone with Rod, who was stirring his beer with the little plastic sword from his garnish like it was doing something.

"So how do you like the conference so far?" he asked.

"I've been here forty minutes."

"Right. Dumb question." He laughed, but it came out weird, like a hiccup. "Sorry. I'm bad at small talk. Jimmy says I'm bad at small talk. Jimmy's a guy from work, he's around here somewhere, forty-five years old, loud as a garbage disposal. You'll hear him before you see him."

"You're doing fine," I said. "Better than the tote bag, anyway. Did you get one? It's got a lightbulb on it."

He held up his. "Two lightbulbs. One on the bag and one ball."

"We're rich."

He laughed again, and this time it worked better, and for a second he actually looked relaxed. Then his face did this thing where the relaxation just drained out of it, and he took a long pull of his beer, and I knew something was coming. You spend enough years around adults pretending to be casual, you learn to spot it.

"Can I ask you something kind of personal?" he said.

"Depends. Is it about the lightbulbs?"

"No. It's, um." He set the plastic sword down on the napkin, lined it up straight, then picked it up again. "Rich says you're, and I'm not being weird about this, he just mentioned it in conversation, that you're gay. And that you've been, I guess, around. I mean experienced. Not that, God, I'm making this worse."

I took a slow sip and waited. Rich's mouth was famously shut, but apparently not that famous.

"Rod," I said. "Breathe. Ask me the thing."

"Okay. Okay." He turned sideways in the booth to face me, which made it worse, like we were about to negotiate a hostage release. "I came out when I was thirty. I'm thirty-eight now. I dated a guy for about a year when I was thirty-two, and that was the extent of it. And I'm going to a lot of these things and meeting people and nothing ever, you know, goes anywhere, because I get nervous and I stall out. And there's this specific thing I've never done, and I'm at the point where the not knowing is worse than anything."

"The specific thing being?" I asked, even though I had a strong suspicion.

"Bottoming." He said it like a man saying a word in a foreign language to a waiter. "I've never done it. I've never even really tried. And I want to learn, properly, from someone who knows what they're doing, and not fumble through it with some guy from a bar who's going to rush me and make it awful."

There was a beat where the jazz did a little drum fill, like it was applauding him for getting it out.

"Okay," I said. "First of all, congratulations, that was braver than anything anyone will do on a stage at this conference all week."

"You think I'm ridiculous."

"I think you're the only person in this hotel being honest. Everyone else is here to talk about leverage." I set my drink down. "Second, why me? You met me an hour ago."

"Because you're not a coworker, and you leave Sunday, and Rich says you're the most patient person he's ever met. He says you taught his daughter to ride a bike without raising your voice once."

"That took three weeks and I raised my voice into a bush."

"Well." He spread his hands. "I'm not asking for a bush. I'm asking if you'd teach me. Tonight, if you're free. In my room. And I know that's a lot to ask of someone you just met, and if the answer is no, I will take the lightbulb tote and never bring it up again."

Here's the honest part, since we're being honest. I was flattered. Rod was a good-looking guy, that stiff navy shirt and those nervous hands, and underneath all the wound-up energy he was kind of sweet. I'd had casual things before, back in college and a little after, nothing serious ever, and I liked to think of myself like someone who could keep it physical without catching feelings. Which is a nice thing to think about yourself right up until you're tested.

"Alright," I said. "Some rules first, so we're clear before anything happens. One, no kissing. That's a romance thing and this isn't romance. Two, this is one night. A lesson, not the start of something. Three, you say stop anytime, for any reason, and we stop, no questions, no hurt feelings. Four, we're using condoms, obviously, and I've got what we need, so don't go buying anything at the hotel gift shop. And five, this has nothing to do with Rich, the conference, or my job or yours. Nobody owes anybody anything for this, and I'm not on anybody's clock."

"Those are all fine," he said, fast, like if he didn't answer quick the deal would evaporate. "All of them. Yes."

"And you're sure? You're not drunk, I'm not drunk, we're both thinking straight?"

"I've had one beer. I've never been more sure of anything, which honestly is a little sad."

"Then yes. After this drink and after Rich stops telling the Chicago people about his boat. I like a little time between the talking and the doing."

Rod nodded, twice, hard, as a man agreeing to terms of surrender. Then Rich slid back into the booth with two more drinks and a story about someone named Trina, and Rod looked at me over the top of his glass with an expression I can only describe as a man trying to act natural while his entire internal filing system caught fire.

I picked up my vodka soda, and after that one I switched to water, because I was about to be responsible for somebody else's first time. Three days of conference to go, and I'd already signed up for homework.

So here's where I have to admit something to myself in the elevator. I had told Rod I had everything we needed. I did not have everything we needed. I had a lightbulb stress ball and two dollars in quarters. The closest drugstore was six blocks away and it was already pushing eight, so the hotel gift shop it was.

The gift shop at a business hotel is a strange place. It's got Cleveland postcards, phone chargers, eleven kinds of candy, and then, way in the back on a bottom shelf, a tiny "personal items" section like the store itself was embarrassed about it. I stood there in my conference lanyard holding a box of condoms in one hand and comparing two bottles of lube like I was picking a wine, and a woman in a Synergy Forward polo came around the corner and I swear I pivoted like I was studying the postcards.

"Looking for something?" she asked.

"Postcards," I said. "Big Lake Erie guy."

I bought the condoms, the lube, and, as a decoy, a Cleveland postcard and a candy bar. The guy at the register rang it all up without blinking, which somehow made it worse. A few hours earlier I'd been at a registration table getting a tote bag. Now I was the creepy gift shop guy. I took the stairs to the fourth floor just to have somewhere to put the nervous energy.