Amor Fati

“Why did we just go hella out of our way?”

“To avoid someone.”

Saturday night at 7:30, San Francisco, Union Square Park, Sixty miles away from where both of us are from—of all things my first crush, “Vance,” could have been doing (eating, drinking, fucking), he had to be here, with another guy at a corner that SF Andrew and I were heading toward.

Well, it’s not super mind-blowing crazy. It is San Francisco, and Vance is gay. And no one is getting drunk at 7:30 in the evening.

But still, out of all places in San Francisco that he could’ve been at, he had to be there at Union Square Park and at the right time too. We were at the right place and right time. If I was five minutes earlier or later, I might’ve missed him.

I know it’s stupid that I’m making a big deal out of this. It’s not like I even talked to him or tripped and fell face first into his crotch. I just tend to get carried away when I think about how seemingly unrelated occurrences can lead to something significant but way even more unrelated than the occurrence that started the entire chain of events.

Last week, Andrew messaged me asking to hang out in SF. I agreed and figured that Saturday evening after dance rehearsal would be the best time because I was planning on attending a company class Sunday night. The day of, we decided to go on a vain search for the last bit of sun in the evening. We stopped by Forever 21 to browse for a bit. We then proceeded to Union Square Park. I spotted Vance.

I could go further back and start with me meeting Andrew or even way way further back and start with me starting to hang out with Cameron. Either way, one small difference could’ve completely changed the outcome. Andrew could’ve never decided to message me out of the blue. If I wasn’t taking a summer dance intensive in SF, I could’ve visited him on any day of the week at any time. We could’ve decided to not go outside into the cold. We could’ve not stopped at Forever 21 or could’ve stayed there longer. The point is that, based on all the preceding events, I would not and never have expected to spot my first crush at a corner of an intersection. But I did anyway.

This kind of sequence of events is so delicate and easily malleable that it forces my more non-rational (my “emotional”) side to come out and wonder, “These coincidences are too coincidental. Someone or something had to have set this up.”



The reason I came out at the time I did is very convoluted, at least when I explain it. I never planned on coming out on New Years Eve, an hour and a half left before 2006, at an arcade, to Peter.

My story of how it happened starts in 2002 or 2003 with black John, far back when we haven’t even met yet. John was attending a private middle school where one of his friends happened to be Vance. Vance had a birthday party with DDR set-up, and that was how John got into DDR. Middle school eventually ended, and John ended up going to Leland, a public school, while Vance went to Bellarmine, a private school.

One year later in 2004, I just finished middle school. I had a very bad ending to my friendship with Seth, my best friend since the second grade. I told him (and the world) via a blog entry that the last few years of our friendship were shit and he meant nothing to me, especially now that he was heading off to Bellarmine and I was off to Santa Teresa High School (yeah, pretty cowardly, public, and overdramatic). Never talked to him since the last day of the eighth grade.

Some time later that year, I met John through playing DDR at the arcades. We, along with Peter, Miranda, and many more, all became good friends.

December 2005 came, and feeling some kind of mushy Christmas spirit, I decided that I wanted to talk to Seth again to settle some issues. And I had to be very dramatic about it (again), so I wanted to do it through a messenger. I asked John if he knew anyone that went to Bellarmine, and he did. He knew only one person: Vance.

“Oh, by the way, he’s gay,” John randomly pointed out. He’s gay. That stuck out to me, just a little bit. I was still a closet homo.

I got in contact with Vance through myspace, and eventually, the whole issue with Seth was settled toward the end of December. Done with that mess.

During the whole ordeal, however, I got to know Vance and his personality somewhat. He was very bold and out there, and he comfortably joked about his own gayness. He was the first gay guy that I had ever met, and I considered his openness admirable. I couldn’t help but develop my first true crush.

These were emotions that I had never felt before, and I didn’t know how to handle them. I needed someone to confide in, but I didn’t know who I could really go to.

Late at night on New Years Eve, John, Peter, and I decided to drop by Oakridge to play a few games of ITG. We were the only ones in the arcade, and the only sound came from the ITG machine. Peter and I were sitting in some driving games watching John play (the song he was playing, I remember very distinctly, was Soapy Bubble), and out of no where, or as though fate had commanded him, Peter turned to me with a wide smile and asked, “Are you gay?!”

I was caught off guard. I used to be able to lie about this whenever it would come up, but that night, with my need to confide in someone about these new emotions building up inside of me, I couldn’t lie anymore.

“Yeah,” I muttered.

John immediately stopped playing and shouted “WHAT?!” as he jumped off the machine.

And so began some of the best and some of the worst adventures/months/years of my life. New emotions, new drama, new ways of thinking, basically a new era in my life. And of the million things from my past I can now attribute all that to, I can attribute them to 2003, when John and Vance, two people I didn’t know at that time, played some DDR. What’s even crazier about this case is that, in a way, I wouldn’t have met Vance if it weren’t for Vance (him introducing John to DDR).

Gotta love fate.