Elijah...

Chapter 15  Elijah

The first infatuation of my life was this guy named Elijah.  He was my first gay friend in the 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 a gay.  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 may have been gay my entire life, but it wasn’t until I met Elijah that I knew I it.  The worst part was when I did the whole coming out thing.  Which people ask me about all the time.  It 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 the very few people were surprised.  Often the response was like, “It would be another couple years, a flower march, several ton of vodka and 3 seasons of the ‘Real Housewives’ shows before I would become good at it too.  I hope that this story doesn’t sound like a bad after school special and if it does, 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 that I planned on drinking all year, ignoring my studies and learning how to drunken surf San Francisco busses like a champ.  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 egger 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 and just be kids.  He was just an average looking kid, 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 an 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 around him.  He was very different from everyone around us.  What magnate me to him, I don’t know.  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.  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 Brittany.  His eyebrows weren’t even plucked.  He didn’t even have a feminine voice.  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 we 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 always that little boy playing with girls that everyone was speculating could have been “playing” with the girls, but obviously wasn’t.  We would always start off playing house and end in me braiding one of the little girl’s hairs.

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 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 I think.  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 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 was convinced that he would be the love of my life.  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.  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 dumbest idea ever.  This was after we had broken up for the third or fourth time ironically, even though we never really dated.  For some reason he kept crawling back into my life for one reason or another.  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.  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.  I freaking out 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 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 out 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 not sure if that 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 and who 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 until 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 finder 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.  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 loved him for who he was to me and even how he hurt me.  He showed me that being gay didn’t have to fit any one stereotype.  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.

Chapter 16 Beautiful

As a small child I was very inquisitive and quiet.  This was during the days before the bar. Before I would become self-conscious about my weight, looks or what people thought of me.  It was before the days of Keeping up with the Kardashians, and the Jersey shore.  I was just a boy. 

My mother would always tell me stories about how I, much like Mc Guyver, would always try to figure out things very quickly.  The only difference between he and I was that I would get frustrated easily, quit when I got fed up and end up eating something sweet.  In reality I was never really like him, I mean I never had the attention-span to build anything and it would be years before I had a mullet.  My mother said that I always would create new ways climb out of my crib as an infant.  This was a difficult thing to accomplished be since I, also had to sleep with a brace which was a metal bar holding both of my feet outwards.  The brace was heavy gave me something to complain about from a young age.  This brace, was used to treat my severe pigeon-toe but really just worked as leverage to help me climb out of my crib or play-pen and to create a comedian.

I would keep calm while supervised, then during naps I would study the crib for new ways to escape and nearly give my mother a heart-attack every morning as a result.  Often these missions would lead to success in terms of surprising her, not the heart-attack part.  I would find a way to move my soccer-sized head with legs over the edge of the crib or playpen and somehow end up making my way safely to the ground.  As a child I looked much like Stewie from Family Guy, all head and a little body, a real caricature type of kid.  The climbing out of the pen, during the age of innocence, was before I learned what fear was, before courage had to be earned.  I just did what I felt like.  This, partially, is the mentality that has remained with me through my adult life.  Just as an adult I learned to drink and curse like a sailor.  As a child I worked with this mantra: do what you feel like, find out how things work, maybe taste them and that’s it.  When I was younger though, that concept was followed by, how can I get things to work and get people’s attention on me? 

Once, around 2-years old, my mother awoke to me looking like I had just came out of an alien movie.  This child-like creature who resembled her baby boy was standing near her bed.  As she wiped the sleep out of here eyes, she then realized that I was covered in what looked like blood.  I was like a baby swamp-thing, but red.  Her heart sank and she was ready to take charge, call an ambulance, lift a car from off of me, if she had to, all within a heart’s beat.  It would be any mother’s nightmare to see their child covered in blood.

After a second or two I whispered in Russian, the only language I knew at the time, “I am pretty.”  This, was before I knew how to sound jaded and roll my eyes after that sentence.  By this point I had already learned that the world had a concept of beautiful and that I wanted to be just that.  It was at this point that she began to smell fumes like formaldehyde.  She then realized that the blood-goo was actually globs of a dark red nail polish in my hand.  I had splatter-painted all over the small infant-size body I once possessed.  She immediately started a bath while she went for the nail polish remover before the nail polish stopped my skin from breathing.  I got a fever as a result of this whole ordeal.  All to be “pretty.” This would be just one of many missions during my childhood where I would aspire to be that one which one viewed as pretty or handsome.  It’s funny how then the concept was so simple.