Elijah, not the Profit.

The first infatuation of my life was this guy named Elijah.  He was my first gay friend in San Francisco.  The truth was that until then, all I knew about gay people was that they were supposed to be loud, flamboyant and wear little hats.  I got all my facts off of  ‘In Living Color.’  I met Elijah before I knew that I, too, was gay.  Gay was as foreign to me as vagina.  I just thought I would have a wife, some kids and a white-picket fence like on T.V. cause that’s where I got all my role models.  Like all kids I had a plan, gay couldn’t be in those cards so I just didn’t consider it.  There have always been people who said that they “always knew” when talking about their own gayness.  I was not one of those people.  I knew, but how could I be sure.

I may have been gay my entire life, but it wasn’t until I met Elijah that I knew it.  The worst part was when I did the whole coming out thing, which people ask me about all the time.  It’s always some girl that has to ask it about it all loud and uncomfortable, “what was it like coming out?”  Coming out doesn’t always have to be the way the WB shows of the 90s painted it.  My life wasn’t an episode of Ellen and coming was no big deal.  I made out with Elijah one Halloween and told my friends/family soon after that I was gay.  The most annoying part was that very few people were surprised.  It was like telling them the shy was blue.  They would just smile but their eyes would say “what did you think I was blind?  So what, who cares?”  Then it came to being a homo, it would be another couple years, a flower march, several tons of vodka and 3 seasons of the ‘Real Housewives’ shows, and several bad dates before I would become good at it.  I hope that this story doesn’t sound like a bad after school special, please contact me about making one.  I would like someone super hot to play me.

It was my second week of my junior year of college.  I transferred from a community college in San Diego to San Francisco State.  I decided to live on campus that year.  I had no idea that essentially meant a plan on drinking all year, ignoring my studies and learning how to drunken surf San Francisco busses like a champ.  Drunken surfing on buses is a San Francisco past-time I perfected in college.  This is where you get wasted first or at least on that path (you don’t have to be drunk, but it doesn’t hurt), stand in the middle of a bus without holding on to anything and just ride the wave.  It’s totally unsafe and stupid, perfect one’s early 20s.  When most people have heard this story, they have generally been shocked that I went to college at all.   I digress.  It was during an impromptu kegger that my roommates had facilitated, in my apartment, I went outside to see what the rest of the world was doing.  More so, I was looking to grab a free beer from someone.

There he was on the patio next to our apartment.  It was a shared courtyard/patio area where students would hang, smoke, sneak booze, start bad habbits, puke and just be kids.  He was just average-looking, skinny, with buzzed light hair, complimented by a fair complexion, blue eyes that seemed to glimmer of their own story and angst, while at the same time they gave off the essence of innocence.  Sitting there by himself with a can in one hand and a box the “Champagne of beers,” Miller “Highlife.”  He was studying everyone on the patio.  He was very different from everyone.  What drew me to him, I don’t know.  It’s like how I can’t control myself around ice cream.  I even get upset when someone else eats ice cream, doesn’t finish and lets it melt in front of them.  He was my ice cream.  Sometimes we just Maybe it was kismet, fate or down right bad luck?  He was 19.  I was 20.  He was about my height, actually a little taller, but I digress.  He was scrawny, in a plaid black and white shirt, a cigarette behind one ear, and an essence that reeked of apple pie.  He looked like the type of kid that grew up in a household that drank milk with their meals.  Growing up with Russian/Jewish parents, from the Soviet Union, I had never seen that until I was a teenager and was horrified the first time I saw it.  I have never been a fan of milk, never understood why people drank it.  I introduced myself, and invited him to our party.  As he smiled, he revealed his slightly buck-toothed smile, while accepting my offer.  I knew that this moment would change my life forever.

Elijah and I were inseparable from then on.  He was the first gay I had ever met that didn’t act, well, gay.  His taste in music didn’t consist of the usual classics like Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Mariah or Britney.  His eyebrows weren’t even plucked.  He didn’t even have a feminine voice or use feminine nouns for men.  He was just a “normal” guy, so I thought then.  Until him, I didn’t even know gays had an option to be like everyone else.  I assumed there was some disco-balled legacy of ‘flaming’ that had to reach in order to be gay.

My relationship with Elijah, become a yearlong infatuation rollercoaster ride.  I would feel the whiplash for years to come, but that’s another story.  He became my best friend.  Until him, I never had a real male best friend.  Most of my close friends until college were girls.  I was that guy.  I was always that little boy playing with girls that everyone was speculating could have been “playing” with the girls, but obviously wasn’t.  I could barely stomach oysters. We would always start off playing house and end in me braiding one of the little girl’s hair.

I learned from Elijah how to let go and worked to be much less uptight.  Prior to him I was much more conservative and less free, so I later realized then.  I didn’t realize just how anal retentive I was until I met him.  It was almost like I was afraid to live.  I was also a virgin to most definitions of sex. Being a virgin half way through college was not cool.  It deemed me as “uptight” by some and sad by others.  Being a virgin at that age seemed to be as cool as cancer.  Maybe cancer wasn’t the best choice of that example, but you get it.

We also experimented with various drugs together.  I would never suggest this to anyone because the idea that one would need drugs to become inspired has never been one that I have wanted to prescribe to or advertise.  I would though admit it was not an experience I would later regret, nor ever want to repeat.  He would stay over pretty often even though we lived on the same block.  Through our mutual loneliness it seemed that we connected.  It would take me years to realize that even in loneliness one could still feel happiness. 

He was a little rich kid, the baby of the family.  When he came out of the closet, he burned it down, as he had been openly gay to since he was 16-years old.  He was one of those that had a same-sex prom date.  I had never met anyone like that and didn’t understand how he knew so young.  I was convinced that he would be the love of my life, but I also was in love and engaged to food for a short time so not sure if that mattered.  I felt for him in a way that I still couldn’t put into words.  It was love the way I knew it then, young, pure and stupid. 

We never did consummate our relationship, although we had gotten close to it a few times.  It was like on “Friends” waiting for Rachel and Ross to get back together. I could happen any moment or make it another season without.  Although we never really talked about it, I actually, was secretly crushed by the fact that we never had.  Oh how young love could be.  We never called each other boyfriends or held hands in public.  Something that was shockingly accepted in San Francisco in a way I had never in my life seen before.  It was an unsaid thing that everyone else saw and knew better than we did at the time.  He truly was my first love, when I thought that I knew what love was.

After that year of college, Elijah and I moved into an apartment together.  This, of course was the dumbest idea ever.  Ironically this was after we had broken up for the third or fourth time, even though we never really dated.  For some reason he kept crawling back into my life like herpes with a drug problem (not that I’ve had that. I’ve never even had a cold sore…).  After 3 months, and about 15 major arguments, we parted ways after I found chemicals and methamphetamines under our sink for the third time.  I yelled at him as I threw them out.  It had been a while since I had been that kid who experimented with hallucinogenic and whatever else we did at the time.  Now I had a job and was working to build a productive life in the city, aside from the occasional bowl now and again, I was moving on.  Besides, In San Francisco, smoking pot seemed like it was equivalent to having a drink there.  I was a new man who was responsible. 

I was still living with him when I first started working at the bar.  I would come home often at around 3 am and get to sleep around 4am.  One morning, around 8 am, Elijah came home and woke me up.  We weren’t really talking at this time because I was finding him super annoying to live with, messy, inconsiderate and always leaving whip-its chargers all over the apartment (the most stupid substance ever).  I was over him and didn’t want to be a part of the drugs.  He was sweaty, frantic and talking faster than the micro-machines guy.  I couldn’t understand him at first.  He told me that “people” were after him and trying to kill him.  He told a long, farfetched story to me that I couldn’t grasp and then told me about how he had some big drug dealer in our apartment the night before.  My first reaction was slamming the door in his face to go to bed until he busted it open.  He was freaking out and now so was I, on many accounts.  I called the cops as Elijah spaced back and forth.  They came in minutes.  Within one minute of talking to Elijah, they asked him what he was on.  After he admitted to GHB and METH the night before, they turned away from him and talked to me.  They told me that they couldn’t take anything he was saying into account or as record since he was “under the influence” and they left.  I didn’t know what to do.

The next day I found some chemicals under the sink.  I didn’t know what they were for, but knew that they didn’t belong there.  I later found out that they were chemicals to make various drugs.  It was like living in an episode of “intervention,” less fun when you’re in it.

The new me realized that Elijah both had a problem and I couldn’t deal with it anymore.  My love for him couldn’t handle being a parent to him anymore.  Eventually, I severed all ties and called his father.  He was on Elijah’s portion of the lease.  I told him that his son needed help, had a drug problem, was making drugs in our apartment, and couldn’t live with him anymore. 

I always presumed his parents sent him immediately to rehab as a result.  I don’t know really what happened after.  I heard that years later he had been in and out of rehab several times.  Not sure really if he made any major progress though.  I heard that he had been caught with alcohol at the first one, but after 3 times friends said that they heard he was doing much better.  I moved out of our apartment within 2 days, like a criminal breaking out of prison.  I left him to clean up his own messes, while he left me shattered.  I spent the next month listening to Fiona Apple and TLC “Red Light Special” on repeat.

Ideally, I wanted to think that time healed wounds.  After 9 months of not talking to Elijah, I had been at the bar nearly a year then.  In my mind, he was dead.  I assumed that if he wasn’t, it was about time.  This made it easier for me to not miss the person I loved, who had helped me understand myself.  I went to get tested as every responsible adult should.  Having never had unprotected sex, I was sure that I would pass with flying colors.  I took this HIV test, where they swabbed the back of my throat and within minutes the volunteer nurse came back and told me that I was preliminary positive.  This meant that I would have to come back in two weeks to find out what that meant. 

I forgot to mention that Elijah had gotten very sick with what we had thought to be the flu.  This was right before we had moved in together.  It turned out that this flu was actually the beginning of acute HIV, he then told me that I should get tested a little more regularly as a result, just in case.  As he put it, since he would regularly black out and we had experimented with drinking and other substances together, there could have been something we had forgotten.

            For the next two weeks I lived life like a zombie, thinking that I was probably HIV positive and would have to begin planning to live my life as another happy, healthy HIV positive, gay man.  All I could think of was Magic Johnson for some reason.  I had remembered as a kid when he was diagnosed, how that sounded then and how much better science had become since then.

At work, while I would try to look happy, I was horrified on the inside, and a ticking time bomb with every step.  All I wanted to do was smoke pot and be doped up so I wouldn’t have to think about life and its many problems.  Nick, the “chocolate doctor in training,” as he so poignantly nicknamed himself, patted my shoulder to say hi about twenty minutes into that shift.  I had a handful of glass beer bottles in my hands that I was putting into a drop-in cooler.  Being in a daydream-moment I dropped the beers all over the ground.  I guess he startled me.  I kept dropping beers, and did little talking, because I didn’t want anyone to know.  I tried to hide my hurt and uncertain nervousness from those around me.  After 2 days in, I had chattered a pint glass in my hand, in turn cutting my ring finger right on the bend and deep enough to almost see the bone.  All I could think of was how I would never be able to wear a wedding ring.  Silly, right? Gays couldn’t get married anyways.  At that second, I realized that if could still feel.  I was still alive.  While I was in the emergency room getting my finger stitched up, I realized that this was not the end of the world.

            Seven days after my finger was stitched up, I went to get the results of my second blood test.  They asked me what I would do if this second test too came out positive.  I smiled and said, I would live and still plan on a future.  I also said that I would smoke enough pot until I couldn’t see.  The advisor didn’t find that funny and just stared at me with judging eyes.  It was the same way one stares at the fat kid’s plat at Sizzler.  This all may sound silly now because in the end, that test and the one after would in fact come out negative.  At the time it blew harder than Jenna Jameson (I assume).  After though, I realized that I was letting Elijah hold me back from meeting new people and really growing up.  I never wanted to bring people to our apartment cause well I didn’t want to look like a crack head.  I was too pre-occupied tying to take care of him that I couldn’t take good care of myself.  I loved him for who he was to me and even how he hurt me.  As a result of him I grew fast.  It was the kick in the pants I wouldn’t wish to anyone, but it changed my life.  Dating would never be the same.  It took me years to trust anyone.  I went through a phase where I assumed all the men I met had HIV.  Not true.  If I could walk around in a full body condom at that time I would have.  It would take me several years to learn that not everyone else was like him and that gay men came in every shape, size and type.  Some were honest and afraid like me.  That was okay.  Elijah showed me that being gay didn’t have to fit any one stereotype.  I learned that HIV while scary wasn’t the end and that rather than fear it, I should be come educated in it.  Until him, I had never been that close to another guy.  He introduced me to a world that I had never known, including the one that every gay man becomes acquainted with in their lives, either first hand or via their found family, HIV.