The reality of what I’m gonna put out for public consumption today is realistically a chapter of an autofiction work that may at some point coalesce into a book.
It’s tonally different from a lot of what I’ve written and published publicly. It also too strongly tied into the theme of what I’ve been writing here on this Substack. The question being begged is how many ways can I say I love someone? How many ways does the love die on the vine once a song fades, or a moment moves onto the next.
That’s where we drop into Philadelphia in the summer of 1965. We make friends with Dee Dee Sharp’s last chart entry on the Billboard Hot 100. We cruise low and slow to
Dee Dee Sharp – I Really Love You (1965)
Sugar, sugar
Would ya, would ya
Tell me where I made my mistake?
The day I first really heard that lyric was in 2005.
I’ve known the song from many of those ‘dedicated to the one I love’ DJ nights on 99.7 KFRC. Sylvia Chacon would spin oldies more in lowrider oldies vein. Those songs were not as well worn as the big hits that dominated the collective memory week in and week out on everyone else’s programs on the station. You’d hear absolutely no Beatles or Stones on her programs, while Patti Drew, Brenda and The Tabulations and The Dells became rightful megastars beyond the Chitlin’ Circuit, especially on Sunday nights. Those dedications became so many lover’s prayers. I sorely miss that you can’t dial that number I’ve long forgotten. Grown as I am, I’d prefer the coy method of requesting “Tell Him” to ‘tell him’ rather than actually having to go tell him to his face.
The structure of a typical playlist Sylvia used borrowed heavily from KDIA, the Big 1310. KDIA is where Belva Davis, one of the first Black TV anchors in the nation cut her teeth announcing the latest of Mary Wells alongside the local news and where on San Pablo to get some good Barbeque. KDIA was one of the beacon R&B radio stations on the west coast. It gets lost to being an AM station, and the shinier story that Sly Stone skyrocketed into an interracial funk paradise later in the 1960’s from San Francisco competitor, KSOL.
The same proximity Latine lowrider culture had to the Black great migration diaspora ironically put me in contact with Dee Dee Sharp’s last Hot 100 chart entry, her first written by soon-to-be (ex) husband Kenny Gamble. Philly soul had been around me all my life, hell, Teddy Pendergrass’s demand to ‘turn off the lights and light a candle’ is probably the reason I was conceived.
I didn’t know then, I struggle to conceive it even now, how many little moments that gave me life harkened back to recording studios in the city of Brotherly Love.
This time, it was a Sunday afternoon, Mrs. LaRue before she was sharp cooed those notes it not to a specific request to someone. I was driving down 580 southbound in that Burgundy Delta 88. I had left Oakland officially, driving through that vague area where Chabot Park section of Oakland blends seamlessly with the hilly section of San Leandro that ironically hides Chabot Park. You’re still elevated enough past Golf Links to still look down on the Oakland and San Leandro flats looking out towards the airport and the Bay. The radiance and warmth of that tan leather always comforted me, but the whole world outside my windshield was shades of grey. The bungalows and craftsman houses in the flats hadn’t all been graywashed in gentrification yet.
On a sunnier day, even today, the ones that are pastel can glitter in the afternoon sun. That afternoon all I saw was crystalline silver threads. Some of those threads seemed as strong as the steady bead of rain that won the war over full force windshield wipers. Beyond that there was hidden light slightly towards the west. I always loved the September tendency to bless this part of the world with a rare thunderstorm. They seemed to set the tone for washing away the delusions of summer in California, the hope that it would actually get warm and feel like summer. There’s always the cruelty that the best warm weather here is when you have to go back to school or work. You can’t savor the beauty of the turn to autumn until you near retirement age. The way in California, with its endless culture of aspiration to be the richest, and smartest, you’d be lucky to make it 65 with the energy to enjoy it, if alive at all.
The thunderstorm intensified to the point that my windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. I pulled over, I let that glorious string section wash over me in the same way the sky was giving old Florence 88’s a free bath. My tears started to flow in a way that I never truly let them before.
Where did I go wrong, cause…
I really LOVE you.
Baby, baby, yes I do….
There was something I noticed between the melancholy of staying present, but the beauty of all the interlocking pieces that made me break. I cried out in relief. I had experienced love before, perhaps for the first time. It took me 5 years after that last embrace and being frozen in a beautiful moment, with this gorgeous song, in this Linus blanket of a car to realize I wasn’t sharing it with the man I thought of. Who did I wish I could reach across the cracked leather of that armrest and take their hand, or massage their shoulder, or taking this all in, ask if it were beautiful, perhaps lean in for a kiss?
I finally grieved that moments that make you feel all of yourself are the moments love is generated. Your ability to follow through, to chase one of those moments again, is how love continues. I finally recognized that I had, for various reasons, let that first big love die. It’s been extremely cruel to deal with the consequences of my inactions, my fears, my watching the same hands do the same deed to the same pitiful outcomes, wanting to protect myself. It wasn’t fully unselfish; I wanted to protect those I loved more than they know.
“You have a broken heart too?!”
If only you knew Ty.
I hope you understand that there’s the reality and beauty of Knitsugi.
I know you actually do, anyone with an MFA from an Ivy knows this. If I have faith that getting into Yale has taught you anything, I have to run with the assumption that I won’t have to backtrack to explain this concept to you. I looked up what Yale MFA tuition costs are now. At just a smidge over $77,000 you better know I’m talking about mending broken beauty with gold. We both grew up poor enough to understand the value of getting every ounce of life out of ever dollar spent. I really wish you’d retire the befuddled dumb jock routine.
You carried a wisdom then that you need not deny these days. You weren’t a straight-A honors student, nor was I. We’re smart where it matters. Here you are still questioning everything those ‘honors’ represent. You wonder openly why there’s still this huge pull for you to talk with me. I wonder if you truly understand your natural flow when touching me. You’re still choosing to stand by my side. You are still letting the embraces linger. I’ve noted your hands start to drift into shy caresses. You need to dig deep into the why of that. Puns intended, I’m hoping a lil internal twizzle made you boldly go where everyman should go more than they did before. Yes, the indica did it for me.
I hope you understand in the beauty of the matters of the heart, we’re actively healing something that was always beautiful between us. I’ve told a select few of the ease of being in your arms. The world stops for a moment and becomes only ours. I’m sad that it still does after all this time of mutual denial. There’s arms standing around you that beat your time. There are those that directly benefitted from what you taught me about myself. There’s a few that repeated the basic skill of reaching out and holding to the point they allowed something more to develop. They did it more often, and I praise every saint that they did.
I have to consider the time limits of what we can share. What can we share if I move in so many directions? In some ways, we’ve never parted. In some ways we stand in the middle of our lives with so many fractures of navigating this world presented to us. The world that sent us down different paths.
None of the nation’s highways or rail lines go in straight lines North, South, East or West. There are so many variations on the landscape that sometimes you just gotta drive down the road. Therein lies the beauty of the crossroads, my old friend. There’s certain places we know how to get to just by recall and reaching out for by feeling. There’s choices I still gotta make. There’s a life I haven’t quite built to my standards or desires. I said something was going to challenge my self determination. I wasn’t surprised it was you. I’m surprised how great and how horrible that feels. There’s a pregnant yearning you’re showing now in every half full sentence, every softening of your eyes, every denial that it’s not with you. I’ve cried just enough about this stillbirth. I can only hope that I encourage you to choose yourself, and all that you embody, for yourself, and not anyone else, before it’s too late. There’s a life you want too. I’m so surprised how much it looks like one you’d want with me.
Sometimes you state the very obvious but ignore the truth. I don’t know whether to write this to the audience that’s been observing us for 30 years or directly to you. I worry about the consequences of either direction, for each one might provide unneeded stress to our fragile hearts. You don’t know how heartbreaking it is to realize your heart has always been as broken as mine. I struggle with you placing the burden of having the open heart on me when you were the first that opened your arms to hold me close to your heart.
I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. Do you hear how tender your voice is? Do you understand that I love it when you hand me something, or open the door for me to put on the boxing gloves with fools. I always win with you by my side. I don’t know if it’s weird confidence that often I’ve got the biggest white boy to back me up. I know you’re a gentle giant but people aren’t all the bright. They see nearly 7 feet of white man that doesn’t say much and see a threat. I see nothing but someone I resist running my hands through sandy brown hair that falls in ocean waves over your five head. I told you I can’t resist, I never feel bad in the beams of your smile. I have had to own that you can’t hide those feelings, your mouth never did lie. It schooled me to pay attention when I get that from others. It’s taught me to covet every smile, every shared laugh that I get from a lonely boy turned manchild.
I try my best to speak directly to you, to hold room for the vulnerability in all that you don’t say. We both know it hangs like comforting humidity between us, keeping the air saturated with feelings. I can’t be ‘hard’ in the heart around you. However,, altho I think you’d be surprised how there’s still a passion that can prompt a more pleasurable firmness. Maybe I’m in denial. Your smile says you know. I frankly hope some of those texts after the boys are tucked in are because you’re enjoy the little extra bloodflow that thoughts of me send towards your deep south.
I’m a little annoyed that you shy away from the beauty you’ve shown me. I want to share it with the world because the world deserves to see you as you fully are. I guess in some ways I regret that I kept that a secret for long. There’s charms here I shouldn’t be the only one to witness.
Have I?
I swear, and the only time my memory is faulty is wondering if I ever told you? I want to believe this is not my first time struggling with the joy of expressing my feelings for you. I honestly hope I can blame your fear that I was honest with you before. It would ease my guilty heart to know you always knew how I felt, and you chose to abandon me. It would be a pitiful crime if I lied by withholding. I could have potentially saved layers of grief and loneliness had I been bold enough to say something it took my five years for me to realize I didn’t bother saying.
I really LOVE you.
Baby, baby, yes I do….
I do know, honestly, that I stopped short of saying not only I love you, but I was in love with you. It still feels the same, that same haunting safety I’ve had to live without for a quarter of a century each time you take me in your arms. What could I have, what could we have done together had I embraced feelings as truth? I lied so long about this being foundational to the human condition that I’ve become that I worry that I’ve betrayed you by finding that love elsewhere.
I lied to you, and sent you off into the world insecure about your powers to comfort and heal. I worry now that even you don’t understand how precious time with you really is. You do understand when I called you a great pumpkin just before Halloween, it was the glowing light within you against the cobalt skies more than the fact that you were, indeed, looking cute in that pumpkin orange button down. You know I don’t even like Pumpkin Pie, so to say something Pumpkin related with zeal should be a telltale of the heart. Your voice took on that hushed familiar tone. You speak to me with such pride that you have my attention but quiet enough to keep the love between us. I almost shriek in positive response, you demure, tilt your head to the right, seemingly smiling harder at what you’re capable of. I don’t want to say this is painful shyness. All it does is make me wish you’d relax in my arms for a change. I’d wish you’d unload. Despite it all you carry that magic that moves me from bitter to beautiful.
That’s why I’ll move mountain and sea to give you even a few hours of shared moments over a shared meal., I may not make every meal with you in mind, but I can’t wait to have you over for a few Sunday dinners. This is where it burns, The kitchen I want, to even have a dining room to formalize the love of providing for you, I have to leave where we came from. I can’t afford to give you or anyone the luxuries of a Sunday kinda love on Ohlone land. I didn’t give you everything you needed in that once upon a time. Nobody had written a fairy tale like ours, so neither of us could see the magic in front of us.
Where we came from, if people noticed it, we decidedly had the love that dared not speak its name. Maybe this is the sick twisted fairytale I have to document. How do I make this pay off for the both of us? The key I guess is not framing love as having happy endings. There’s always a possibility that it can transform to a new dynamic. What if we prevent so many more generations from having to fill cracks with gold? What happens when those resources can be dedicated elsewhere? I’m always looking for a way to save money somewhere so it can be spent somewhere else. I never gave you a fighting chance to fight for me. Frankly I may have written you a half truth on binder paper with bic ink or hid the details in the brevity associated with Christmas Cards. I can answer why I’m so forgiving of the way you run in and out of my life. You always come back with hope in your eyes that it’s still at least the same.
It almost always is the same if things are going good for me. It’s rougher when it’s not. I never wanted you to absorb all the pain I felt. I don’t want you to feel responsible for anything that has happened to me. I only wanted you to feel happiness or joy when I was around. I never truly understood then that perhaps, in some ways, you wished I gave you more of a glimpse into how you brightened my day. I could have laughed more honestly. I could have smiled as easy as you do to me. I could have made sure to make more direct eye contact. I could have fawned over you more physically. I could have taken initiative with a hug. I could have stood on my tippy toes to give you a coy kiss. I could have delighted in grabbing your ass. How could I choose time with anyone over you? I can coulda-shoulda-woulda all the way to my grave. I’ve only experienced the surface warmth of the fire you hold within. We both have paid the price of my fears. This is penance we both have to endure.
When things are indeed shitty, I need to admit I’m looking for you to save me. I have to realize there’s a reason I needed to save myself though. We’re approaching a time that you may have to learn to save yourself. You’ve done everything you’ve been told to do. You thought it was the right thing to do, even if it has never felt just right. It must be a painful mirror to look at the life you’ve created and still feel a yearning for more. I understand it deeply, and I’ve got nowhere near the amount of worldly accomplishments that you do. I worry that you aren’t as proud as you could be about them. There’s recognition that it’s a litany of survival techniques crafted into a very respectable version of white male heterosexuality. Dear me, you’ve built all of this and now, you want to be whatever you’re finding out about yourself between where I stand in the world and where Orville Peck stands on stage.
Like kissing boys and sucking dicks and lots of anal? You made a point of pointing out all the assless chaps. I’m not mad at it, it’s oddly cute, genuinely arousing that your new attitude is ‘let me at them prostate orgasms.’ If Smokey can sing about where his dick fits, have at it. Our love is the most beautifully dark comedy ever written. You would want this, seemingly with me, while I’m in limbo between the first round that someone did fully step into your shoes, and did more. You almost released me to the hope that he’d return.
I know you hope in some ways he fails. The problem really is that I know he won’t. There’s not a moment in a day in the last 3 years I haven’t thought about how he’s my ultimate life line. I owe him the world for listening, understanding as I spoke. Somehow that listening turned into the love I was waiting for. You say you didn’t know, but tell me to take it easy on those who you say did know. What is the truth? I’m not sure you know what it is given all the things I can question you on.
I hope when you decide on next steps, the process isn’t as viscous as many various times I’ve had to. I honestly hope your whiteness protects you from having to swim to a life raft. The seas are frighteningly raucous right now. I haven’t been around for all the times you’ve had to make any similar choices previously. I’m unaware of everything you’re carrying right now. I can only feel the weight. There’s some significant answers in that weight. I can only think of the ways to guide you into setting everyone else’s bags down so your feet feel a little bit lighter.
I have the same longing for lightness for you that I try to give myself every day, if only for a few moments. I never wanted you to carry more than your fair share. Society looked you up and down and equated your admittedly Costco bulk size with an unrelenting durability. Have you become a warehouse everyone buys their needs from, only to visit you quarterly at most? I heard part of that as one of the old crowd ran with the assumption that she could just move her husband and kid in with you before she departed for Australia. I’m worried that we’d end up entangled if I requested the same luxury before I scuttle off to Philly. The whole world has never experienced the tenderness of being held close to your heart. They don’t get that real endurance is the tenderness you’ve always shown me. If you put me in a household with you for a week, I wouldn’t be able to resist showing you how thankful I am.
You have choices to make, we all do. All I can do honestly is be as close by as possible. You were my first superstar, I can’t even fathom seeing you lose. Honestly, I’ve got my own version of “I’m going to Disneyland!” planned for you in my head. Free will however. I sincerely want you to make your own choices, not the ones that have caged you all of your life. I worry that some of my suggestions would be the same fucking cage. Each way there, I’m meddling when I should step back and at most, offer the same open arms you’ve always offered me. I need to stand by and support whatever decisions you make. You said we’re best friends, despite the fact you never chose me. That’s whats best however; there’s no possibility of me never making home space with you.
I’m trying, still to figure out if it’s only 30 or closer to all of our lives. Kanisha can’t remember if we were both at one of her pre-Kindergarten birthday parties. I hear your chuckle, knowing I explicitly asked. It’s the same bemused humor you let loose whenever I correct someone that your Cougar was a 1973, and an XR-7 to boot. The blue leather matched your eyes. Something tells me I could guarantee that this is as close to life time as anything I’ve experienced.
If that’s true, you beat Piero by a full 5 years. He’s never gonna be man enough to admit he loves me anyways, that’s why I don’t regard his first kisses as anything significant. The were in secret anyways; the boys bathrooms, while everyone else was napping on the chartered bus on the way to Yosemite. The one at Vallambrosa was as close as it ever got to public. They were all fleeting, never leading to some stability or endurance. I love the long haul too much.
I wonder if I say, before I knew how to count to 10 that you were a yes, probably a perfect 10. I wish yet at the same time know you understood how safe you made me feel then. I still need to believe in superheroes. For some reason, you’ll never see that in yourself. It’s the painful paradox that you look at me, in my loneliness, as some hero. I’m just some human you love, still love. Whether I am a figuratively year after year in your life or even actually become a real ghost, I’m something you cherish with your whole heart. Given our parallel circumstances, I couldn’t let the fractures stay in place. Each moment I get with you now has to have a little bit of gold. If I love you as much as you love me, let’s make each others hearts memorable works of art.
“You have a broken heart too?!”
Sure, when you asked this, I diffused as always. You know I don’t want to dwell on the simple subject. I heard your “I’m sorry” as a cry that you weren’t there to prevent any of this. Baby, I’ve had to live with the fact that there’s nothing I could have done. You can’t do anything about yours either. It’s our inheritance. What can you do to make soft silk purses out of the whole grainy thread? It’s a curse I have to break. I might beg you to walk alongside me soon as possible. This whole maddeningly queer life I have to live is to break damnation in what innately my body was born compromised with.
I had to stop cycles of pain that wrecked hearts before they had chances to experience the joy that beauty provides. I had to go at it differently to eventually turn the page into a healing odyssey. My difference was my savior. I have no clue what this means for you. I pivoted to the facts, but not necessarily the truth. The narrative is all around this, my god 1957 was one helluva year. I don’t get the chance to stay up with you, or nestle with you to really dig at the facts I know to figure out the truth.
You’ve never given yourself the space to question for yourself. It scares me. It’s not too late for some healing to come out of the truth. It was telling that reefer is our secret key to in all irony, unlocks the madness of the strict routines we’ve found ourselves in. Trust me, I knew exactly why I gave you my preferred edibles. It was a running joke between me and Billy for him to tell me to have my Indica and go take a bath.
I’m a tight ass in more than one way, but I’m a lot more relaxed and ready for happiness after that combo. He always wanted me at my peak Venus in Blue Jeans on Fridays. It goes back to that meme I posted proudly that he sent about two bottoms seeking adventures. He knew, I felt it before I consciously knew. Where I see you standing up for yourself now reminds me so much of how I fell for him. This is where I have faith in the possibilities for you.
You know how to smile and make a dirty joke too, you just haven’t practiced your craft in a while. You need someone to fuss over you the way we fuss over each other. That’s why I’m fussy with you. You deserve all that attention you’ve been without for years. The grand plan is that’s the same spirit I want to pass onto you. You are indeed a great pumpkin, cause as reminder, I don’t ascribe by that pie.
I feel so torn that I want to share with you the love I found. I feel horrible for trying to give you a glimpse of what’s possible by showing you all of these Sears catalog versions of a life I wished I had with you for decades at this point. I want us to laugh at the fact that some basic facts between us are true. I want us to frolic in the beauty. I hate that I want you to understand that I’ve got to prioritize those that shared in that beauty more unapologetically than you did, seemingly until now. I’m not even sure you’re willing to take the risk to be that naked, bewitched, bothered and bewildered by your own desires just yet. I haven’t heard you breathe a sigh of relief just yet, even when you keep taking me into your arms after all this time.
I look at the men you chose over me, none of them as close to you. You even apologized then when you felt the weight of choosing them over me. None of them would be bold enough to touch you. They all feared what it meant if they lingered for more than a split second looking into your eyes. I paid attention and kept your attention the longest. I understand the world you’ve curated so far, and how far that’s driven you from what you love. I hope you see me wanting you to give me away should I adhere to one tradition, that it would be welcoming you into the abundance and possibility that you deserve. If what happens, if he’s capable of what I believe he’s capable of, trust that he’s benefitted from all the lessons that have been between us. The day you’ll hear his laugh and note his smile, I’ll recognize that’s the cruelest gift I can give to you.
I think you don’t understand your power as a teacher yet. You’ve long walked away from your potency of craftsmanship. There’s a hope that you’ll rediscover the visionary I fell in love with. I remember how you could see the possibility of light if you drew in the possibility to welcome it in. All I can remember of the houses you drafted were plenty of glass to let the light in. Natural light that whomever you built a home with could jointly bathe in it with you. I’ll never forget it. You have to teach yourself the power and beauty of yourself tho. I know that this is an interesting interim period where I can help a little. I guess I’m accepting that it’s an intended shared journey, without the prescribed outcomes society tells us.
I can’t watch you wallow in the trap of heterosexuality any more than I did with who I’m choosing. This is the odd parallel of Ted saying “If I weren’t already betrothed….” There’s the pain in realizing that love is abundant and in surprising places. The love you choose to commit to is all about timing and moment. I’ve missed quite a few moments. I didn’t show up until after many had found a love that met enough of their needs to say yes. Honestly I wouldn’t have been ready for love at time after time anyways, no matter how many times I’ve pretended to be Martha Reeves pretending to be Diana Ross.
I see the rot on David’s face. I tried to hide it in some of those last photos I took of him, but couldn’t in all of them. I already knew something was wrong even as he couldn’t bring himself to ask me to give him a chance. All he could do, nearly 40 was playfully mentioning he was commando as we closely hung together crate digging. I had the pressures of being nursemaid yet again, not knowing my health was already failing, to worry about losing opportunity to discover what more there was beyond his admittedly cute face and nice ass combo. I see why he hides away as a ghost now. We all want to be cute. There’s a reason he’s bringing up Johnny Mathis now, in some effort to return to his former regal stateliness he recognizes in a superhuman queer figure of culture.
There’s hope that David is screaming that someone rediscovers his warmth that Johnny so proudly winked at the more knowing audiences on album covers now resigned to rot in 50 cent LP bins in Salvation Armies. The snug hugs that can be intensified by exploring our bodies has always been in plain sight. It takes years of study to really understand it. My vow to never stop speaking on discovering, the delight and surprise that you’ve been there through many versions in this society that only thinks of production and death. Johnny retired on his own terms, voice nearly pitch perfect.
I’m crediting prostate play.
Please, for the life of me, tell me you’ve at least put at least one of your own fingers up your own butt in your 43 years of life?! This is what I’ll be most angry about if you haven’t. Knowing you, you want me to be angry enough that I’ll just do it for you. You’re still VERY cute. I know exactly what everyone was thinking when I shared photos of us together. There’s a reason I captioned one instance with a reference to “Back In My Arms Again.” I’d rather, and have been acting more like the follow up was “Mother Dear” because you’ve never been “Nothing But Heartaches.”
“You have a broken heart too?!”
“You can’t ever let go of those you love” is what I heard, shortly after you said I was beautiful on Jupiter’s Day. We’re you getting the thrill of playing a playboy? Marvelettes records warned me away from finding value in such behavior, but I still felt a tingle. Did it make you feel younger than the gripes about getting older from the week before?
There’s a hope that it did. I felt fine, fuckable and almost 21. I hope you felt tingles you haven’t felt in years. I hope the flow of blood increased to all the zones I know on you to be the sweetest shade of pink. You deserve to remember that vibrancy that you chided me on decades ago. Back then it was me shying away from the fact that we should just do it like mammals like the ones on discovery channel. I was already reading and watching the how-t0 guides, but no one told us about lube.
Did you notice that I blushed, and maybe teared up? I never expected you to be that sweet on me, wanted to share the most delicate of nectars between us. You still have that magic. It was one of the most precious moments I ever experienced. Yet you still can’t say it, directly, to my face, what it is, after all this time. There’s gonna be a time where you’re gonna have to be as fun as you used to be. I wouldn’t know to be that way without you. When’s the last time anyone called you sexy in any of the ways someone can’t wait to see you at your most naked and pure?
“You have a broken heart too?!”
Wouldn’t you if you had to feel the tear that comes when someone acts the way you want someone to love you yet.
But yet.
They can’t bring themselves to say it to you. They can’t stop panicking about what society will say if you do. You try your best not to resent that 3 going on 4 decades have passed before it became even a full on fantasy manifests as furtive texts to get every lingering long lunch dates before I move across the country. You halfway give permission with a hope that I’ll be back in maybe 5 years. You’ve said 10 where you’re feeling generous. I’ve waited so long, I’ve almost died once. Forgive me as I look around and say why the fuck would I wait another 5 years for you?
Why is it a mystery to you what’s been obvious to me for probably all my life? Again, I can’t help but fault myself that I haven’t been fully honest with you, there’s only so much anyone can discern with coy responses. It’s the same fatal flaw that has me separated and trying to claw back into a particular lovely Libra’s arms. I can kill a beautiful thing by not prioritizing how important it is to me. I don’t shot from the rooftops at a time we all need to hear and heed that clarion call.
I get that it’s wishful thinking that you’d figure it out all on your own because I didn’t know how to honestly express that’s what I needed all along. We also didn’t have anything around us to support us in understanding any needs we had of each other. This is why I’ll always choose an Oakland, a Baltimore, a Philadelphia. You always live in enough proximity of others so you can’t truly lie about who you are. Where should we have gone to college? What would have career paths looked like? I would have wanted adopted kids, were you seriously wanting to have fruit of your loins to nurture…
“You have a broken heart too?!”
I let you back in each time because I’m always trying to repair the fracture in between the hope and disappointment. There was no true illusion, we still love each other. Trust me it’s not disappointment in you. It’s disappointment in this world. Every time I welcome you back, it’s to heal and make this world a little less disappointing. You are my FIRST love, quite really. I’ll never truly be able to really let you go and be on your own. There’s a world I still want to build with you.
Yet I’ve been lucky you haven’t been the last one either. You knew, you seemed 10 years ago less convinced on Ian. You had good reason to be. “Where the fuck was he?” on a lovely Sunday afternoon we were spending together was the underlying tone. He had to pass your test. You can’t actually bear seeing me in the arms of someone you deem as less than you. He didn’t join us at a museum, despite you knowing that’s one of my favorite places to spend indoors vertically. You’re wise to so much but don’t want to let on.
Please say something, anything, but what did you have to offer me then, or even now? We both walked away from the fantasy that you’d always be my white knight. Anita Baker warned me about living in fairytales. It’s not like I had a good answer. I thank your listening that had no prejudgement on the subject that day however. It hurt really bad when you said to me that you wished me love, ironically with someone tall like you 10 years later. I hope you realize that dug the knife in deeper. You know. You know what my needs are. You have this vision of me that’s beyond where I stand even now, as proud, as much as you admire that I’ve survived.
It’s in the push and pull of your understanding of why I have to leave, why Philadelphia is so important to me. I can’t, I’m cautious not to say we can’t, stay in what we’ve known. It’s what I’ve been screaming at who is gonna claim the passenger seat. He gets it, he also understands how hard it is to get out. We got close because he handed me the best lifeline I could get to leave the same prison you left me in 20 some years previously.
I know he’s gonna be impressed, aroused, again, if I pull this off on my own again. There’s a huge reason why I don’t want to pull it off alone. I’m gonna ask him one more time what in the hell he thinks would be possible if we joined together again in the love that we shared. I’ve learned in my old age it’s okay to have demands. I understand that’s where you hoped for the both of us too. You love me more than I can ever really comprehend if you’re willing to let me go build a dream with another man. You only ask to watch. You know you have your own seat in the front row. Just don’t talk too much shit with the rest of the Greek Chorus.
I want you to understand what’s possible for you too in the love we have. There’s love we’ve shared that has inspired me time and time again to try again, to share my heart for the off chance I’d end up in arms that felt close enough to yours again. I did. In some ways each set of arms has the same quality that you have yet has their own special flavor. A warm embrace is universal in its ability to calm and delight, but everyone sprinkles their own spices on you as you melt like butter on toast. I think none of them are gonna be angry if I linger in your arms from time to time or give you every deserved kiss we’ve missed over the years.
I felt you stab yourself in that moment too. You would rather die on the honorable sword that you didn’t take up the fight to be by my side years ago. We chose our battles as wisely as we could have. I can’t ever bring myself to resent or hate you. I hate what this world made us do. I still cherish the beauty we’ve been able to create in separation despite this world. I hate that this world prevents so many people who truly love each other to not choose love. The only thing we can do is change and tell why we’ve changed.
“You have a broken heart too?!”
You know you’re my first heartbreak. You know you were the first time I hoped someone would choose me. Yet I was left alone again. I was lost without my anchor I could cling to. You knew probably later, but not in the immediate moments that distance and the whole world tore us apart. You can’t notice in moments of ceremony and transition anyways. I knew, but not how heavily moving on from high school to college would change us. I should have paid attention to the absence of scripts about those like us. Again, I was dishonest with myself that I had that fear of loss. I wasn’t allowed to mourn losses like you. That’s the hugest cruelty of this society. You get cast in certain bodies, and you can’t wail at the pain of not being next to the comfort and warmth that keeps you alive.
“You have a broken heart too?!”
Ty, it was inevitable. The cursed genetics. Ted warned me of this in 2019 and I was scared to admit he knew. You know how I used to look. You still idolize the frankness of my face and voice. I sincerely worry that you saw some faces I had that terrorized you, that frightened you away. You are more selective but have shown me the unspeakable horrors you’ve faced with your own face too. Billy has too. I’m more grown now, less afraid to make space for understanding them.
It was indeed that horrible, that stressful. I wanted so long to protect you from all the ways I was in pain. The coming to school then going home with the same migraines. The nerves on edge as he stomped around the house in some indiscernible frenzy. That house rattled under his storms. I was scared to speak because I had no clue what would happen if I said something then. I didn’t want you to potentially suffer greater than I was already. Your body would have made you a perfect target and a scapegoat.
There would have been no responsibility, no accountability. There’s so many ways had you loved me harder then that it would have killed you, not me. My cousin says it would have been the both of us. You honestly have to trust a Scorpio’s assessment of the facts. I’m only saying it now to give your grace you deny yourself. You knew, you had no resources to save me from that even if you wanted to. That’s the ultimate cruelty of this society. I love you as just as much for walking away and taking care of yourself.
I had to fight my own war a little.
The hurt now is knowing you actually did want to. With the limited resources you had, you tried. You tried cheering me up. You became my heart. That’s why he looked at you with jealousy when I hugged you. I only wanted to laugh all the pain away, for it was absurd anyways.
This is where I found myself in slowly drifting, cautiously, afraid as a startled cat into Billy’s arms after he came for me the last time. I had just escaped him trying to finish off the job in the insanity I tried, valiantly to save him from. I left open diary entries that Billy paid attention to, perhaps in horror, I’m sure in disbelief. How could someone he found to be so strong find themselves trapped, weak and if I know him, aware that someone was dying. I couldn’t fight my dad’s demons anymore. My body gave out trying to save the man that would always look at me with envy.
I don’t want to think he looked at you and feared the ultimate loss of me to you. I worried then and still, my father didn’t realize how much he may have had the same feelings for you that I did. I absolutely cringe to think of what might be the true reverse of that situation. Had we been together when marriage equality hit, my father would not, and probably not yours either, have walked us down the aisle. We would have been feral and alone, whether we were back east or in the Bay Area. We would have both had to build from absolute scratch. I sit in wonder that Ted & Theo did it from a box truck with Nella in the West to a whole ass 3 bedroom in West Philly. There’s partially the reason I slid you Ted’s book. It is possible. I understand for us there would have been words of gossip, especially about you about all the places in society you would have betrayed for me, some faggot from the other side of the freeway. There’s no reason for all of that strife and suffering when you could just lean on someone.
George took enough pictures in August that show I still lean on you. I never really realized you were always looking to lean on me too. I hadn’t seen us in isolation as a pair in years. I’m sorry that I didn’t help you carry that weight you’ve always had to shoulder on your own. I regret deeply that I had no bandwidth to consider your needs then. It’s a huge reason I try to consider them now.
“You have a broken heart too?!”
When you carry all this for more that 4 decades, there might be a bit of wear and tear on your heart. I understand yours more than you’ll ever know.
