APRIL 30TH, 2014

4/30/14 12:38 AM

My birthday is the first of May, which was on a Wednesday, and I worked Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning. Saturday was May 4th, so for my 23rd birthday, I threw a “Cinco De Jacob” party.

I hyped it up.
I was going to be the fucking bee’s knees.
I tweeted celebs.
Kristin Cavallari.
Shaq.
Bill Murray.

I wanted it to be big.

It wasn’t. Maybe like 25–30 people showed up. Most of them were people that I really didn’t want to celebrate my birthday with anyway. They were just people I Facebook-invited and didn’t expect to show up.

Well, they did. 

4/30/14 3:38 PM

People came in groups, and the groups didn’t break up at all, but it was indicative of what my whole life has been. There have always been multiple groups of people in my life, and those groups never interacted. I had to connect the groups. This is what was happening at Cinco De Jacob.

I had multiple groups of friends who weren’t really friends with each other. I had to entertain everyone separately. Well, my ex and I did. We were always together when we were physically together. If we weren’t, we would find each other. We’ve always gravitated toward each other.

This isn’t how it always was. When we first started dating, we would go out to the same bar and never see or talk to each other. We would individually go out with our groups of friends and act as if we weren’t dating. This was due to him being in the closet and our two friends (our college “hags,” said with love). They didn’t like each other. There we go again—groups not interacting, but me having to be the mediator.

Beyond that, we ignored each other because I think my friend was in love with me, and it seemed like she would try to keep me from him no matter what, and I allowed that to happen. It was like I didn’t want to make her mad at me because I knew she loved me, and I craved that love. I wasn’t sure if my ex loved me yet. I didn’t want to sacrifice the love that my crazy best friend had for me, even though it would never work out. I didn’t want to end up without either of them.

I was torn, but he was present at Cinco De Jacob, and she wasn’t. It wasn’t this way until I realized that he had love for me—love that she would have never supplied. He was always there for me, even when I wasn’t there for him. I can’t say the same about myself. Maybe that’s how it is now. Maybe this is karma. Maybe this is some sort of sick revenge. 

4/30/14 3:58 PM

Is he showing me what it feels like to care about someone more than the other person cares about you? That’s just conjecture. 

4/30/14 4:09 PM

I wish I could tell you more about Cinco De Jacob. I had fun—I remember that. I remember my roommates getting really drunk. I remember a lot of good music being played. There were PBRs and Malört shots. There was pot to be smoked. There was a dinosaur hat and toy dinosaurs. There was a lot of shit: a model, a European beauty, two gay couples, two dogs, five roommates, one Breaking Bad T-shirt, and one Jacob.

It was a good night. I celebrated my birthday with the man I loved. We had fought earlier in the day, but the company of friends and alcohol changed that. We were fine at the end of the night. We kissed. Cuddled. And probably blew each other. I don’t remember the specifics. I started my 23rd year in love. Fat. And happy.

I can’t say that I didn’t see my life coming down around me. The actual year, not my birth year, started pretty crappy. I lost my uncle, and it was my first death as an adult. I didn’t like the way it made me feel. It made me start to think about all the things that I didn’t get to say before he passed away. It made me realize I would never hear his laugh again. I have a thing with laughs. I always want to remember the way someone laughs. I don’t like knowing that I may never hear that again.

After my uncle’s death, things inside of me kind of changed. I didn’t know how to express myself. I just didn’t feel right. I often wonder if it made me question my own mortality. I think it allowed me to see that one day that will be me—that one day I will be the one people are mourning. I don’t want to be mourned. I want to be celebrated, bitch.

I want people to look at my life and celebrate it. I sometimes wish that I would die young. I don’t know why. I just feel like it would be better. I really don’t want to see what my life has in store for me. I really don’t want to get old. I think I’m old enough. I’ve experienced love. I’ve experienced happiness. I’ve experienced education. I’ve owned a pet. I’ve had my heart broken. I just don’t know why I need to be like 90. I’m fine with a short life.

My family isn’t, and I would never willingly take my life. I can’t say I haven’t contemplated it. I actually attempted it once. It was a dark time. We’ll get to that. It happened when I was 23.

So back to 23.

4/30/14 7:10 PM

Shortly after my 23rd birthday, the remainder of my friends that went to my undergraduate university graduated. My ex was one of these people, and I went to the graduation. I went and sat with his best friend—not the one that my old best friend hated, but his childhood best friend. We didn’t sit with his parents. His parents are amazing people, but they just didn’t accept that their son was gay.

Graduation came, and I was to go out to eat with my ex’s family. It was going to be awkward because this would be the first time that I would be meeting his parents. I had talked to his parents on the phone once—it was school-related—so they had no clue who I was, and at the time they didn’t even know that their son was dating a man, let alone the man on the other side of the receiver.

I wasn’t ready to meet his parents. Partly because of the way that his parents found out about me. We had a little too much to drink while we were visiting a friend of mine at another university. This was the first time that my friends were going to meet him. I didn’t know what to expect. He was nervous. So was I. My friends weren’t, though. They were happy to be meeting someone that I loved. I gushed over him all the time to them. They listened. He came with me.

It started off as fun. We were all getting to know each other, and then we tailgated. We got a little too drunk, to the point that I don’t really remember the specifics of the day. I remember rain, beer pong, hills, horses, and porta-potties.

I believe I introduced my ex to some friends from high school that we ran into. They were more shocked that I had finally come out.

The day went by fine until we got into a cab. The taxi driver was talking, and in his sentence he dropped the n-word, in a car with one Black man, three white women, and a white man. My other friend, who is Black, had gotten out of the cab to use an ATM. The car went dead silent. I told the cab driver to fuck off. We got out of the cab. I smoked a cigarette outside the ATM with my other friend, filled her in, and we walked to the bar we were going to.

As we were walking, I grabbed my ex’s hand, and we got into a fight. A huge fight. We argued. He wanted to take a cab back to Chicago from Kalamazoo. He called his parents. I attempted to calm him down. We made up. We continued our relationship.

I always thought that if his parents wouldn’t have found out under those circumstances, they wouldn’t have minded me as much. But there were always dramatics involved in our relationship, specifically to the point of parental involvement. Our parents have never actually interacted, but from the outside, both of our parents thought that we had a volatile relationship. And were they wrong? No.

Most people saw our relationship as volatile. I, however, thought of it as love. I thought of it as devotion and commitment. I thought that the way we fought showed how much we loved each other—that we were so in love that we would fight to prove it. We’ve only been in three huge fights. All three were spurred by other people. We just let our emotions about other things spill over into the fight and blow it up.

We had public safety called on us. We had frat bros cheering us on. We had ambulances. We had it all. Except parental approval.

This dinner after graduation was going to be my test for parental approval. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready because I was not someone they pictured their son with.

I was white.
Fat.
Tattooed.
A philosophy major.
And most importantly, I was a man—and I felt like I really had nothing to offer. But I was determined to make them like me.

I barely spoke through the whole dinner. The main reason I didn’t talk was because I knew that I wasn’t really wanted there. I never felt unwelcome, because they always made me feel welcome—I just felt out of place. It wasn’t because I was the only white person there, but because they combined his graduation dinner with another girl’s graduation dinner. A girl who had been in love with my ex until she found out we were dating. She was the girl who would have been a perfect match for their son. She was everything they wanted him to marry.

She was Black.
Fit.
Christian.
A pre-med major.
And most importantly, she was a woman.

I could feel the comparison. His grandparents only talked to her and her family. I talked to his best friend and his little brother. He would come and talk, but I knew he had to socialize. He had to entertain his family. I was fine with it. I loved him so much that I was willing to be there uncomfortably rather than not be there at all. I wanted to make his family see that there was nothing wrong with us. I was not successful.

Besides his dad—his dad liked me—and honestly, I loved his dad. He always made it a point to talk to me and ask what was going on in my life. He remembered details. He would always ask me how my car was running. I looked forward to that question. Sometimes, I still do.

“Shitty. It needs a tune-up. New brakes. And a new front right tire.”

That’s what I would have said.

But I always told him it was running fine. I just wanted to be asked again.

But do I? I don’t think I could ever face his parents after everything that happened. 

4/30/14 7:37 PM

You know, the first part of being 23 was really good. When summer came around and my ex was out of school and we were both working, we had a blast. We saw each other all the time. We made it a point to, especially since he was starting med school in the fall and I was continuing my master’s. We were going to make it work. We were determined.

The summer tested us.

As time went on, we started to fight more.

We had about a one-to-two-week grace period. We would even make comments about how long it had been since the last fight—and then we would fight. And someone would point out that we had just said we hadn’t been fighting.

We were interesting. But we worked.

For a while.

Then it got serious.

His family was not having it. It started to get to him. He was essentially being forced to choose between me and his family. We pulled him in both directions.

He would take out the frustration he felt from his family on me, and I would take the frustration I felt toward him—for not saying “fuck his family”—out on him, and marijuana.

I started smoking a lot of pot that summer. It caused a lot of fights between us. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it until he tried it. Once he did, the fights about pot stopped.

But his family was still in one ear.
And I was in the other.

I was guilting him into choosing me. I made him feel bad for not being there for me when I needed him. I don’t know why. I think I wanted to test how much he loved me.

I shouldn’t have pulled.

Because all that pulling was doing was moving me further away from him.

He stayed grounded.
And I drifted.

Further.
And further.
And further.

By the time he left for med school, I was so far gone that we didn’t even realize it. I was out in the middle of the sea, and he was still standing on shore.

I had pushed him away by wanting him too close. All summer, I wanted him with me 24/7 because I knew things would change once school started. I didn’t want to lose him yet.

But in trying not to lose him to his family,
I lost him completely.

As my boyfriend.
As my partner.
As my best friend.

I wanted something from him that he couldn’t give. And I wanted him to want to give it.

He didn’t.

He wanted normalcy.

I wasn’t normal. I was something completely different from what he saw for his life at the time. Something he couldn’t keep hidden or act nonchalant about. But he also knew he couldn’t do that to me, because he loved me.

He told me he couldn’t give me what I wanted—a husband, a family.

And I said that was fine.

I said I didn’t need it.

Because I thought I only needed him.

If he couldn’t give me a family, then I didn’t need one. He was my family. And when it was just the two of us, we were good.

We didn’t need anything else.

But we let other people in.
Too often.

We let society in.
We let pressure in.
We let expectations in.

And eventually, it broke us.

Haters gon’ hate.

And if they hate hard enough,
they will fucking break you.

Hate has a strong influence over the world.

And I wanted to have a strong influence over the world too.

That’s a problem I have—control.

Letting go of it.

It’s not something I like to do.

Maybe that’s why I don’t let men put it in my butthole. I don’t want to relinquish control. I don’t like people seeing a passionate, vulnerable side of me. It’s something I don’t ever show. When I do, it’s because I like you. Because I want to feel closer to you.

I feel the same way about sucking dick. I don’t suck random dicks. I need some sort of emotional connection before I let you put your wiener in my mouth.

Sorry, boys.

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