It was breakfast time, and Micah didn’t come with me like he usually did. I had to get my biscuit and gravy fix though, so I was unattached as I walked into the cafeteria that day, and I sat with the friends I always sat with when I was unattached. It’s not like I would normally avoid them or anything. It’s just that they tended to either avoid me when I was attached to Micah, or they were avoiding Micah. It was one or the other. And I figured it out.
“So where’s Micah and that gay guy?”
“Gay guy?”
“That gay guy that wears make up.” Deadpan. He was talking about Micah’s friend Christian. Who was also a good friend of mine, by way of Micah. Slowly they were becoming my only friends.
“You mean Christian?” I smiled uncomfortably. Since I assumed he was joking, but I couldn’t tell.
“Yeah. With the eye liner. The gay guy.”
“He’s not gay.”
“Well then why does he wear make up?”
“He has a fiancée. He’s not gay.”
“Is she a man?”
“No! –Listen, you don’t know anything about him.”
And that’s when I knew they avoided Micah. And although Taylor was just one person at the table, no one said anything else. No one said, ‘so what if he is gay, anyway.’ No one even frowned. Did everyone agree with the sick joke?
Yes, Micah and Christian were oddities. They were beautiful, too. They didn’t wear gray New Balances, and they didn’t have North Face jackets, and they weren’t always the most sociable people, but they were there for me later in March, and they were important to me. And for the brief time I knew them I think I was important to them.
And Christian was so not gay. His fiancée lived in Georgia and it tore him up to be away from her. He visited her sometimes on the weekends, leaving Micah and I to run around by ourselves. He did believe, in what I assumed was a delusion, that he was a direct descendant of ancient royalty, but he had a tender heart. I worried about him a lot actually. I recall him abusing anti-depressants and muscle relaxers, and Micah telling me he almost called an ambulance once, Christian was so out of sorts. There were good reasons for him being ‘out of sorts’ that I hate I never got to help him with. And it never stopped the three of us from talking about religion, and relationships, and what we would do with our lives. We had in depth discussions on communism and sex. Not at the same time.
And maybe now I’m guilty of reverse-judgment, right? Maybe I don’t know anything about Taylor at breakfast that day. Maybe he was struggling with homo-sexuality himself, I don’t know. But I know he didn’t win me over right then, because everything that was said after that tasted bitter. That conversation is exactly how I remember him.
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