Hundreds packed the dance floor. White v-necks glowed and sweaty foreheads glimmered underneath the black light and through the haze of perspiration and body heat, a haze in which everyone moved together like a single blur as the stereos pumped out the pulsing bass of techno remixes to mainstream songs. They bounced up and down, rocked side to side, and thrust forward and back. I slumped over the railing and watched from the second floor, alternating my attention between tracking any piece of eye candy and completely spacing out. Someone took an opening on the rail next to me, and I recognized him again, but not soon enough to dodge him cupping his hands over my ear and yelling into it. “Com’n, just give me one kiss!”
I winced. Even my ear could smell the alcohol in his breath. I backed away a step, dragging my arms along the railing, and I turned my head at him. “I said no earlier and the answer’s not going to change. So, no.” I forced a crooked smile because I didn’t wanna seem too bitchy.
“Just one!”
“No.”
“You haven’t found anyone to kiss at midnight yet, and you got like thirty minutes left. You think you’ll find your New Years kiss at this rate?”
“No.”
“Well, if you wanna, I’ll still be up here in thirty minutes.”
“Thanks Shaun.”
I decided I wanted some fresh air, so I squeezed, ducked, and pushed my way down the stairs, through the bar, and outside onto the patio. But I was stupid to think I could get fresh air outside here. Cigarette smoke invaded my lungs as soon as I stepped out the door. It wasn’t as loud out here, but it was cold, just a little, and still crowded. I didn’t realize that the back of my shirt was soaked with sweat until I felt it cooling my skin, chilling my back while the cigarette smoke warmed my front and my sides.
I found Walden congregating in a circle with his teammates. I joined them for about five minutes, and then they all left except for Walden to go dance on the main floor. We managed to pull aside a few chairs by the fence and sat on their edges. I pulled out my cell phone to glance at the time and put it away again. 11:40.
“Shaun’s bugging me about reenacting two thirds of the Halloween threesome,” I told him.
We laughed it off and continued a more casual conversation.
“So how was your Christmas trip back up to NorCal?” Walden asked me.
Not bad. There was, however, that one thing that sorta just defined my entire NorCal visit, but I danced around the subject first using the conventional, “It was fine,” “Got to spend time with my family,” “Got some money,” “Did some shopping and eating,” “The usual.” But Walden knew there was more to my one-week visit back up North, so I finally told him all about it: My holiday hook-up.
“Five days before Christmas, it started like any other regular hook-up, the only immediate striking difference being that he, Jerick, was by far the cutest. Dark skin Filipino? Check. Clean face? Check. Height-weight proportionate? Check. And a sleeve tattoo—bonus points times a hundred. After the sex was over, we just sat there on my bed in the dark, talking about dancing. And then, well, I asked him if he was hungry. He was, so I had him take us to my favorite Vietnamese banh mi sandwich shop in San Jose. Since he didn’t live too far away, he took me back to his place afterward, and we cuddled on his bed and watched This Christmas, which was a really terrible movie. It was basically a two-hour long Chris Brown music video, but what mattered was the cuddling. And the kissing. And just being in his arms. And then we fucked again. Later we went back to my place, where he spent the night. And it went on like that for the next few days, culminating on Christmas Eve.
“San Jose has this ‘Christmas in the Park’ festival downtown every December. They close off a few streets for the entire month, throw in some carnival rides and a bunch of Christmas trees made by community organizations, and boom, it’s a romantic stroll through the park. Jerick and I went. And well, it was fun. We went on that one ride that swings you back and forth until it gains enough momentum to overshoot and you end up swinging upside down, or just getting suspended in the air for a while with the concrete some several stories directly below the top of your head. Dude, that ride is fucking a lot scarier than it looks. Jerick and I held each other’s hands, but at one point I think I squeezed too tight and hurt him a little.
“After the ride, we must’ve been in some sort of awe-struck daze. We were walking along the park, being openly flirty, openly touchy, openly affectionate with each other. He’d grab my hand and I’d let him. He’d stand up on his toes to kiss me and I’d meet his lips with mine. Walden, this is shit I never do. Even when I was with Trung, even after we were going strong for more than a year, I’d freak out and pull away if he ever tried to grab my hand while we were out in public. He’d persist and I’d eventually let him loosely latch onto my elbow, but kissing in public never happened. I never allowed it. Jerick brought out a side of me that I’d been trying to shut away for the last five years of my life. And it felt good. That night at Christmas in the Park with Jerick, it was a high point for me.
“And that night was the last time I’ve seen him. I thought we were going to hang out for a little bit on Christmas Eve, but then he decided on making an impromptu visit back up to Sacramento to visit his parents. That was fine. We texted a little bit. He wasn’t responsive. We didn’t see each other on Christmas, which was expected I guess, but the day after, my last day in San Jose, he was back in San Jose. I texted him to see if he could hang out, but he said he was still with family, but at that point, I sensed that it was just an excuse. Since I’ve been back in SoCal, we’ve had like one really brief text message exchange. And that was it.”
I paused to think carefully about my next few words. I didn’t want this story to seem like a parable about the player who finally got played. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe whatever ex drama he was having got settled. Or well, I was going back to UCI, and I was going to be there a long time while he’d still be up in NorCal. Maybe reality hit him. The truth was, well, it was just a hook up. A hook-up gone horribly wrong or horribly right. A holiday fling. Shit. I don’t know.” The truth was, well, I got attached. And now I had to sever myself if I wanted to move on.
It was 11:50. Walden offered me a few comforting words, but I got distracted and spotted in the corner Jeremy, a guy that Trung had been low key dating for the last month (low key, as in Trung didn’t approve my usage of the word “dating” to describe his relation to Jeremy because according to some certain background information that Trung collected by means of the Internet, Jeremy happened to have a boyfriend some several thousands of miles away, one that he never mentioned and one that Trung never wanted to bring up). Right behind Jeremy I saw another guy, who wore a thin unzipped jacket with no shirt underneath, and whose arm was snaked over Jeremy’s chest and under his shoulders. I excused myself from my conversation with Walden and rushed inside to find Trung.
Normally I would expect to find him dancing in a circle of his friends, or being the center of attention with his ghetto drunk dancing, dropping it to the floor like he owned the whole club. But instead, I found Trung sitting next to the entrance to the hip hop room, on the couch in the corner on the second floor, alone and sober, both hands holding his phone under his face and his thumbs twiddling away on the touch-screen buttons. I sat beside him and adjusted myself until our shoulders rested against each other’s. Trung didn’t break his intense focus on his phone, so I pulled out mine and mimicked him. We didn’t need to say anything to each other to understand where we each stood emotionally.
I browsed statuses on Facebook and read entries on Tumblr. Nothing but New Years resolutions, thank you’s for a great 2010, fuck you’s to a terrible one, and handles of vodka or rum and several colorful varieties of UV crowded together on a counter top, looking like a miniature metropolitan city—photos which foreshadowed a night that was only just beginning. I noticed the time and turned to talk into Trung’s ear.
“It’s 11:57. Do you wanna go into the hip hop room and dance a little?” He nodded.
The hip hop room on the second floor was a little less crowded than the main dance floor on the first floor; I at least had enough space to lift my elbows, but it was still just as hot and as loud as downstairs. Trung and I faced each other as we danced, leaving enough room between each other in hopes that someone cute would perhaps come over and ask one of us to dance up behind him (I usually hoped for this more than Trung did). I only began getting into the music however when a sudden storm of cheers and applause drowned it out. I looked up at the TV monitors in the corner and saw that a countdown ticked sixteen, fifteen, fourteen... Once it hit ten, everyone started shouting out the numbers as they ticked closer to zero.
Trung and I glanced at each other. We shrugged, and halfheartedly, nearly inaudibly among the screams around us, we mouthed along to the last few seconds of 2010: Four, three, two, one...
One single, thunderous “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” erupted throughout the entire club. Strobe lights flashed. Confetti fell. And fake smoke poured into the room. People clapped. People kissed. People hugged. And then they hugged some others. But Trung and I found ourselves locked in our hug as people around us moved from person to person, taking turns giving each other hugs or kisses on the cheek. Eventually the black light replaced the strobe light again. The last piece of confetti fell to the ground, and the fake smoke faded away at our feet. Most celebrants now resumed their dancing. But Trung and I were still hugging, my arms wrapped over his shoulders, the side of my head resting in his hair; his arms around my back, and the side of his face on my chest.
“Happy New Year, Trung.”
“Happy New Year, Brian.”
Showing posts with label walden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walden. Show all posts
Runaway: Part 3
Saturday, November 27, 2010
(Continued from “Runaway: Part 2” and “Part 1”)
I was still sitting up against the wall, rolling the back of my head against it when Walden found me upstairs. “I just wanna have a talk outside, Brian. But yes, that does include having to walk past a bunch of people, including Linh, who all knew that you were messin’ around with two other guys in the bathroom for the last hour. You guys couldn’t have been any more obvious.”
Walden had already taken off his tranny/cowboy/stripper Halloween costume, so it was easier to take him more seriously. I followed him downstairs and tried to stay as close behind him as I could. Once I entered the kitchen where the party was, I narrowed my focus to the backyard door, but someone, who obviously hadn’t sobered up yet, called me out—or congratulated me.
“Whaddup Brian!” He stumbled up to me and jabbed my shoulder. “Shit man, you da shit! Homie you been having a good Halloween? You been enjoying yourself? I know you been!” Getting this kind of reaction actually lifted a little weight off my shoulder; not everyone thought I was a skank for hooking up in the bathroom with two other guys, but then again, not everyone on the team really knew that I had been talking to Linh. I scanned the kitchen for him and easily spotted him. Standing on his however-many-inch heels he stood out above the sea of heads, but as soon as we made eye contact, he whipped his head away, as if to bitchslap my face with the long curls of his wig. I felt the weight on my shoulders again.
The backyard was empty. Walden and I sat down in lawn chairs, and Walden lit up a cigarette and spoke to me while he smoked.
“So, you and Shaun. And Tyrone. A threesome. Wow. How much did you drink before?”
“Two shots.”
“Two shots! It only takes two shots to get you in a cramped bathroom with two other guys? One shot per guy!”
I shrugged.
“I think you need more shots. That’s what you need right now because you look bummed.”
“I am.”
Walden tilted his head at me. “Why? There’s nothing to worry about. Yeah, everyone knows but no one cares. Trust me. No one is judging you.”
“I’m not worried about what everyone thinks about me. I’m worried about Linh.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Walden leaned back in his chair and took a long drag from his cigarette. “Okay, well Brian, let me remind you: you and Linh aren’t even together. You guys have been talking for a week.”
“That doesn’t mean I can still mess around with other guys.”
“Well, yeah, but I mean that at least it’s not much of a loss.”
“Yeah I know, but I’m still disappointed in myself.”
“Why?”
“You know what’s been on my mind this whole time since I got out of that bathroom?”
“What?”
“Trung.”
“Why?”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell him what I wanted to say next, so I paused and deeply inhaled the second-hand smoke from Walden’s cigarette. It relaxed me enough to initiate the conversation. “Did I ever tell you why we broke up, Walden?”
“Something about issues, your own or his. You were never really clear.”
“Do you wanna know the real reason why we broke up? You’d be the first person to ever know, ‘cause hell, Trung doesn’t even know.”
“Yeah, what is it?”
I needed to calm my nerves before continuing, so I breathed in and filled my lungs with a few more breaths of smoke. Bad habit—whatever.
“I cheated on Trung. Five times.”
“Wow.” Walden raised his eyes brow as he took another puff on his cigarette. “And he found out?”
“No, I uh, managed to keep them all a secret. Well, he sorta found out about one, but I lied to him and told him I only made out with the guy. I mean, I guess you could say I did, but with his dick in addition to his lips. But yeah, for the most part, they were all a secret.”
“So you guys didn’t break up because he found out? Who broke up with who again?”
“I broke up with him. I had to. I thought that I could keep all five of my slip-ups a secret forever because I learned a long time ago to separate sex and emotion. Walden, I loved Trung, and to this day I still love him, but somehow back then, each time at the moment before I cheated, I figured what I was about to do was okay. I thought that if I played it safe and didn’t contract any STDs—and I didn’t—then I could put my sex scandals all behind me. But, I dunno, my guilt eventually caught up to me. I was surprised. As much as I tried to shut out the guilt, I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine us together celebrating our anniversary in ten years with him still not knowing about something I did nine years prior. I knew I couldn’t go on in our relationship for as long as I kept the secret to myself, but at the same time, I knew that if I admitted to him about all the times I’ve cheated on him, he’d break up with me anyway. It was a lose-lose situation, but I couldn’t face that. I had to find a way out, a way to still win.”
“What’d you do Brian? What’d you tell him?”
Trung sat still in the passenger seat and stared out into the dark street through the front window. I unfolded my letter and struggled with it until I could hold it up against some of the dim light that shined through from the street light above my car. The paper fluttered in my shaky hands, and my voice cracked as I began reading it out to Trung.
“‘Even though we’ve talked about it before, I never forgave you for the whole Anh drama back in May 2008. You made me choose between keeping our relationship and ending my friendship with Anh, or breaking up and keeping my friendship with him. You even gave me a day to think about it. And do you remember what I chose? I chose to break up and keep my friendship with Anh. But you forced me to choose our relationship. I insisted on breaking up, but you managed to manipulate me into choosing otherwise. I think you (specifically you) could make anyone do anything if you forced them to converse with you for a million hours too. Because like two hours after I said, ‘I want to break up,’ you were still trying to convince me otherwise and wouldn’t get the fuck out of my car. I just wanted you to shut up, so I finally agreed. And then came the grueling process of deleting Anh’s phone number from my phone, etc. whatever.
“‘Like I said, I never forgave you for that.
“‘So maybe, I never address my problems with you as they come up because I want things to build up and become unbearable for you. Maybe I’ve always secretly wanted you to break up with me since I wasn’t allowed to break up with you the first time I tried. I feel like the option to break up isn’t even available in this relationship. Honestly, every time we do fight, I secretly hope, ‘Please let this be the one. Break up with me already.’ We were never supposed to make it past that Anh argument.
“‘I’ve fallen out of love many times in this relationship. The reason is usually different every time, but because I’m feeling moody and depressed, I end up focusing on all this stuff from May. And then that becomes the main problem.
“‘But you still probably want to know the reason I fell out of love this time around.
“‘I feel like the reasons why I fell in love with you in the first place no longer apply to you. You’re no longer the committed, driven person that you once were when I met you.
“‘When I met you, you were on your way to being a valedictorian. You had a big interest in history and foreign policy on politics and all that junk. You were really committed to education and so much more.
“‘But college really changed things. You no longer really cared about school, and you’re not the passion-drive history/politic nerd that you used to be. I can’t think of anything that you’re driven toward now. What are you dedicated to right now? I don’t fucking know. Celebrity gossip?
“‘I realized this once Breakthrough ended. Without Breakthrough, I couldn’t see anything in you that kept you going. If you need an example of what I mean by driven, I had dance, a workout plan, and writing to keep me going. You were just the same inside jokes that we’ve had for the last year and a half.
“‘And what’s annoying is that you get irritated by people who are driven. To you, Cameron’s just ‘way too unrealistically excited’ about helping his step mom start a frozen yogurt business. To you, it’s ‘great that these young teenagers [Funksters] want to dance, but why bother ‘cause it’s not like dance is going to get them anywhere in the future.’
“‘Well, at least they’re all passionate about something.
“‘So you can try to start trying more. You can try to stop being lazy and find something to do. All that would be good for your future, but it won’t help this relationship. Nothing that you’ve done has ever really fixed the main problem. You’ve only fixed the reasons I fell out of love each time, but nothing ever fixed the main problem. The main problem, to remind you, is the whole wanting-to-break-up-but-couldn’t thing back in May 2008. As I said before, that—this main problem—is unfixable. It’s unforgivable.
“‘It doesn’t matter if you try to do anything to get me to forgive you for forcing me to stay in the relationship back in 2008. I wanna wake up tomorrow and live as though I never let you convince me to stay with you back in May 2008. You gave me the choice to stay or break up, and I wanted to break up. There wasn’t anything unfair about that until you forced me to stay. I want things to be the way they should’ve been if you hadn’t forced me to stay. There shouldn’t even be any hypothetical statement. When you gave me the choice and when I made the decision to break up, that was it. I broke up with you in May 2008. That was the end.’
There was no more to read. “So, in conclusion, uhh,” I folded the letter and set it in my lap, “ever since that one incident, our almost-breakup five months into our relationship, it was never meant to be.” ...
I was still sitting up against the wall, rolling the back of my head against it when Walden found me upstairs. “I just wanna have a talk outside, Brian. But yes, that does include having to walk past a bunch of people, including Linh, who all knew that you were messin’ around with two other guys in the bathroom for the last hour. You guys couldn’t have been any more obvious.”
Walden had already taken off his tranny/cowboy/stripper Halloween costume, so it was easier to take him more seriously. I followed him downstairs and tried to stay as close behind him as I could. Once I entered the kitchen where the party was, I narrowed my focus to the backyard door, but someone, who obviously hadn’t sobered up yet, called me out—or congratulated me.
“Whaddup Brian!” He stumbled up to me and jabbed my shoulder. “Shit man, you da shit! Homie you been having a good Halloween? You been enjoying yourself? I know you been!” Getting this kind of reaction actually lifted a little weight off my shoulder; not everyone thought I was a skank for hooking up in the bathroom with two other guys, but then again, not everyone on the team really knew that I had been talking to Linh. I scanned the kitchen for him and easily spotted him. Standing on his however-many-inch heels he stood out above the sea of heads, but as soon as we made eye contact, he whipped his head away, as if to bitchslap my face with the long curls of his wig. I felt the weight on my shoulders again.
The backyard was empty. Walden and I sat down in lawn chairs, and Walden lit up a cigarette and spoke to me while he smoked.
“So, you and Shaun. And Tyrone. A threesome. Wow. How much did you drink before?”
“Two shots.”
“Two shots! It only takes two shots to get you in a cramped bathroom with two other guys? One shot per guy!”
I shrugged.
“I think you need more shots. That’s what you need right now because you look bummed.”
“I am.”
Walden tilted his head at me. “Why? There’s nothing to worry about. Yeah, everyone knows but no one cares. Trust me. No one is judging you.”
“I’m not worried about what everyone thinks about me. I’m worried about Linh.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Walden leaned back in his chair and took a long drag from his cigarette. “Okay, well Brian, let me remind you: you and Linh aren’t even together. You guys have been talking for a week.”
“That doesn’t mean I can still mess around with other guys.”
“Well, yeah, but I mean that at least it’s not much of a loss.”
“Yeah I know, but I’m still disappointed in myself.”
“Why?”
“You know what’s been on my mind this whole time since I got out of that bathroom?”
“What?”
“Trung.”
“Why?”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell him what I wanted to say next, so I paused and deeply inhaled the second-hand smoke from Walden’s cigarette. It relaxed me enough to initiate the conversation. “Did I ever tell you why we broke up, Walden?”
“Something about issues, your own or his. You were never really clear.”
“Do you wanna know the real reason why we broke up? You’d be the first person to ever know, ‘cause hell, Trung doesn’t even know.”
“Yeah, what is it?”
I needed to calm my nerves before continuing, so I breathed in and filled my lungs with a few more breaths of smoke. Bad habit—whatever.
“I cheated on Trung. Five times.”
“Wow.” Walden raised his eyes brow as he took another puff on his cigarette. “And he found out?”
“No, I uh, managed to keep them all a secret. Well, he sorta found out about one, but I lied to him and told him I only made out with the guy. I mean, I guess you could say I did, but with his dick in addition to his lips. But yeah, for the most part, they were all a secret.”
“So you guys didn’t break up because he found out? Who broke up with who again?”
“I broke up with him. I had to. I thought that I could keep all five of my slip-ups a secret forever because I learned a long time ago to separate sex and emotion. Walden, I loved Trung, and to this day I still love him, but somehow back then, each time at the moment before I cheated, I figured what I was about to do was okay. I thought that if I played it safe and didn’t contract any STDs—and I didn’t—then I could put my sex scandals all behind me. But, I dunno, my guilt eventually caught up to me. I was surprised. As much as I tried to shut out the guilt, I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine us together celebrating our anniversary in ten years with him still not knowing about something I did nine years prior. I knew I couldn’t go on in our relationship for as long as I kept the secret to myself, but at the same time, I knew that if I admitted to him about all the times I’ve cheated on him, he’d break up with me anyway. It was a lose-lose situation, but I couldn’t face that. I had to find a way out, a way to still win.”
“What’d you do Brian? What’d you tell him?”
Trung sat still in the passenger seat and stared out into the dark street through the front window. I unfolded my letter and struggled with it until I could hold it up against some of the dim light that shined through from the street light above my car. The paper fluttered in my shaky hands, and my voice cracked as I began reading it out to Trung.
“‘Even though we’ve talked about it before, I never forgave you for the whole Anh drama back in May 2008. You made me choose between keeping our relationship and ending my friendship with Anh, or breaking up and keeping my friendship with him. You even gave me a day to think about it. And do you remember what I chose? I chose to break up and keep my friendship with Anh. But you forced me to choose our relationship. I insisted on breaking up, but you managed to manipulate me into choosing otherwise. I think you (specifically you) could make anyone do anything if you forced them to converse with you for a million hours too. Because like two hours after I said, ‘I want to break up,’ you were still trying to convince me otherwise and wouldn’t get the fuck out of my car. I just wanted you to shut up, so I finally agreed. And then came the grueling process of deleting Anh’s phone number from my phone, etc. whatever.
“‘Like I said, I never forgave you for that.
“‘So maybe, I never address my problems with you as they come up because I want things to build up and become unbearable for you. Maybe I’ve always secretly wanted you to break up with me since I wasn’t allowed to break up with you the first time I tried. I feel like the option to break up isn’t even available in this relationship. Honestly, every time we do fight, I secretly hope, ‘Please let this be the one. Break up with me already.’ We were never supposed to make it past that Anh argument.
“‘I’ve fallen out of love many times in this relationship. The reason is usually different every time, but because I’m feeling moody and depressed, I end up focusing on all this stuff from May. And then that becomes the main problem.
“‘But you still probably want to know the reason I fell out of love this time around.
“‘I feel like the reasons why I fell in love with you in the first place no longer apply to you. You’re no longer the committed, driven person that you once were when I met you.
“‘When I met you, you were on your way to being a valedictorian. You had a big interest in history and foreign policy on politics and all that junk. You were really committed to education and so much more.
“‘But college really changed things. You no longer really cared about school, and you’re not the passion-drive history/politic nerd that you used to be. I can’t think of anything that you’re driven toward now. What are you dedicated to right now? I don’t fucking know. Celebrity gossip?
“‘I realized this once Breakthrough ended. Without Breakthrough, I couldn’t see anything in you that kept you going. If you need an example of what I mean by driven, I had dance, a workout plan, and writing to keep me going. You were just the same inside jokes that we’ve had for the last year and a half.
“‘And what’s annoying is that you get irritated by people who are driven. To you, Cameron’s just ‘way too unrealistically excited’ about helping his step mom start a frozen yogurt business. To you, it’s ‘great that these young teenagers [Funksters] want to dance, but why bother ‘cause it’s not like dance is going to get them anywhere in the future.’
“‘Well, at least they’re all passionate about something.
“‘So you can try to start trying more. You can try to stop being lazy and find something to do. All that would be good for your future, but it won’t help this relationship. Nothing that you’ve done has ever really fixed the main problem. You’ve only fixed the reasons I fell out of love each time, but nothing ever fixed the main problem. The main problem, to remind you, is the whole wanting-to-break-up-but-couldn’t thing back in May 2008. As I said before, that—this main problem—is unfixable. It’s unforgivable.
“‘It doesn’t matter if you try to do anything to get me to forgive you for forcing me to stay in the relationship back in 2008. I wanna wake up tomorrow and live as though I never let you convince me to stay with you back in May 2008. You gave me the choice to stay or break up, and I wanted to break up. There wasn’t anything unfair about that until you forced me to stay. I want things to be the way they should’ve been if you hadn’t forced me to stay. There shouldn’t even be any hypothetical statement. When you gave me the choice and when I made the decision to break up, that was it. I broke up with you in May 2008. That was the end.’
There was no more to read. “So, in conclusion, uhh,” I folded the letter and set it in my lap, “ever since that one incident, our almost-breakup five months into our relationship, it was never meant to be.” ...
Runaway: Part 2
Sunday, November 21, 2010
(Continued from “Runaway: Part 1”)
I slid into my jeans and sat on the toilet, waiting in the dark while he finished putting on all his clothes.
“What do we do about the towel rack?” I whispered.
“Just leave it in the shower stall.”
“So what’s the plan?” the third voice spoke. I listened as the two of them discussed the plan to each other.
“You’re going to pretend you’ve been vomiting in toilet. We’re going to tell everyone that we’ve been helping you.”
“Okay, I guess I did drink a lot.”
Like anyone’s really going to believe he’s been vomiting for the last hour while the two of us were tending to him. In a locked bathroom.
“Alright, got my clothes on. You ready?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
He opened the door and walked out first, while I stayed behind at the sink. Someone who had probably been waiting to use the bathroom for the last hour walked in and saw the “drunk mess” hunched over the toilet.
“Is he alright?”
I nodded. “Yeah, kid’s just been vomiting. Had a little too much to drink.”
He tilted his head and raised his eye brow at me.
I looked down. “Yeah, I know.”
I left the bathroom and found my pizza costume sitting next to the door. I didn’t bother wrapping it back around my neck. After putting on a shirt, I sat up against a wall, wondering what to do. I felt too nervous to go back downstairs to the party, nervous that everyone knew where I had been the last hour. Remembering that my phone’s ringer went off thirty minutes ago in the bathroom, I pulled it out and saw that I had one text message from Walden. I read it: Wow neexxxt!
Shit. With no one to turn to, I wrote a text to Trung: Just had a threesome with two other guys at the Halloween party. Linh wasn't one of them. And everyone knows, oops. What do I do now?
Trung lay next to me on my bed, tugging at my shirt and trying to look me in the eye, but I continue to stare straight through his pleading eyes at the ceiling. Both our sweat began running down onto my pillow and blankets; it was a warm summer evening.
“Brian, talk to me. Talk about our relationship. What’s bothering you?”
I grunted and turned away from him to look at the wall. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.” I’m fine—I don’t know how many times I uttered this phrase in the last hour. But we both knew that everything was far from fine.
Trung pulled my shoulder and rolled me back onto my back. “Brian, I sat in my car for two hours outside your house waiting for you to come home. Why didn’t you tell me before I left home that you were going out to the mall? And when I called you to tell you I got to your place, why did it take you two more hours to come back?”
I motioned at the shopping bags on the floor. “I stopped by Oakridge.”
“I know that, but I’m asking you why did you feel like you could make a two-hour detour when you already knew I was at your place?”
I didn’t answer; I just stared at the ceiling again. Somewhere in my mind I pieced together the answers to his questions, but I didn’t know the right words to speak them. I just wanted to be alone, Trung. I needed to think because I couldn’t think with you around all the fucking time.
“Brian, please. What’s wrong?”
I’ve been pushing you away more and more every day because every morning when I wake up, I can see our end coming closer and closer. I’ve been growing so disillusioned; you know that picture we had of ourselves in the far distant future? How we’d just finish watching X-Files at 3 AM, and I’d be washing the dishes at the sink as you come up from behind to wrap your arms around me? Just as we normally would do now? That picture’s long since dissolved.
“Brian, say something!”
I’m guilty of keeping secrets from you Trung, secrets that I thought I could bury deep in the back of my mind. And for the longest time I did a good damn job of suppressing them, never letting them reach my conscience, but somehow, they eventually did. That pretty picture I had of us two huddled over a crib, making funny faces insides—gone. Now I just see me living alone in a beaten down apartment and getting a rejection letter from the adoption agency.
“Brian, we’ve been together for twenty months now. Every time we’ve fought, it’s always been like this Brian, you being angry about something me trying to figure out what’s wrong. I can’t always do this. You have to grow up and change some time.”
I finally turned toward Trung and met with his pleading eyes. I gazed into them, and I knew that this argument would be the one argument that I couldn’t get out of, the one argument in which I actually had to say something. “How about I write you a letter?”
I slid into my jeans and sat on the toilet, waiting in the dark while he finished putting on all his clothes.
“What do we do about the towel rack?” I whispered.
“Just leave it in the shower stall.”
“So what’s the plan?” the third voice spoke. I listened as the two of them discussed the plan to each other.
“You’re going to pretend you’ve been vomiting in toilet. We’re going to tell everyone that we’ve been helping you.”
“Okay, I guess I did drink a lot.”
Like anyone’s really going to believe he’s been vomiting for the last hour while the two of us were tending to him. In a locked bathroom.
“Alright, got my clothes on. You ready?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
He opened the door and walked out first, while I stayed behind at the sink. Someone who had probably been waiting to use the bathroom for the last hour walked in and saw the “drunk mess” hunched over the toilet.
“Is he alright?”
I nodded. “Yeah, kid’s just been vomiting. Had a little too much to drink.”
He tilted his head and raised his eye brow at me.
I looked down. “Yeah, I know.”
I left the bathroom and found my pizza costume sitting next to the door. I didn’t bother wrapping it back around my neck. After putting on a shirt, I sat up against a wall, wondering what to do. I felt too nervous to go back downstairs to the party, nervous that everyone knew where I had been the last hour. Remembering that my phone’s ringer went off thirty minutes ago in the bathroom, I pulled it out and saw that I had one text message from Walden. I read it: Wow neexxxt!
Shit. With no one to turn to, I wrote a text to Trung: Just had a threesome with two other guys at the Halloween party. Linh wasn't one of them. And everyone knows, oops. What do I do now?
Trung lay next to me on my bed, tugging at my shirt and trying to look me in the eye, but I continue to stare straight through his pleading eyes at the ceiling. Both our sweat began running down onto my pillow and blankets; it was a warm summer evening.
“Brian, talk to me. Talk about our relationship. What’s bothering you?”
I grunted and turned away from him to look at the wall. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.” I’m fine—I don’t know how many times I uttered this phrase in the last hour. But we both knew that everything was far from fine.
Trung pulled my shoulder and rolled me back onto my back. “Brian, I sat in my car for two hours outside your house waiting for you to come home. Why didn’t you tell me before I left home that you were going out to the mall? And when I called you to tell you I got to your place, why did it take you two more hours to come back?”
I motioned at the shopping bags on the floor. “I stopped by Oakridge.”
“I know that, but I’m asking you why did you feel like you could make a two-hour detour when you already knew I was at your place?”
I didn’t answer; I just stared at the ceiling again. Somewhere in my mind I pieced together the answers to his questions, but I didn’t know the right words to speak them. I just wanted to be alone, Trung. I needed to think because I couldn’t think with you around all the fucking time.
“Brian, please. What’s wrong?”
I’ve been pushing you away more and more every day because every morning when I wake up, I can see our end coming closer and closer. I’ve been growing so disillusioned; you know that picture we had of ourselves in the far distant future? How we’d just finish watching X-Files at 3 AM, and I’d be washing the dishes at the sink as you come up from behind to wrap your arms around me? Just as we normally would do now? That picture’s long since dissolved.
“Brian, say something!”
I’m guilty of keeping secrets from you Trung, secrets that I thought I could bury deep in the back of my mind. And for the longest time I did a good damn job of suppressing them, never letting them reach my conscience, but somehow, they eventually did. That pretty picture I had of us two huddled over a crib, making funny faces insides—gone. Now I just see me living alone in a beaten down apartment and getting a rejection letter from the adoption agency.
“Brian, we’ve been together for twenty months now. Every time we’ve fought, it’s always been like this Brian, you being angry about something me trying to figure out what’s wrong. I can’t always do this. You have to grow up and change some time.”
I finally turned toward Trung and met with his pleading eyes. I gazed into them, and I knew that this argument would be the one argument that I couldn’t get out of, the one argument in which I actually had to say something. “How about I write you a letter?”
Runaway: Part 1
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
“Murrieta really is in the middle of nowhere.” I stared out the window and couldn’t see anything but black silhouettes of passing scenery and the road in the car’s headlights. I turned around to glance at Ron and his girlfriend Renee in the backseat, completely knocked out in each other’s arms. I sighed. “Still hot.”
“Neeeext.” Walden’s voice wobbled and wavered. Save for a few fingers clingly onto the bottom of his steering wheel, his arms rested dead in his lap. His eyes looked glazed, and I could tell when he did and didn’t focus on the road. If I didn’t want us all to crash and die, I had to keep him awake.
“The end of your guys’ first hell week and your guys’ first performance—you guys really killed it today.”
“Thanks.” Walden’s voice remained just as flat.
“Okay, you guys are tired. Yet here we all are, going straight to the Halloween party right now.”
“Alcohol wakes us up. Are you going to drink?”
I shrugged. “Depends on the person who invited me.”
Walden scoffed. “Neeeext. I still can’t see it—you and Linh.”
I turned around to double-check that Ron and Renee really were asleep. “Linh and me. Why can’t you see it?”
Walden lifted his hands and shook them with each word he spoke. “Because it’s Linh. I know you pretty well now Brian, and I can tell you, Linh is not your type of guy.” Looked like Walden was fully awake now.
“He is my type of guy. He’s got that hard-ish, hypebeast-ish, ghetto-ish manly—”
“What? Are we even talking about the same Linh?”
“You don’t think he’s—”
“Of course I don’t! Lemme tell you this: Last week, during a team bonding picnic at the park, all the guys were playing basketball. Linh, who was totally uninterested, sat on the side, and he was all, ‘I’m over basketball. Let’s go shopping.’ I don’t have any problem with Linh—I like him—but I know that you get picky about certain things in a guy. Choosing shopping over basketball, is that manly enough for you?”
I bit my lip. I had to admit to my shallow-ass self that my heart sank a little when I heard that he opted for shopping. “Well, Linh and I spent a whole night together, and I didn’t sense a single ounce of gayness on him.”
“Fine Brian. You haven’t been around him long enough, but you’ll eventually see. And when you see it, I’ll be there to tell you, ‘I told ya so.’”
“We’ll see. But I’m sure that he is a keeper.”
We got to Linh’s place in Murrieta half an hour later. We parked outside his house and I retrieved my costume from the trunk: a giant, homemade cardboard pizza to be hung in front of me around my neck. I had brought a yellow shirt to wear underneath it, but I figured, hell, it was Halloween, so I went shirtless underneath my cardboard pizza. With the four of us dressed up, Walden, Ron, Renee, and I marched up Linh’s doorstep and rang his doorbell. We waited.
A few seconds later, the door swung open and we were greeted by some Asian chick I had never seen before. I was slightly taken aback—with her heels on this girl must have been standing at six feet three inches. Her long, wavy black hair, curled eye lashes and dark eye shadow at least made her face pretty, but her breasts, which were incased by a bra probably no larger than an A-cup, nevertheless popped out unusually at me. Her small sweater revealed a flat stomach, and her short black skirt revealed long, toned legs; they even kinda had some muscle to them. My eyes twitched as I scrutinized every unusual detail of her body.
“Oh my god!” Renee spoke up. “Linh, is that you?”
I froze.
“Shit!” Ron stepped up to get a closer look. “Oh shit man I thought you actually were a girl for a minute. You outdid yourself.”
The chick—well, fuck, Linh—grabbed his bra and readjusted it. “Thanks guys.” No doubt about it, that was Linh’s voice. “Here, lemme show you where you guys can put your sleeping bags and stuff.” I watched, my feet locked in place outside on the doorstep, my mouth gaped and my eyes wide open as Linh strutted down the hall with his four-inch heels. Ron and Renee followed him inside.
Still unable to lift my feet, I turned to Walden, my face frozen with the same shocked look. He pretended to not notice, stepped one foot inside the doorway, stopped, turned his head over his shoulder to look at me, smirked, and winked. “I told ya so.”
---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009
[[Continued from where this last left off in “Promises Are Just Restraints.”]]
“SHUT THE FUCK UP TRUNG. You’re not the all-knowing smart person you think you are. This has nothing to do with peer pressure, so again, shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit.”
That silenced Trung for a few minutes, but then, he began prying again.
I wasn’t in the mood to dive into the reason. “Things have changed,” I stated. Trung further tried to get me to elaborate, but no, I left it at that.
A week later, on May 8th, the day of our 17-month anniversary, I felt ready to talk about it. Actually, I wasn’t, but Trung convinced me. 3 AM, we had just settled into bed, and Trung was lying in my arms. He brought up the argument, and soon, he got me talking. I was very hesitant.
“Remember the gay party we went to two weeks ago in Murrieta? We met a lot of people. Remember that one guy? The gay one—well, they were all gay. It was a gay party after all. Anyway, that one guy, he told us about his relationship. His two-year-relationship, which ended months prior. He made it two years. Two whole years. It must be terrible to have a relationship that long just end on you, y’know? You’d think that like, after a while, you spend a lot of months, maybe a year, working out all the kinks in the relationship, and then it’s smooth sailing from there. But this guy, he broke up after two years. I can’t believe that something that is capable of going on for two years is also capable of breaking up.
“And then, a few days later, I was looking up some dance choreography videos on YouTube to get some ideas for Breakthrough this summer. I remembered seeing a piece to Ne-Yo’s Closer that I really liked a while ago, and so I found it and went through the user’s profile. I found a link to his blog, and I read it. ...[H]e blogs a lot about his day to day life with his boyfriend. They’re in their mid-20s, and they’ve been together for seven years. I think they actually got together around eighteen, our age. Anyway, they live together, Trung. They work together for the same company, and, yeah, they live together. They travel together. They even have a dog. And, well, seven years. That’s amazing. Their relationship just seems so unbreakable.
“So all that just left me thinking. On one hand, there’s the guy who broke off a two-year relationship, and on the other hand, there’s the couple who’s maintaining a wonderful seven-year relationship. It made me think about our relationship in a way that I never thought about before. I felt disillusioned: what if we don’t last? I felt hopeful: what if we do last? And that’s when I freaked out. I was thinking about our future. You know how that freaks me out right? I never even liked it when you would plan road trips for us that’d only be like four weeks into the future. Yet, here I was questioning where we’d be in two years, in seven years. The thought of such long-term commitment freaked me out, so I tried to not think about it. But then that just freaked me out some more. You know me Trung. I need control, I need direction, I need to know where I am heading. It’s only when I know where I’m heading toward in the future, I can feel fine moving through the present. So, I thought about our future, but, BAM! Vicious cycle. My fear of commitment came out and freaked me out, so I stopped thinking about the future, but lacking a clear vision of the future freaked me out, so I thought about the future again, and yeah yeah yeah.
“And now, well, I’m less freaked out about it. I learned to half think about the future and to half ignore it. I don’t know what I mean by that, but it’s what I do to keep myself going.”
I paused to wait for Trung’s reaction. He ventured a few comments, telling me that there is no such thing as smooth sailing, but it’s the way I live day to day that determines my future, a future no farther than the next day. Live my life, basically. Cliché advice, but he managed to put it in a different way that made me feel somewhat comforted. I shifted a little bit in bed and realized that I had been shifting quite a bit actually. I was the one lying in Trung’s arms now.
“Sometimes, uh, um, well, you know the game we play, Trung? The hypothetical one. You ask hypothetical questions about...about kids. How I would raise them. Like, you ask me what I would do if my daughter became an anime-loving emo kid or came home knocked up or brought home a boyfriend who was clearly an abusive asshole. Or if my son demanded to take ballet and quit breakdancing. We’ve always played this game since we started going out, and we’ve always had this unwritten and unspoken rule: In these hypothetical situations, I act alone. Single Parent. It was a good rule; I would’ve insisted on keeping it if that rule was every brought up. Every once in a while, you’d throw in black John, who is living on my sofa, and Peter, who I borrow money from, and Miranda, who still keeps on missing out on dinners at my house—er, apartment. But still, I am stuck handling these child-raising hypothetical situations without help. And well, I was thinking, maybe, every once in a while, you...”
A part of me told me to not finish the sentence, but I was already at the point of no return. I had to say it. Tears were pushing against the back of my eyes.
“Maybe you could be with me in the situations every once in a while. Help me out a bit, y’know?”
As I uttered the question, I felt Trung’s embrace tighten. He nodded. It was a slow nod. And I buried my face in his chest, soaking in every little second I was there with him. I felt so warm, and so... and, I let out a sniffle, and some heavy breaths, and soon, I was sobbing. Crying. Soaking Trung’s wife beater. He was concerned, but no, I reassured him, “Trung, don’t worry, no, no. I’m not crying out of, out of sadness. No, I’m not sad.
“Trung, I’m happy. That’s all Trung. That’s it. I’m just happy.”
“Neeeext.” Walden’s voice wobbled and wavered. Save for a few fingers clingly onto the bottom of his steering wheel, his arms rested dead in his lap. His eyes looked glazed, and I could tell when he did and didn’t focus on the road. If I didn’t want us all to crash and die, I had to keep him awake.
“The end of your guys’ first hell week and your guys’ first performance—you guys really killed it today.”
“Thanks.” Walden’s voice remained just as flat.
“Okay, you guys are tired. Yet here we all are, going straight to the Halloween party right now.”
“Alcohol wakes us up. Are you going to drink?”
I shrugged. “Depends on the person who invited me.”
Walden scoffed. “Neeeext. I still can’t see it—you and Linh.”
I turned around to double-check that Ron and Renee really were asleep. “Linh and me. Why can’t you see it?”
Walden lifted his hands and shook them with each word he spoke. “Because it’s Linh. I know you pretty well now Brian, and I can tell you, Linh is not your type of guy.” Looked like Walden was fully awake now.
“He is my type of guy. He’s got that hard-ish, hypebeast-ish, ghetto-ish manly—”
“What? Are we even talking about the same Linh?”
“You don’t think he’s—”
“Of course I don’t! Lemme tell you this: Last week, during a team bonding picnic at the park, all the guys were playing basketball. Linh, who was totally uninterested, sat on the side, and he was all, ‘I’m over basketball. Let’s go shopping.’ I don’t have any problem with Linh—I like him—but I know that you get picky about certain things in a guy. Choosing shopping over basketball, is that manly enough for you?”
I bit my lip. I had to admit to my shallow-ass self that my heart sank a little when I heard that he opted for shopping. “Well, Linh and I spent a whole night together, and I didn’t sense a single ounce of gayness on him.”
“Fine Brian. You haven’t been around him long enough, but you’ll eventually see. And when you see it, I’ll be there to tell you, ‘I told ya so.’”
“We’ll see. But I’m sure that he is a keeper.”
We got to Linh’s place in Murrieta half an hour later. We parked outside his house and I retrieved my costume from the trunk: a giant, homemade cardboard pizza to be hung in front of me around my neck. I had brought a yellow shirt to wear underneath it, but I figured, hell, it was Halloween, so I went shirtless underneath my cardboard pizza. With the four of us dressed up, Walden, Ron, Renee, and I marched up Linh’s doorstep and rang his doorbell. We waited.
A few seconds later, the door swung open and we were greeted by some Asian chick I had never seen before. I was slightly taken aback—with her heels on this girl must have been standing at six feet three inches. Her long, wavy black hair, curled eye lashes and dark eye shadow at least made her face pretty, but her breasts, which were incased by a bra probably no larger than an A-cup, nevertheless popped out unusually at me. Her small sweater revealed a flat stomach, and her short black skirt revealed long, toned legs; they even kinda had some muscle to them. My eyes twitched as I scrutinized every unusual detail of her body.
“Oh my god!” Renee spoke up. “Linh, is that you?”
I froze.
“Shit!” Ron stepped up to get a closer look. “Oh shit man I thought you actually were a girl for a minute. You outdid yourself.”
The chick—well, fuck, Linh—grabbed his bra and readjusted it. “Thanks guys.” No doubt about it, that was Linh’s voice. “Here, lemme show you where you guys can put your sleeping bags and stuff.” I watched, my feet locked in place outside on the doorstep, my mouth gaped and my eyes wide open as Linh strutted down the hall with his four-inch heels. Ron and Renee followed him inside.
Still unable to lift my feet, I turned to Walden, my face frozen with the same shocked look. He pretended to not notice, stepped one foot inside the doorway, stopped, turned his head over his shoulder to look at me, smirked, and winked. “I told ya so.”
---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009
[[Continued from where this last left off in “Promises Are Just Restraints.”]]
“SHUT THE FUCK UP TRUNG. You’re not the all-knowing smart person you think you are. This has nothing to do with peer pressure, so again, shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit.”
That silenced Trung for a few minutes, but then, he began prying again.
I wasn’t in the mood to dive into the reason. “Things have changed,” I stated. Trung further tried to get me to elaborate, but no, I left it at that.
A week later, on May 8th, the day of our 17-month anniversary, I felt ready to talk about it. Actually, I wasn’t, but Trung convinced me. 3 AM, we had just settled into bed, and Trung was lying in my arms. He brought up the argument, and soon, he got me talking. I was very hesitant.
“Remember the gay party we went to two weeks ago in Murrieta? We met a lot of people. Remember that one guy? The gay one—well, they were all gay. It was a gay party after all. Anyway, that one guy, he told us about his relationship. His two-year-relationship, which ended months prior. He made it two years. Two whole years. It must be terrible to have a relationship that long just end on you, y’know? You’d think that like, after a while, you spend a lot of months, maybe a year, working out all the kinks in the relationship, and then it’s smooth sailing from there. But this guy, he broke up after two years. I can’t believe that something that is capable of going on for two years is also capable of breaking up.
“And then, a few days later, I was looking up some dance choreography videos on YouTube to get some ideas for Breakthrough this summer. I remembered seeing a piece to Ne-Yo’s Closer that I really liked a while ago, and so I found it and went through the user’s profile. I found a link to his blog, and I read it. ...[H]e blogs a lot about his day to day life with his boyfriend. They’re in their mid-20s, and they’ve been together for seven years. I think they actually got together around eighteen, our age. Anyway, they live together, Trung. They work together for the same company, and, yeah, they live together. They travel together. They even have a dog. And, well, seven years. That’s amazing. Their relationship just seems so unbreakable.
“So all that just left me thinking. On one hand, there’s the guy who broke off a two-year relationship, and on the other hand, there’s the couple who’s maintaining a wonderful seven-year relationship. It made me think about our relationship in a way that I never thought about before. I felt disillusioned: what if we don’t last? I felt hopeful: what if we do last? And that’s when I freaked out. I was thinking about our future. You know how that freaks me out right? I never even liked it when you would plan road trips for us that’d only be like four weeks into the future. Yet, here I was questioning where we’d be in two years, in seven years. The thought of such long-term commitment freaked me out, so I tried to not think about it. But then that just freaked me out some more. You know me Trung. I need control, I need direction, I need to know where I am heading. It’s only when I know where I’m heading toward in the future, I can feel fine moving through the present. So, I thought about our future, but, BAM! Vicious cycle. My fear of commitment came out and freaked me out, so I stopped thinking about the future, but lacking a clear vision of the future freaked me out, so I thought about the future again, and yeah yeah yeah.
“And now, well, I’m less freaked out about it. I learned to half think about the future and to half ignore it. I don’t know what I mean by that, but it’s what I do to keep myself going.”
I paused to wait for Trung’s reaction. He ventured a few comments, telling me that there is no such thing as smooth sailing, but it’s the way I live day to day that determines my future, a future no farther than the next day. Live my life, basically. Cliché advice, but he managed to put it in a different way that made me feel somewhat comforted. I shifted a little bit in bed and realized that I had been shifting quite a bit actually. I was the one lying in Trung’s arms now.
“Sometimes, uh, um, well, you know the game we play, Trung? The hypothetical one. You ask hypothetical questions about...about kids. How I would raise them. Like, you ask me what I would do if my daughter became an anime-loving emo kid or came home knocked up or brought home a boyfriend who was clearly an abusive asshole. Or if my son demanded to take ballet and quit breakdancing. We’ve always played this game since we started going out, and we’ve always had this unwritten and unspoken rule: In these hypothetical situations, I act alone. Single Parent. It was a good rule; I would’ve insisted on keeping it if that rule was every brought up. Every once in a while, you’d throw in black John, who is living on my sofa, and Peter, who I borrow money from, and Miranda, who still keeps on missing out on dinners at my house—er, apartment. But still, I am stuck handling these child-raising hypothetical situations without help. And well, I was thinking, maybe, every once in a while, you...”
A part of me told me to not finish the sentence, but I was already at the point of no return. I had to say it. Tears were pushing against the back of my eyes.
“Maybe you could be with me in the situations every once in a while. Help me out a bit, y’know?”
As I uttered the question, I felt Trung’s embrace tighten. He nodded. It was a slow nod. And I buried my face in his chest, soaking in every little second I was there with him. I felt so warm, and so... and, I let out a sniffle, and some heavy breaths, and soon, I was sobbing. Crying. Soaking Trung’s wife beater. He was concerned, but no, I reassured him, “Trung, don’t worry, no, no. I’m not crying out of, out of sadness. No, I’m not sad.
“Trung, I’m happy. That’s all Trung. That’s it. I’m just happy.”
Status Quo
Monday, November 15, 2010
Walden and I somehow ended up staying at the party until 3 AM, one hour longer than I had planned. The party was at the house of one of his team’s directors, and I had only planned on stopping by for a few minutes to get Walden and head to Fullerton apartments to wish a friend a happy birthday. But, of course, he needed to sober up before leaving.
When we got to the Fullerton apartments, our birthday friend was already passed out, so Walden and I just sat at the kitchen table and talked. Well, he waved a handle of Brandy in my face first.
“Take some shots Brian!”
I cringed and pushed it away. “No thanks. Anyway,” it was time for a swift topic change, “I still feel pretty weird about going to parties with your team.”
“Why?” He put the Brandy and a shot glass down and totally forgot about them. “It’s nearly the last week of October and you’ve known a lot of them for a month now. And I saw you sitting on that couch, chattin’ people up.”
“Yeah, I met the dancers on your team from Riverside, like Linh. He’s interesting. He was pulling at my forearms hairs when he sat next to me.”
“Boom, there you go. You don’t always need me to be around anymore at the parties I invite you to. And yeah, Linh’s like that. Now take some shots!”
I saw Walden reach for the Brandy again, so I leaned forward to cut him off. “So what was that one thing you wanted to tell me after we left the party?”
Walden retracted his arm. “Oh yeah! You know what I thought was funny?”
I relaxed back into my chair. “What?”
“I thought it was funny that when the people inside asked you if pussies tasted sour, you answered that you never thought about the taste before. It made me stop and think.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Because it was such a cleverly neutral answer. If you were straight, then your answer would’ve meant that you just get so into pussy-eating that you don’t care about the taste. If you were gay, which you are, then your answer would’ve meant that you never thought about it because you never had nor would ever lick a pussy.”
“Yeah, I give answers like that. I told ya that the one thing I don’t lie about is that I suck dick.”
“But you don’t tell the truth about it either.”
“Oh yeah, but who considers lying by omission to be real lying anyway?”
“I just don’t understand. I understand Henry, J.P., Harold, and all my past exs’ situations: they were simply in the closet, and they were in there deep. Some had girlfriends before me, and some after me. But I don’t get you.”
“Why not?”
“Because, you’re not confused. You admit that you’re gay—well, that you ‘suck dick.’ You’re comfortable enough with it that you have no problem talking and joking about it, and you have no problem trying to get at other guys. But at the same time you don’t tell others, and you actively try to hide it by making an effort to come off as straight. Yet at the same time you told me that you were gay—”
“I didn’t tell you that I sucked dick.”
“I knew when you told me, out of no where, that you thought Ron was hot.”
I lifted my hand to oppose, but then I dropped it and sighed. “Damn, he is hella hot though.”
“Yeah. Too bad he has a girlfriend. Anyway, you revealed yourself to me about your dick sucking long before you’ve revealed it to friends you’ve known longer. Lianne, who you auditioned with in September, didn’t know until I let it slip last week. I thought she would’ve known since you spent an entire week cleaning audition pieces with her. So what’s the deal? What’s the logic behind when you’re out of the closet and when you’re in the closet?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I paused to think. I really wasn’t sure. “There’s a reason, but I don’t know what it is, as in, I don’t know how to describe it in words.”
“Is it because you’re afraid?”
“Oh god, no. Of course not. I might come off as scared, but what I do is intentional, trust me. Whatever I do, there’s usually a larger, ulterior motive at play.”
“What’s your ulterior motive?”
“Like I said, I don’t know how to put it in words. But you’ll be the first person I’ll tell when I find the right ones.”
“Boom, it’s settled then. I can’t wait to hear.”
“Since we’re on the topic of closet guys,” I could sense that Walden wanted to once again offer me a shot, “how are you and Henry doing?”
“Oh, Henry.” Walden leaned back in his chair and rolled his head toward the ceiling. “Henry Henry Henry. He knows that I don’t want to go out with another closet guy because I’ve told him about my bad history with closet guys, but he doesn’t want to come out either because he’s still freaked out. I don’t think we’re going to happen, so you can have him. I know you want him.”
“What? You guys belong together!”
“Stop trying to act all nice! I notice the way you eye him because you’re sooo obvious. It’s ok. You’re far more attractive than I am. You guys can be two closet guys together in a closet relationship where you can discuss your closet desires.”
“Seriously Walden, I think you belong with Henry. I’m not going to swoop in and take him away. I’m not that shady. Plus, I wouldn’t want Henry to deal with the misfortune of liking me.”
“Why not?”
“You know the whole story. I hurt the ones I love, or even somewhat like. Always. It’s bound to happen. Sometimes right away and sometimes later on. And it’s not limited to boyfriends either: Parents, and sometimes guys that I even only like just a little bit.”
Walden leaned forward to stare me in the eye. I backed up, feeling a little weirded out until he finally sat straight up, snapped his finger and pointed at me. I could see whatever epiphany he might’ve just had in his face. “You know what I think the problem is?” he said.
“What?”
“The first few times with the people you loved, you just happened to hurt them, because seriously, how do you not eventually hurt your parents or someone you’re going out with? And because of the first few times, you walk into your next relationships with the mindset that you’re already going to do something to fuck up, and that makes you fuck up.”
I shrugged. “That sounds reasonable, I guess. But...”
“But what?”
“The only difference is that when I hurt someone, I think I...” I crouched closer toward Walden and lowered my voice. “Honestly I think I like it sometimes. Like, I actually enjoy it, somewhat.”
“Oh.” Walden glanced to the side before turning back to face me. “Well that’s pretty different.”
I nodded.
“Just don’t do all that. If you really want to build a relationship with someone, don’t lie and don’t be all shady, like right now and how you’re obviously trying to avoid taking a shot by thinking you can get me distracted.”
I half-ass feigned an innocent and shocked look on my face. “What are you even talking about?”
“I told you last week, after you admitted to me about how you dumped your shot cup into mine before drinking out of it at my birthday party, if you don’t want to drink, just tell me with a stern face, a serious voice, and not all that laughy smiley shit you do, ‘Walden, I do not want to drink tonight.’ Tell me it twice or three times, and, I, being the respectful kind of guy I am, will leave you alone for the night.”
Coming face to face with the dopey smiling face Walden always had on, it was pretty hard to force my own stern face. “Walden,” I furrowed my eye brows and bit my lips before continuing, “I don’t wanna drink tonight.”
He dropped his shoulders and nodded at me, and then he turned to the Brandy and pushed it to the other end of the table. “See? You often forget that honesty actually is the best way out sometimes.”
When we got to the Fullerton apartments, our birthday friend was already passed out, so Walden and I just sat at the kitchen table and talked. Well, he waved a handle of Brandy in my face first.
“Take some shots Brian!”
I cringed and pushed it away. “No thanks. Anyway,” it was time for a swift topic change, “I still feel pretty weird about going to parties with your team.”
“Why?” He put the Brandy and a shot glass down and totally forgot about them. “It’s nearly the last week of October and you’ve known a lot of them for a month now. And I saw you sitting on that couch, chattin’ people up.”
“Yeah, I met the dancers on your team from Riverside, like Linh. He’s interesting. He was pulling at my forearms hairs when he sat next to me.”
“Boom, there you go. You don’t always need me to be around anymore at the parties I invite you to. And yeah, Linh’s like that. Now take some shots!”
I saw Walden reach for the Brandy again, so I leaned forward to cut him off. “So what was that one thing you wanted to tell me after we left the party?”
Walden retracted his arm. “Oh yeah! You know what I thought was funny?”
I relaxed back into my chair. “What?”
“I thought it was funny that when the people inside asked you if pussies tasted sour, you answered that you never thought about the taste before. It made me stop and think.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Because it was such a cleverly neutral answer. If you were straight, then your answer would’ve meant that you just get so into pussy-eating that you don’t care about the taste. If you were gay, which you are, then your answer would’ve meant that you never thought about it because you never had nor would ever lick a pussy.”
“Yeah, I give answers like that. I told ya that the one thing I don’t lie about is that I suck dick.”
“But you don’t tell the truth about it either.”
“Oh yeah, but who considers lying by omission to be real lying anyway?”
“I just don’t understand. I understand Henry, J.P., Harold, and all my past exs’ situations: they were simply in the closet, and they were in there deep. Some had girlfriends before me, and some after me. But I don’t get you.”
“Why not?”
“Because, you’re not confused. You admit that you’re gay—well, that you ‘suck dick.’ You’re comfortable enough with it that you have no problem talking and joking about it, and you have no problem trying to get at other guys. But at the same time you don’t tell others, and you actively try to hide it by making an effort to come off as straight. Yet at the same time you told me that you were gay—”
“I didn’t tell you that I sucked dick.”
“I knew when you told me, out of no where, that you thought Ron was hot.”
I lifted my hand to oppose, but then I dropped it and sighed. “Damn, he is hella hot though.”
“Yeah. Too bad he has a girlfriend. Anyway, you revealed yourself to me about your dick sucking long before you’ve revealed it to friends you’ve known longer. Lianne, who you auditioned with in September, didn’t know until I let it slip last week. I thought she would’ve known since you spent an entire week cleaning audition pieces with her. So what’s the deal? What’s the logic behind when you’re out of the closet and when you’re in the closet?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I paused to think. I really wasn’t sure. “There’s a reason, but I don’t know what it is, as in, I don’t know how to describe it in words.”
“Is it because you’re afraid?”
“Oh god, no. Of course not. I might come off as scared, but what I do is intentional, trust me. Whatever I do, there’s usually a larger, ulterior motive at play.”
“What’s your ulterior motive?”
“Like I said, I don’t know how to put it in words. But you’ll be the first person I’ll tell when I find the right ones.”
“Boom, it’s settled then. I can’t wait to hear.”
“Since we’re on the topic of closet guys,” I could sense that Walden wanted to once again offer me a shot, “how are you and Henry doing?”
“Oh, Henry.” Walden leaned back in his chair and rolled his head toward the ceiling. “Henry Henry Henry. He knows that I don’t want to go out with another closet guy because I’ve told him about my bad history with closet guys, but he doesn’t want to come out either because he’s still freaked out. I don’t think we’re going to happen, so you can have him. I know you want him.”
“What? You guys belong together!”
“Stop trying to act all nice! I notice the way you eye him because you’re sooo obvious. It’s ok. You’re far more attractive than I am. You guys can be two closet guys together in a closet relationship where you can discuss your closet desires.”
“Seriously Walden, I think you belong with Henry. I’m not going to swoop in and take him away. I’m not that shady. Plus, I wouldn’t want Henry to deal with the misfortune of liking me.”
“Why not?”
“You know the whole story. I hurt the ones I love, or even somewhat like. Always. It’s bound to happen. Sometimes right away and sometimes later on. And it’s not limited to boyfriends either: Parents, and sometimes guys that I even only like just a little bit.”
Walden leaned forward to stare me in the eye. I backed up, feeling a little weirded out until he finally sat straight up, snapped his finger and pointed at me. I could see whatever epiphany he might’ve just had in his face. “You know what I think the problem is?” he said.
“What?”
“The first few times with the people you loved, you just happened to hurt them, because seriously, how do you not eventually hurt your parents or someone you’re going out with? And because of the first few times, you walk into your next relationships with the mindset that you’re already going to do something to fuck up, and that makes you fuck up.”
I shrugged. “That sounds reasonable, I guess. But...”
“But what?”
“The only difference is that when I hurt someone, I think I...” I crouched closer toward Walden and lowered my voice. “Honestly I think I like it sometimes. Like, I actually enjoy it, somewhat.”
“Oh.” Walden glanced to the side before turning back to face me. “Well that’s pretty different.”
I nodded.
“Just don’t do all that. If you really want to build a relationship with someone, don’t lie and don’t be all shady, like right now and how you’re obviously trying to avoid taking a shot by thinking you can get me distracted.”
I half-ass feigned an innocent and shocked look on my face. “What are you even talking about?”
“I told you last week, after you admitted to me about how you dumped your shot cup into mine before drinking out of it at my birthday party, if you don’t want to drink, just tell me with a stern face, a serious voice, and not all that laughy smiley shit you do, ‘Walden, I do not want to drink tonight.’ Tell me it twice or three times, and, I, being the respectful kind of guy I am, will leave you alone for the night.”
Coming face to face with the dopey smiling face Walden always had on, it was pretty hard to force my own stern face. “Walden,” I furrowed my eye brows and bit my lips before continuing, “I don’t wanna drink tonight.”
He dropped his shoulders and nodded at me, and then he turned to the Brandy and pushed it to the other end of the table. “See? You often forget that honesty actually is the best way out sometimes.”
Tags:
fall 2010,
gay,
relationships,
socal,
walden
My Testimony: Part 2
Saturday, October 16, 2010
“God Loves You” (continued)
9 o’clock came pretty quickly. I tossed my apron into the hamper, clocked out, said goodnight to the chefs and my coworkers, and I walked out the door. The girl and her three friends were in front sitting on a ledge. I smiled and greeted them, and they finally introduced themselves. The girl who God supposedly spoke to was Cindy.
They all talked a little bit about their backgrounds: They were third years, didn’t know any first-years really, weren’t part of any kind of on-campus religious club. And I talked a little bit about mine.
“Do you believe in God?” Cindy asked.
“I used to not to,” I answered. “But, you guys caught me in this period where I just don’t know anymore. You guys have come at a really strange time for me, not just because of that. You know how you said I needed to be healed? You’re right, and I don’t know how you’re right.”
They asked me to tell them about it, and, surprising myself, I confessed my family’s situation to them. “My dad’s nephew, who lived in Vietnam, died in a motorcycle accident. He was nineteen, my age. It happened last Tuesday. My mom told me through email. She wrote that the loss is really hard for my dad, and in all their years of marriage, she has never seen him cry until now.”
I paused to reflect, and then I continued, “I still haven’t talked to them on the phone about it. I owe them a call, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Among all this stress about finals and a research paper and so many other things, calling them has been on the very back of my mind.”
“My condolences to you and your family. God will help you all through this,” Cindy reassured me. “Would you like us to pray for you now?”
“Alright, I’m almost ready,” I said, “but first, can you explain to me again how exactly God talked to you, Cindy?”
She was happy to. “We were sitting upstairs in the dining hall eating. And when we prayed, God just spoke to me. He said a guy in glasses who worked here needed to be healed, both him and his family. And he told me your name, Brian.”
Guy in glasses... Guy. In. Glasses. This phrase struck me somehow.
“Are you ready?” Cindy asked.
“I am.” Each of the four laid a hand on my shoulders, two on each side. I watched them close their eyes and slowly drop their heads down; I followed suite and listened to their prayers, but sometimes I couldn’t help but distract myself. Guy in glasses. Why couldn’t I get that phrase out of my mind?
A sentence of their prayer stuck out to me: “God loves you. He created you the way you are.”
Guy in glasses. I couldn’t get it out of my mind because it definitely rung a bell.
“You may be confused about where you are in your life now, and you may be afraid of the future. But remember that God is there for you, to see you through all this. Let him open your heart to new possibilities, new adventures. Do not be afraid of the future.”
Motherfucking guy in the motherfucking glasses. Where the hell did I know this phrase from?!
“God is waiting for you, and he will happily come to you when you are ready to open your heart to God.”
They stopped. I open my eyes. “Is that it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t deny it, I felt somewhat calmer and at ease, except for the, well, you know, GUY IN GLASSES.
They then asked me if I wanted to convert, to which I said that I wasn’t ready. I was still skeptical. Cindy repeated the bit about how God would welcome me with open arms when I decided it was time to “receive Jesus.”
Before parting ways, I declined exchanging numbers, but we agreed to find each other on facebook. I shook each of their hands and thanked them again for the prayer, and we slowly broke our circle to head back to our homes.
---
Walden and I arrived back at the Fullerton apartment with a pound of “XXX spicy” shrimp (“porno spicy” shrimp, as Walden likes to call it) and a pint of gumbo from Boiling Crab. We spread it all out over the kitchen table and dug in with our fingers. The gumbo was delicious, but porno spicy shrimp was disappointingly not spicy. Still all good though.
“So,” I said, “ever since my dance interview yesterday, I’ve wanted to write a thank you note on Facebook to some of my friends who have really helped me with my dancing, but I’m not sure if I should do it.”
“Why not?” Walden asked.
“I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“What are you talking about? How’d the interview go yesterday?”
“I don’t know, Walden. I think it went pretty well, but I’d say that I’m still as likely as I am unlikely to get onto the team. Right now I’m just going crazy and hating life because the final roster won’t be posted until this Sunday, the 17th.”
“Why are you hating life? You should be happy and proud. You got an interview! Damn, you knocked like fifty other people out!”
“I don’t know, Walden. I’ve been trying to believe that the interview means something, but it’s hard for me. I’ve only been able to focus on the wait, which has been torture, and sometimes I feel like I would’ve been better off without ever getting that interview. At this point, I’m so close. I have to go all the way or else everything leading up to this will have been in vain.”
“Can’t you just appreciate that you’ve made it this far?”
“I don’t know. I just doubt myself. Full of doubts, like always.” I took a sip from my gumbo.
“Brian,” Walden said as he licked the spicy sauce off his fingers, “you are a great dancer. The fact that I’m saying it and the fact that you got an interview are enough to make it true. You can believe it. Believe me.”
“I guess...my problem is I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe others. I don’t believe, period.”
“It’s time to start believing Brian. You’ve grown so much since I first saw you in my summer intensive session. Why don’t you believe?”
“Because every time I believe,” I paused to wipe some gumbo off my hands, “I get fucked over. I get hurt.”
---
“God Loves You” (continued)
Finally understanding the significance of the “guy in glasses,” I retreated back into the dining common’s kitchen and strode straight to the conveyor belt where all the students dropped off their dirty dishes. On the wall next to the belt hung a bunch of feedback cards. Why were the feedback cards my main interest?
Last week, despaired over the little amount of hours I had been working each week, I asked my friend Mary to get a feedback card, write something nice about me and demand that I get more hours.
I searched the wall for that feedback card, and it didn’t take me long to locate it. And there it was in the first sentence of Mary’s comments: “The guy with glasses and earrings who was cleaning tables today was really good!” Okay...However, Mary didn’t write my name. How could’ve Cindy figured out my name?
The next section of the feedback card, under “Our [Manager’s] response,” had the answer. Again, the first sentence gave it away. “Brian is our dining room attendant...”
I gazed. I gazed long. And hard. At the card. This was it. This had to be the answer, no doubt about it. It was how they knew my name, and how they knew what I looked like. But then again, to go up to a stranger and start getting all God-crazy and extremely personal with them, that is pretty damn ballsy. Cindy was so forward, so unashamed. I saw it in her: She definitely believed in God. But did God really tell her about me? If I was her, and if God didn’t actually talk to me, I would not have the balls to pursue a name that I read in a dining hall’s feedback section. But maybe she was just fucking crazy.
And the whole thing about my family needing healing? Well, that was probably just her sales pitch. I mean, don’t like ninety-nine percent of college students have some kind of problem with their family? For me, it was probably more obvious that I did. I was after all working at my school’s dining common. My posture probably doesn’t convey positive messages about myself either. At the very least, Cindy probably thought that she could hit a poverty nerve in my family. (And hell, there is one. My dad’s been laid off and out of a job for a while, and I’m working at Pippin because my parents can’t afford to give me one hundred dollars a month for groceries anymore.) All this was like a horoscope, y’know? Horoscopes are made to be extremely broad and applicable to anyone, and anyone who wants to believe, believes too much.
[...]
When I got back to the hall, the first thing I did was I called my parents. They were happy to hear from me. We chatted a little bit about work, my schoolwork, my parents’ life at home, and probably drawing from his pain toward the motorcycle accident, my dad reminded me to always drive very carefully. I promised him I would.
Last but not least, I went on Facebook, and I looked up one of Cindy’s three friends, John. There he was. UCI class of ‘10. His profile was decked out with his love for God and a bunch of religious sayings. My mouse hovered over the friend request button, but my finger couldn’t make contact. I gazed long and hard again at his picture, his profile, and all the amazing things he had to say about God and what God had done for him.
Fuck this. I hauled my mouse off the friend request button and signed the hell off Facebook.
---
It was another typical morning in lecture, except this time I didn’t sleep straight through the entire thing. I booted up my laptop, and with a blank note open on Facebook, my fingers went to work on my keyboard:
This interview is the closest I’ve ever been, so close that I figured I had to get in, or else all I’ve done so far would’ve meant nothing. But after the interview, and after talking to a few friends, I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve already accomplished. And what I’ve accomplished, I think it’s enough to warrant a small thank you entry, something I’ve wanted to do for a while but never found the occasion to. Right now I just wanna thank a few people that I think had a really huge impact on my dancing, the ones who have been an inspiration and a great help. I might write thank you’s to some more later. But for now, I’d like to say thank you to...
The roster comes out Sunday.
9 o’clock came pretty quickly. I tossed my apron into the hamper, clocked out, said goodnight to the chefs and my coworkers, and I walked out the door. The girl and her three friends were in front sitting on a ledge. I smiled and greeted them, and they finally introduced themselves. The girl who God supposedly spoke to was Cindy.
They all talked a little bit about their backgrounds: They were third years, didn’t know any first-years really, weren’t part of any kind of on-campus religious club. And I talked a little bit about mine.
“Do you believe in God?” Cindy asked.
“I used to not to,” I answered. “But, you guys caught me in this period where I just don’t know anymore. You guys have come at a really strange time for me, not just because of that. You know how you said I needed to be healed? You’re right, and I don’t know how you’re right.”
They asked me to tell them about it, and, surprising myself, I confessed my family’s situation to them. “My dad’s nephew, who lived in Vietnam, died in a motorcycle accident. He was nineteen, my age. It happened last Tuesday. My mom told me through email. She wrote that the loss is really hard for my dad, and in all their years of marriage, she has never seen him cry until now.”
I paused to reflect, and then I continued, “I still haven’t talked to them on the phone about it. I owe them a call, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Among all this stress about finals and a research paper and so many other things, calling them has been on the very back of my mind.”
“My condolences to you and your family. God will help you all through this,” Cindy reassured me. “Would you like us to pray for you now?”
“Alright, I’m almost ready,” I said, “but first, can you explain to me again how exactly God talked to you, Cindy?”
She was happy to. “We were sitting upstairs in the dining hall eating. And when we prayed, God just spoke to me. He said a guy in glasses who worked here needed to be healed, both him and his family. And he told me your name, Brian.”
Guy in glasses... Guy. In. Glasses. This phrase struck me somehow.
“Are you ready?” Cindy asked.
“I am.” Each of the four laid a hand on my shoulders, two on each side. I watched them close their eyes and slowly drop their heads down; I followed suite and listened to their prayers, but sometimes I couldn’t help but distract myself. Guy in glasses. Why couldn’t I get that phrase out of my mind?
A sentence of their prayer stuck out to me: “God loves you. He created you the way you are.”
Guy in glasses. I couldn’t get it out of my mind because it definitely rung a bell.
“You may be confused about where you are in your life now, and you may be afraid of the future. But remember that God is there for you, to see you through all this. Let him open your heart to new possibilities, new adventures. Do not be afraid of the future.”
Motherfucking guy in the motherfucking glasses. Where the hell did I know this phrase from?!
“God is waiting for you, and he will happily come to you when you are ready to open your heart to God.”
They stopped. I open my eyes. “Is that it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t deny it, I felt somewhat calmer and at ease, except for the, well, you know, GUY IN GLASSES.
They then asked me if I wanted to convert, to which I said that I wasn’t ready. I was still skeptical. Cindy repeated the bit about how God would welcome me with open arms when I decided it was time to “receive Jesus.”
Before parting ways, I declined exchanging numbers, but we agreed to find each other on facebook. I shook each of their hands and thanked them again for the prayer, and we slowly broke our circle to head back to our homes.
---
Walden and I arrived back at the Fullerton apartment with a pound of “XXX spicy” shrimp (“porno spicy” shrimp, as Walden likes to call it) and a pint of gumbo from Boiling Crab. We spread it all out over the kitchen table and dug in with our fingers. The gumbo was delicious, but porno spicy shrimp was disappointingly not spicy. Still all good though.
“So,” I said, “ever since my dance interview yesterday, I’ve wanted to write a thank you note on Facebook to some of my friends who have really helped me with my dancing, but I’m not sure if I should do it.”
“Why not?” Walden asked.
“I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“What are you talking about? How’d the interview go yesterday?”
“I don’t know, Walden. I think it went pretty well, but I’d say that I’m still as likely as I am unlikely to get onto the team. Right now I’m just going crazy and hating life because the final roster won’t be posted until this Sunday, the 17th.”
“Why are you hating life? You should be happy and proud. You got an interview! Damn, you knocked like fifty other people out!”
“I don’t know, Walden. I’ve been trying to believe that the interview means something, but it’s hard for me. I’ve only been able to focus on the wait, which has been torture, and sometimes I feel like I would’ve been better off without ever getting that interview. At this point, I’m so close. I have to go all the way or else everything leading up to this will have been in vain.”
“Can’t you just appreciate that you’ve made it this far?”
“I don’t know. I just doubt myself. Full of doubts, like always.” I took a sip from my gumbo.
“Brian,” Walden said as he licked the spicy sauce off his fingers, “you are a great dancer. The fact that I’m saying it and the fact that you got an interview are enough to make it true. You can believe it. Believe me.”
“I guess...my problem is I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe others. I don’t believe, period.”
“It’s time to start believing Brian. You’ve grown so much since I first saw you in my summer intensive session. Why don’t you believe?”
“Because every time I believe,” I paused to wipe some gumbo off my hands, “I get fucked over. I get hurt.”
---
“God Loves You” (continued)
Finally understanding the significance of the “guy in glasses,” I retreated back into the dining common’s kitchen and strode straight to the conveyor belt where all the students dropped off their dirty dishes. On the wall next to the belt hung a bunch of feedback cards. Why were the feedback cards my main interest?
Last week, despaired over the little amount of hours I had been working each week, I asked my friend Mary to get a feedback card, write something nice about me and demand that I get more hours.
I searched the wall for that feedback card, and it didn’t take me long to locate it. And there it was in the first sentence of Mary’s comments: “The guy with glasses and earrings who was cleaning tables today was really good!” Okay...However, Mary didn’t write my name. How could’ve Cindy figured out my name?
The next section of the feedback card, under “Our [Manager’s] response,” had the answer. Again, the first sentence gave it away. “Brian is our dining room attendant...”
I gazed. I gazed long. And hard. At the card. This was it. This had to be the answer, no doubt about it. It was how they knew my name, and how they knew what I looked like. But then again, to go up to a stranger and start getting all God-crazy and extremely personal with them, that is pretty damn ballsy. Cindy was so forward, so unashamed. I saw it in her: She definitely believed in God. But did God really tell her about me? If I was her, and if God didn’t actually talk to me, I would not have the balls to pursue a name that I read in a dining hall’s feedback section. But maybe she was just fucking crazy.
And the whole thing about my family needing healing? Well, that was probably just her sales pitch. I mean, don’t like ninety-nine percent of college students have some kind of problem with their family? For me, it was probably more obvious that I did. I was after all working at my school’s dining common. My posture probably doesn’t convey positive messages about myself either. At the very least, Cindy probably thought that she could hit a poverty nerve in my family. (And hell, there is one. My dad’s been laid off and out of a job for a while, and I’m working at Pippin because my parents can’t afford to give me one hundred dollars a month for groceries anymore.) All this was like a horoscope, y’know? Horoscopes are made to be extremely broad and applicable to anyone, and anyone who wants to believe, believes too much.
[...]
When I got back to the hall, the first thing I did was I called my parents. They were happy to hear from me. We chatted a little bit about work, my schoolwork, my parents’ life at home, and probably drawing from his pain toward the motorcycle accident, my dad reminded me to always drive very carefully. I promised him I would.
Last but not least, I went on Facebook, and I looked up one of Cindy’s three friends, John. There he was. UCI class of ‘10. His profile was decked out with his love for God and a bunch of religious sayings. My mouse hovered over the friend request button, but my finger couldn’t make contact. I gazed long and hard again at his picture, his profile, and all the amazing things he had to say about God and what God had done for him.
Fuck this. I hauled my mouse off the friend request button and signed the hell off Facebook.
---
It was another typical morning in lecture, except this time I didn’t sleep straight through the entire thing. I booted up my laptop, and with a blank note open on Facebook, my fingers went to work on my keyboard:
This interview is the closest I’ve ever been, so close that I figured I had to get in, or else all I’ve done so far would’ve meant nothing. But after the interview, and after talking to a few friends, I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve already accomplished. And what I’ve accomplished, I think it’s enough to warrant a small thank you entry, something I’ve wanted to do for a while but never found the occasion to. Right now I just wanna thank a few people that I think had a really huge impact on my dancing, the ones who have been an inspiration and a great help. I might write thank you’s to some more later. But for now, I’d like to say thank you to...
The roster comes out Sunday.
Semper Eadem
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Fuck, I feel like shit. I think I’m lying on my bed—no, no I’m not. Open your eyes. There’s the ceiling. The light’s on. Oh, I’m lying on a sofa, and I’m still wearing my jeans, and I can kinda hear the victory result screen from Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Yeah, that track’s been going on loop for a while now.
I played forward in high school. Now I’m point guard.
You playin’ for a league now?
Voices. They’ve been chatting for a while now. Their voices have been soft, almost kinda jazzy and soothing. Or am I just saying jazzy because one of them is black?
Okay, there we go. I forgot for a second; I’m in Fullerton, at a friend’s apartment. Thursday night. Walden called me and invited me over to come drink and chill, and well, fuck, I can still taste that god awful burning Brandy in my throat. Man I can taste it every time I swallow my own saliva, as if Brandy is all my glands are producing right now. Shit, I’m going to vomit if I keep on thinking about it. Think—cold crisp Crystal Geyser water, or chocolate protein shakes. Yum. Ugh, well, not the latter. Just think about the former.
Shit, did I forget to take out my contacts? Sit up. Whoa, I got up too fast. Nausea’s hitting me pretty bad. I can feel something brewing in my chest, or esophagus, or diaphragm—shit I don’t know my human anatomy, and I don’t need to be thinking about it. Just needa calm down and focus. The contacts—taking them out was the last thing I managed to do before I passed out. From all that Brandy. From the whole two god damn shots.
Fuck okay, think about the Crystal Geyser water now. Sparkling, delicious water.
I gotta burp. Fuck. Just let it be a burp. Fuck. This can be one crazy big burp, or I’m just going to explode with vomit, but I hope it’s just a burp because fuck I haven’t vomited in forever and I really hate the feeling and shit I’m in front of other people right now—better dancers than I am, way better and I am not going to fucking vomit in front of them. It’s just a burp.
Esophagus. Definitely brewing in the esophagus. Definitely not going to be a burp. POWER WALK TO THE BATHROOM LIKE EVERYTHING’S COOL. Close the door behind yourself, lift toilet seat, take a deep breath aaaaand—What the fuck that’s the spinach I had for dinner. And some more of it. And some more of it. Now I can’t breathe, and fuck why is my vomit reddish orange—oh, that’s probably the spaghetti sauce. Okay and there goes most of my vomit. I have the option of trying to force out the last of it and suffocate some more, or try to swallow it down and breathe a little more easily. Swallow. Breathe. Kinda tastes like the Brandy, or just simply alcohol because it all tastes the same to me. Head back out and plant your ass on the sofa.
I vomited, I announce. I’m not really talking to anyone but to myself, but the two guys discussing basketball are around to hear.
Dang, how many shots did you have?
Just two. Yeah, I know, I’m a one shot wonder but our friend Walden, who looks great passed out on the couch over there, made me take a second one.
I think they’re going back into their discussion about basketball now, so I’m just going to lie down and close my eyes again. I still feel like shit, but I just wanna sleep it off. Shut your eyes. Now fall asleep, damn it. Alright, that’s not going to work. I’m just too miserable. Instead I’ll try to piece together everything that happened this week that led up to this.
I remember a conversation I had with Walden, about a week ago. Sunday, past midnight. Earlier that night I auditioned for Team Millennia in Fullerton, and as always, I had doubts leading up to and after the audition. Auditions always got emotionally stressful, but what won this particular audition the award for the most emotionally overwhelming one ever by far was an impromptu visit from Ranier over the weekend.
And now Ranier had left, and auditions had finished, and I was back at home in Irvine. Walden called me because he also happened to be in Irvine practicing for a performance he was going to dance in with a project team. I met with him at the parking structure where he was practicing, and we found a corner where we could chat. I had told him that I had a lot that I wanted to get off my mind. We talked about ex’s, both mine and his, and we talked about dancing, and some more about ex’s, and some more about dancing.
Walden, I know I’ve improved, but sometimes, I watch recent videos of my own dancing and I feel like the dancing I do now hasn’t really changed from the dancing I did a year ago.
Walden regurgitated the same thing I hear from everyone, about how I really did improve. I felt a little better though, because sometimes I just needed someone to remind me of that, but my dancing wasn’t even really the main issue. My feeling like I hadn’t changed went a lot deeper than dancing.
Walden, remember the night at the kickback when I ended up taking a hit from the bong? You know why I did it? It wasn’t because you or because anyone else at that kickback convinced me. It was because I was, and still am, tired of being the person that would choose calling special ed kids stupid over keeping a relationship with his boyfriend. I’m tried of being the person who has such a strong grip on reality and logic that it’s more like a desperate grasp for dear life, and I drop emotion and anything weighing me down in order to keep holding on. Trust me when I say that I am over my last ex, and trust me when I say that I no longer believe it’s ok to call special ed kids stupid, but despite these little things, I am still the same person. What if I get into a similar situation in the future, where I find that I have to choose between my own convoluted idea of logic and reality, versus an emotion I feel, like love, or regret, or plain happiness? I know I’m going to choose the former.
Something had to change, I concluded. If I can’t change my dancing, or the choices I make, I figured I should drink.
I wanna get fucked up, I told Walden. I think if I work at it, I can really start enjoying myself, so hit me up next time you’re partying.
Brandy.
No, fuck that. Crystal Geyser water. So purifying and refreshing. Open wide for...Brandy. Fuck.
I need to burp again. It’s just a burp. There’s no way that I’ll need to vomit again. Open your eyes, sit up. Get ready to push yourself from the sofa. No, I don’t need to do this because all I really need to do is just lie back down and close my eyes and it will all go away. Then I will wake up the next morning feeling great, and then I’ll go to class and then I’ll go to my friend’s birthday party later at night and drink some more there because drinking has to be the one thing I can change, so... I. Can’t. Fucking. Vomit. Now.
Now POWERWALK TO THE BATHROOM LIKE A BOSS.
Okay, looks like I still had some spinach sitting in my stomach. I’m sure at this point it’s like I never even had dinner at all.
I played forward in high school. Now I’m point guard.
You playin’ for a league now?
Voices. They’ve been chatting for a while now. Their voices have been soft, almost kinda jazzy and soothing. Or am I just saying jazzy because one of them is black?
Okay, there we go. I forgot for a second; I’m in Fullerton, at a friend’s apartment. Thursday night. Walden called me and invited me over to come drink and chill, and well, fuck, I can still taste that god awful burning Brandy in my throat. Man I can taste it every time I swallow my own saliva, as if Brandy is all my glands are producing right now. Shit, I’m going to vomit if I keep on thinking about it. Think—cold crisp Crystal Geyser water, or chocolate protein shakes. Yum. Ugh, well, not the latter. Just think about the former.
Shit, did I forget to take out my contacts? Sit up. Whoa, I got up too fast. Nausea’s hitting me pretty bad. I can feel something brewing in my chest, or esophagus, or diaphragm—shit I don’t know my human anatomy, and I don’t need to be thinking about it. Just needa calm down and focus. The contacts—taking them out was the last thing I managed to do before I passed out. From all that Brandy. From the whole two god damn shots.
Fuck okay, think about the Crystal Geyser water now. Sparkling, delicious water.
I gotta burp. Fuck. Just let it be a burp. Fuck. This can be one crazy big burp, or I’m just going to explode with vomit, but I hope it’s just a burp because fuck I haven’t vomited in forever and I really hate the feeling and shit I’m in front of other people right now—better dancers than I am, way better and I am not going to fucking vomit in front of them. It’s just a burp.
Esophagus. Definitely brewing in the esophagus. Definitely not going to be a burp. POWER WALK TO THE BATHROOM LIKE EVERYTHING’S COOL. Close the door behind yourself, lift toilet seat, take a deep breath aaaaand—What the fuck that’s the spinach I had for dinner. And some more of it. And some more of it. Now I can’t breathe, and fuck why is my vomit reddish orange—oh, that’s probably the spaghetti sauce. Okay and there goes most of my vomit. I have the option of trying to force out the last of it and suffocate some more, or try to swallow it down and breathe a little more easily. Swallow. Breathe. Kinda tastes like the Brandy, or just simply alcohol because it all tastes the same to me. Head back out and plant your ass on the sofa.
I vomited, I announce. I’m not really talking to anyone but to myself, but the two guys discussing basketball are around to hear.
Dang, how many shots did you have?
Just two. Yeah, I know, I’m a one shot wonder but our friend Walden, who looks great passed out on the couch over there, made me take a second one.
I think they’re going back into their discussion about basketball now, so I’m just going to lie down and close my eyes again. I still feel like shit, but I just wanna sleep it off. Shut your eyes. Now fall asleep, damn it. Alright, that’s not going to work. I’m just too miserable. Instead I’ll try to piece together everything that happened this week that led up to this.
I remember a conversation I had with Walden, about a week ago. Sunday, past midnight. Earlier that night I auditioned for Team Millennia in Fullerton, and as always, I had doubts leading up to and after the audition. Auditions always got emotionally stressful, but what won this particular audition the award for the most emotionally overwhelming one ever by far was an impromptu visit from Ranier over the weekend.
And now Ranier had left, and auditions had finished, and I was back at home in Irvine. Walden called me because he also happened to be in Irvine practicing for a performance he was going to dance in with a project team. I met with him at the parking structure where he was practicing, and we found a corner where we could chat. I had told him that I had a lot that I wanted to get off my mind. We talked about ex’s, both mine and his, and we talked about dancing, and some more about ex’s, and some more about dancing.
Walden, I know I’ve improved, but sometimes, I watch recent videos of my own dancing and I feel like the dancing I do now hasn’t really changed from the dancing I did a year ago.
Walden regurgitated the same thing I hear from everyone, about how I really did improve. I felt a little better though, because sometimes I just needed someone to remind me of that, but my dancing wasn’t even really the main issue. My feeling like I hadn’t changed went a lot deeper than dancing.
Walden, remember the night at the kickback when I ended up taking a hit from the bong? You know why I did it? It wasn’t because you or because anyone else at that kickback convinced me. It was because I was, and still am, tired of being the person that would choose calling special ed kids stupid over keeping a relationship with his boyfriend. I’m tried of being the person who has such a strong grip on reality and logic that it’s more like a desperate grasp for dear life, and I drop emotion and anything weighing me down in order to keep holding on. Trust me when I say that I am over my last ex, and trust me when I say that I no longer believe it’s ok to call special ed kids stupid, but despite these little things, I am still the same person. What if I get into a similar situation in the future, where I find that I have to choose between my own convoluted idea of logic and reality, versus an emotion I feel, like love, or regret, or plain happiness? I know I’m going to choose the former.
Something had to change, I concluded. If I can’t change my dancing, or the choices I make, I figured I should drink.
I wanna get fucked up, I told Walden. I think if I work at it, I can really start enjoying myself, so hit me up next time you’re partying.
Brandy.
No, fuck that. Crystal Geyser water. So purifying and refreshing. Open wide for...Brandy. Fuck.
I need to burp again. It’s just a burp. There’s no way that I’ll need to vomit again. Open your eyes, sit up. Get ready to push yourself from the sofa. No, I don’t need to do this because all I really need to do is just lie back down and close my eyes and it will all go away. Then I will wake up the next morning feeling great, and then I’ll go to class and then I’ll go to my friend’s birthday party later at night and drink some more there because drinking has to be the one thing I can change, so... I. Can’t. Fucking. Vomit. Now.
Now POWERWALK TO THE BATHROOM LIKE A BOSS.
Okay, looks like I still had some spinach sitting in my stomach. I’m sure at this point it’s like I never even had dinner at all.
Weeds
Monday, August 2, 2010
I slouched back on a couch and watch an inebriated Alfonso play Marvel vs. Capcom against another inebriated guy. It was 3:30 AM, just an hour and a half after we all got some Mexican food and celebrated the end of our dance camp’s July session. The impromptu kickback at an apartment of a dancer we hardly ever talked to already started to die. At least, it was dying until a few others came through the door with a fresh bag of greens.
No one wasted any time. In less than a minute, people were already lighting up a bong.
After taking a few hits, one particular dancer named Walden planted himself next to me on the couch. “Since you refused to drink,” he said to me, “you have to get high.”
I rolled my eyes. “No,” I told him.
“Com’n, just one hit!”
I folded my arms. “No, and don’t bother trying. You’re not going to convince me.”
“Look, I don’t want to convince anyone to try anything that they haven’t ever done before, which is why I’m leaving your friend Kelvin alone over there, but you said you’ve tried it once before. Why not do it again?”
“Because I didn’t like it my first time.”
“Why didn’t you like it?”
“It’s complicated and it’ll take forever to explain. So just know, I didn’t like it before, and I’m not going to like it now.”
“Maybe you didn’t smoke with the right people. Maybe you need to smoke it with uuuh-uh-uh-us.” He motioned at some people standing in the kitchen chatting amongst themselves. I looked at Jacob, who was sitting on another couch taking a hit. He looked up at me and shook his head, cautioning me not to give in.
“It’s not about the people,” I said. “It’s about smoking itself. It’s the effects that I don’t like.”
“What’s wrong with the effects?”
“Look, my full reason is long and convoluted, so I’ll just tell you this: I like reality the way it already is, and I hold my perception of it really dearly to me. I don’t let anything or anyone come and change my reality and the way I perceive it. Okay?”
“So you won’t even take just one hit?” Walden asked.
“No, I won’t.”
Walden dropped his shoulders and sighed. “Ok, fine.” He lifted himself off the couch and left somewhere outside.
I sat there quiet, still slumped in my seat and twiddling my thumbs. With Walden out of my face, I buried myself deep into my thoughts, deep enough to seriously consider whether or not I wanted to do this.
“Realize what?” Trung asked.
My eyes followed a bright green sign until it disappeared over the roof of my car. Two miles until the Bay Bridge, a four-mile menace that hung some several hundred feet over a deep dark boundless body of treacherous waters. I took several deep breaths and grasped my steering wheel with both hands.
“Maybe I was wrong,” I paused to take a breath and noticed that my emotions were starting to overwhelm me. “And maybe I’ve been wrong the last entire two years.”
“Well hell yeah you’ve been wrong!” Trung chastised me. “Rainy was pretty much all you could ask for in a guy. Dancer, singer, Filipino, not a douchebag, yet you broke up with him! And for what, Brian. For what?”
“Well it was because—”
“It was so you could continue calling special ed kids stupid! So that you could make fun of students with mental disabilities for not being as smart as other kids their age.”
I kept my hands glued to the steering wheel. The last exit before the Bay Bridge was approaching in less than half a mile. Should I use this chance to escape? “It’s more than that,” I tried to rationalize. “It was about the way I think, the way I see things, which was what Ranier tried to change. And you know that I can’t let go of the way I see things. It makes me who I am, and who I’ve been for a really long time. I made a sacrifice and...”
“And what?”
There was no use rationalizing, especially since I already admitted the truth to myself. “Like I said, I—I’m wrong. I...I made the wrong choice.” My throat throbbed.
“Look Brian, I know this whole thing with you calling special ed kids stupid and your rationale for doing it—I know that this is you, that this is something you can’t and won’t change for a really long time, but...” Trung looked at me and noticed my lips quivering. “...Are you okay?” he asked.
I barely uttered the “f” in “I’m fine” when I felt every little bit of anguish pent inside of me come bursting out in an embarrassingly high-pitched wail. Tears immediately streamed down my face.
“Brian!” Trung lifted both his hands as if to do something, but his seatbelt restrained him.
“I’m...” A pant accompanied each syllable, and each syllable came out distorted by my struggle to fight back more sobbing. “I’m. Fucking. Fine. God fucking damn it!” I pried one hand off the steering wheel so I could wipe off my tears, and shielding my face from Trung, I wept under my breath and panted through my nose.
“Brian...” Trung sighed. He placed his hand on the back of my head and rubbed it gently. “It’s okay, Brian. Let it all out...and maybe you should get off the freeway before we get onto the Bay Bridge.”
I looked through the rearview mirror to see the last exit disappear behind me. It was too late to get off. But that didn’t matter. I opened my mouth and breathed out, letting the cries stagger out.
I leaned forward on the couch and scratched my head. “Alfonso,” I said. “I wanna take a hit.”
Alfonso, bong in hand, exchanged a glance with Kelvin. “Wait, what?” Kelvin said. “Did Walden change your mind?”
“No, he didn’t. Just pass me the bong.” Alfonso sat down next to me with the bong, and Jacob came over to ask me if I really wanted to do this. “Yeah,” I told him. “Don’t question my reasons. Just light it up.”
No one wasted any time. In less than a minute, people were already lighting up a bong.
After taking a few hits, one particular dancer named Walden planted himself next to me on the couch. “Since you refused to drink,” he said to me, “you have to get high.”
I rolled my eyes. “No,” I told him.
“Com’n, just one hit!”
I folded my arms. “No, and don’t bother trying. You’re not going to convince me.”
“Look, I don’t want to convince anyone to try anything that they haven’t ever done before, which is why I’m leaving your friend Kelvin alone over there, but you said you’ve tried it once before. Why not do it again?”
“Because I didn’t like it my first time.”
“Why didn’t you like it?”
“It’s complicated and it’ll take forever to explain. So just know, I didn’t like it before, and I’m not going to like it now.”
“Maybe you didn’t smoke with the right people. Maybe you need to smoke it with uuuh-uh-uh-us.” He motioned at some people standing in the kitchen chatting amongst themselves. I looked at Jacob, who was sitting on another couch taking a hit. He looked up at me and shook his head, cautioning me not to give in.
“It’s not about the people,” I said. “It’s about smoking itself. It’s the effects that I don’t like.”
“What’s wrong with the effects?”
“Look, my full reason is long and convoluted, so I’ll just tell you this: I like reality the way it already is, and I hold my perception of it really dearly to me. I don’t let anything or anyone come and change my reality and the way I perceive it. Okay?”
“So you won’t even take just one hit?” Walden asked.
“No, I won’t.”
Walden dropped his shoulders and sighed. “Ok, fine.” He lifted himself off the couch and left somewhere outside.
I sat there quiet, still slumped in my seat and twiddling my thumbs. With Walden out of my face, I buried myself deep into my thoughts, deep enough to seriously consider whether or not I wanted to do this.
“Realize what?” Trung asked.
My eyes followed a bright green sign until it disappeared over the roof of my car. Two miles until the Bay Bridge, a four-mile menace that hung some several hundred feet over a deep dark boundless body of treacherous waters. I took several deep breaths and grasped my steering wheel with both hands.
“Maybe I was wrong,” I paused to take a breath and noticed that my emotions were starting to overwhelm me. “And maybe I’ve been wrong the last entire two years.”
“Well hell yeah you’ve been wrong!” Trung chastised me. “Rainy was pretty much all you could ask for in a guy. Dancer, singer, Filipino, not a douchebag, yet you broke up with him! And for what, Brian. For what?”
“Well it was because—”
“It was so you could continue calling special ed kids stupid! So that you could make fun of students with mental disabilities for not being as smart as other kids their age.”
I kept my hands glued to the steering wheel. The last exit before the Bay Bridge was approaching in less than half a mile. Should I use this chance to escape? “It’s more than that,” I tried to rationalize. “It was about the way I think, the way I see things, which was what Ranier tried to change. And you know that I can’t let go of the way I see things. It makes me who I am, and who I’ve been for a really long time. I made a sacrifice and...”
“And what?”
There was no use rationalizing, especially since I already admitted the truth to myself. “Like I said, I—I’m wrong. I...I made the wrong choice.” My throat throbbed.
“Look Brian, I know this whole thing with you calling special ed kids stupid and your rationale for doing it—I know that this is you, that this is something you can’t and won’t change for a really long time, but...” Trung looked at me and noticed my lips quivering. “...Are you okay?” he asked.
I barely uttered the “f” in “I’m fine” when I felt every little bit of anguish pent inside of me come bursting out in an embarrassingly high-pitched wail. Tears immediately streamed down my face.
“Brian!” Trung lifted both his hands as if to do something, but his seatbelt restrained him.
“I’m...” A pant accompanied each syllable, and each syllable came out distorted by my struggle to fight back more sobbing. “I’m. Fucking. Fine. God fucking damn it!” I pried one hand off the steering wheel so I could wipe off my tears, and shielding my face from Trung, I wept under my breath and panted through my nose.
“Brian...” Trung sighed. He placed his hand on the back of my head and rubbed it gently. “It’s okay, Brian. Let it all out...and maybe you should get off the freeway before we get onto the Bay Bridge.”
I looked through the rearview mirror to see the last exit disappear behind me. It was too late to get off. But that didn’t matter. I opened my mouth and breathed out, letting the cries stagger out.
I leaned forward on the couch and scratched my head. “Alfonso,” I said. “I wanna take a hit.”
Alfonso, bong in hand, exchanged a glance with Kelvin. “Wait, what?” Kelvin said. “Did Walden change your mind?”
“No, he didn’t. Just pass me the bong.” Alfonso sat down next to me with the bong, and Jacob came over to ask me if I really wanted to do this. “Yeah,” I told him. “Don’t question my reasons. Just light it up.”
Tags:
alfonso,
flashback,
norcal,
ranier,
relationships,
socal,
summer 2010,
trung,
walden
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