Bleed Like Me: Dating at DIA

Read the previous chapter of Scott’s DIA adventure on our website here.

I was getting restless during my three-day stay in the Denver International Airport back in 2006. The blizzard had trapped everyone inside without a single flight taking off anytime soon. Smartphones and tablets hadn’t been invented yet, and we were running out of ways to entertain ourselves.

More than anything, I just wanted to get laid. It wasn’t that I had some sort of raging libido. I was just the kind of guy who utilized sex as a means to get lemonade out of lemons. This wouldn’t be easy, though. We didn’t have the benefit of apps like Grindr or Scruff to GPS ourselves over to the nearest available homo. Thus, I would have to do things the old fashioned way: face-to-face.

I stationed myself in various spots to scout guys, but nobody seemed all that interesting to me … much less interested in me. There had to have been at least a couple thousand of us stranded there, so it seemed preposterous that there wouldn’t be other guys doing the same.

Finally, when I was about to give up, I noticed a guy checking me out from across the railing. We played the game of occasionally locking eyes to show the two-way street of interest. Although I would have liked to consider myself some kind of flirting pro, I was honestly too scared to make the first move. But it didn’t take him long to walk over to me.

He introduced himself as Mike and he looked just as good up close as he did far away. He was tall and had a unique combination of baby face and rugged handsomeness. We broke the ice with typical chit chat. I really just wanted to suggest that we immediately go find a space where we could drop trou, but I was far too shy to be so blatant.

“So I need to go check in with some friends for a bit,” Mike started to wrap up our meeting. “But would you like to meet up for dinner tonight?”

“What? Like a date?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he grinned, showing off an impressive pair of dimples.

Luckily, some of the restaurants in the airport remained open during the DIA shutdown and, although it wasn’t quite what I had in mind, I liked this idea. Dinner actually felt like an authentic date. Mike and I got so engrossed in our conversations that we closed the restaurant — something that rarely happens in real life. We took it upon ourselves to keep the night going by walking around the airport and riding the tram just for the hell of it.

As the other trapped travelers began to retire for the night, we weren’t quite ready for that. We found a cozy spot in front of a giant glass wall where we could watch the falling snow. Even though the snow had been responsible for this mess, it still looked beautiful. Our conversation started to fade into a comfortable silence.

“So,” I began. “Now that everyone else is asleep, I bet we would have a lot of privacy if we went over into that bathroom together.” This was as obvious as I could get about wanting to get it on.

Mike just smiled. He leaned in and kissed me. Instead of taking me up on my sexy offer, he just curled in closer and laid his head on my shoulder. We continued to watch the snow in silence and I realized that, for the first time, a guy wasn’t treating me like the total whore I was desperately trying to be. Rather, he treated me like a special person. Something about that felt incredibly romantic.

The next day, our flights were cleared for takeoff and Mike and I went our separate ways. It wasn’t long before we found each other online, but oddly enough, neither of us pursued dating outside of the airport. The memory of it all was just too beautiful to spoil.