Hi, this is for you. We don’t live in the same place anymore. Maybe you’ll find this somewhere.

To anyone who knows me, let’s all assume that I’m in a very good place and that my life gets better and better by the day. Please imagine me as an unencumbered rural queer tending to baby animals and vegetables I treat like babies in Oregon or Washington or New Mexico or Maine or Ireland or Japan. Thanks.

But if it’s you, then, hi again.

~

My skin’s itchy. There’s a visceral, pulpy desire to move on instinct rather than logic. You’d be surprised. I’m a very relaxed, thoughtful person these days.

I also had a vivid sex dream about you last night. So.

~

I don’t want to be funny while I write this. But in a few of these moments it’s hard not to laugh.

~

Christmas was an intense time of year for pear-shaped Pear Street. Do you remember? The last 16 days of December? 16 houses, 16 parties? My family’s get-together was probably the easiest, with New England Patriots-paper plates and an unhinged amount of frozen hors d’oeuvres. I think my mom and I wiped out every grocery store within a five-mile radius of their cheeseburger egg rolls and mini cupcakes.

But the other fifteen festive events in the neighborhood culminated in fifteen festive outfits, fifteen festive plates covered in tin foil, and fifteen festive arguments about why we had to go to every single one. “We’ll just do a lap and say hi,” was a common refrain as we headed out the door.

Some of those parties had kids that I knew well enough to give them a wave in the hallways at school. Usually, we’d find time when the adults really started drinking to go outside to build snowmen or smoke a joint or whatever. But others skewed a lot older, and their kids were about to have their own.

This one was the latter. Parties 12-16 were at the big houses that made up the stem of Pear Street. These events had guest lists, these tables had white tablecloths, these rooms were full of items that felt imminently breakable.

This also meant that me and my people were stationary while the local white-hairs moved about the room like the hands of a geriatric clock, giving handshakes and inquiring about what grade you were in and whether we were enjoying that or not.

This was when you and your crew walked up to the group of us. Your mom drove a pickup truck and wore aviators and a leather jacket. Our fathers were the same age, two of the whitest white-hairs in the bunch. I almost came to his funeral but then I didn’t.

Your button-down shirt was a deep green and fitted you perfectly. My eyes went to your elbows, where your shirt was rolled up. Your forearms had a layer of short black hair. Your wrists were angular and had little bumps on them. The tendons in your hands went all the way to your knuckles. While our parents chatted, my eyes charted a course, back and forth, elbow, forearm, wrist, knuckle, wrist, forearm, elbow. I couldn’t bring myself to go up to your shoulders.

You were also entirely unfamiliar to me, but allegedly we’d known each other all our lives.

You had just graduated from BU, PreMed. Your father said your name and then mine, and then pointed between us sporadically, me to you to me to you to me. You smiled and turned to face me, blocking out the rest of our little huddle. You asked me what I did outside of school. No one had ever asked me a question like that, and it brought my eyes right to the China bread plate in my left hand. It had a pizza bagel on it.

“I’m doing the rec center musical,” I mumbled. It felt very lame to say.

“Oh, cool! What’s Trish doing this year,” your eyebrows going up to your forehead and it shocked me that you knew who Trish was and that she was being invoked at party sixteen of all places.

“Bye Bye Birdy,” and you smiled, and it emboldened me, “how do you know Trish?”

Knuckle, wrist, forearm, elbow, and you shifted your weight onto your back foot, standing like a dancer. Did you even notice? “I did a couple of those back in the day. Geez, how old is Trish at this point?”

“Probably Jesus’ age,” I said, forgetting myself for a moment and feeling my voice rise in camaraderie. Our parents turned to face us and for a suspended moment I felt like I was under a microscope.

But then you laughed, like a volcanic eruption, your head thrown back, Adam’s apple bulging out of your throat. “It’s his birthday after all,” you said conspiratorially, and winked at me.

People love to ask queer people when they knew they were queer. To those uninitiated it’s a bit like asking when a tall person knew they were tall. They didn’t, until they did.

My mom asked you about medical school, and you said you were going to Columbia next Fall and that you were daunted but happy to be moving to New York. “It’s a party you want to be invited to,” you said, taking a sip from a cocktail glass with a liquid as green as your shirt.

Later that night in my bedroom I unwrapped a napkin and crunched on Christmas cookies I snagged from the table. The only thing on my mind was elbow, forearm, wrist, knuckle.

It got hard to close my eyes to sleep after that. So, I rolled up my sleeves to my elbows and stared at my arms in the bathroom mirror. Or snuck out just to walk around the neighborhood, touching every tree on the sidewalk, and imagining that you were on the other side of it, experiencing the same pull. Did you, all the way at Columbia?

You were the first thing that ever belonged to me. There was me, and then there was the secret of you, invisible to everyone. That eighth-grade version of myself walks with me to this day.

~

New York. I lived in student housing on 119^th and Lexington. I went to class and stayed quiet and turned things in on time.

You and I connected right around when it started snowing.

I went all the way back to the source of your social media, day one, and walked through your life one step at a time. High school. Undergrad. Med school. It was my first ever seeing a picture of you not on a Christmas card. Your profile featured well-timed candids of you with a squash racket, you on a boat with a champagne flute in your left hand, and you and a bunch of guys in bathing suits by a pool in a high-rise. Your blonde hair relaxed into a mousy brown; your smile was always on the side of your face.

This is when I started going to the gym. At first it was mat stuff on the floor. Then I’d jog on the treadmill. Then I made my way over to the machines. Earlier in the day the place had a ton of natural light and afterwards I’d grab a smoothie and sit in the municipal park across the street. To this day, desirability is connected to not even exertion, but its’ fruits. Clothes looked kinda good on me after a few weeks.

It was during a HIIT workout when you messaged me. There wasn’t anything novel about the conversation other than your weekend plans with undergrad friends fell through and would you like to get drinks?

Upon receipt of this message, I put on my sneakers and went for a five-mile run, the first ever in my life, the tightness in my chest transforming fear into excitement into a settled sense of anticipation.

You told me to meet you at a restaurant in the seaport district. I put on my most expensive athleisure and set out on the 6. The place seemed to be entirely made of glass. The tables were chromed out and the waiters wore black collared shirts and jeans. You looked like how I remembered you. Much to my horror and excitement, your sleeves were rolled up.

How much of this do you remember, anyways? Champagne, Aperol spritzes, martinis? My first oyster was at that table, sitting back in my seat as the briny protein slid down my throat. The food brought a not-terribly unpleasant chill down my spine, and the alcohol made me warm and chatty. I remember referring to your work with at-risk youth as superhero shit.

We got talking about our fathers and their illnesses, mine and his liver, yours and his heart. You said something that stuck with me—that your dad was your best friend. That even after he died, you would feel his presence as intensely as you did now. Then you invited me over to your place.

Your apartment was also glassy and chrome and a massive open concept kitchen-living room situation that had probably a million antisepticky clones in downtown Manhattan. It had started to rain, and you turned on your countless tiny lamps.

When we kissed your right arm was around my lower back, the left around my neck. You were taller than me and broad-shouldered. I noted your Peloton and weight set.

Clothes looked kinda good on me, but you had an angularness to your body that evoked Michelangelo, especially when you leaned your head on your hand, or placed your palms on the crown of your head and it was almost like the muscles in your chest rolled up and back. Even after fried calamari, fish with pasta, and chocolate torte, there was no extraneous part of you.

We had sex and then my head was on your chest and we both had video game controllers in our hands. As the battle royale on screen came to an end, you kissed the crown of my head and whispered into my hair, “do you remember the Christmas party?”

I found your eyes and realized I was grinning, “geez, which one?”

You smiled back, and it started on the side of your face, “fair point. The one where we met. Between PreMed and Med.”

“I do,” I say, kissing the tip of your chin, noticing the razor burn on your neck. He did that for me popped into my mind involuntarily. We both resumed trying to kill each other on a floating stage, your guy in a long trench coat, mine with a sword and shield. “That was kind of a monumental day for me, actually,” I said, after you knocked me off the platform.

“Me too,” you said, and I noted the trepidation in your voice. I felt your chest rise dramatically. “I still haven’t told my dad that I’m into guys.” Then you made a face like sucking on a lemon. “God, that makes me feel like a cliché. Do your parents know?”

I nodded. “I didn’t have much say in the matter. I used to mess around with this other closeted kid, and he told a bunch of people and it got back to my parents.”

We were quiet for a while. I stared at the ceiling, feeling the scab of my adolescence being picked, new fresh blood gushing through an old wound.

“I don’t think I’ll ever tell my dad,” you told me. “He doesn’t have that long anyways, and I think it would change the way he sees me.”

“I thought your dad was your best friend,” the words falling out of my mouth before I could hold them back. I found your eyes and there was something stony and solid behind them.

The sun was coming up as I came home to my dorm. The bed sheets felt so hot, so I took them off and replaced them with the clean ones from my laundry. I shucked off my clothes and put on a pair of basketball shorts, pouring myself a tall glass of water, drinking it down, refilling it, and drinking it again.

I wouldn’t see you for seven years.

~

Our dads died within three weeks of each other during the pandemic.

Mine was the first, and you texted me, I’m so, so, sorry, I don’t even know what to say. I thanked you. When your father died, I texted you, I’m thinking about you and your mom. You thanked me. I said if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m available. You thanked me again.

Our communication to that point was intermittent at best. Your residency training was over, and you were on to a fellowship at one of those big hospitals up in Vermont right when shit hit the fan. I banged my pots and pans with the rest of them and thought of you and the intimacy of psychiatric work that was now dependent on webcams and shoddy software.

I had moved home when things got really bad and he died not long afterwards. Your mother came to our house and my mom met her in the driveway. Your mom pulled mine into an embrace, aviators still on, the door to the garnet Toyota Tacoma still open. Your mom saw me looking from the window and raised her hand, the loop of her keys stuck around her ring finger. I waved back. I couldn’t see her eyes. Part of me has always wondered if I could, I would figure out if she knew about us. But we never talked about your mom.

The funeral was sparse, exclusively outdoors, masks plastered over mouths except when people walked about thirty paces to take them off to cough or breathe or drink their wine.

Other than that, I wept, I stayed in bed, I hugged all the people who needed a hug and listened to all the people who needed to talk.

Enough time had passed that it was time for me to figure out what to do next. I was told by a grieving relative; I don’t remember which, that my mid-twenties were not meant to be spent moping. A family friend told me they had a room available in their apartment in Vermont, and did I want to come up north? I said yes.

This part you must remember. The co-op. Minus ten degrees with windchill. I was bagging groceries when a chill ran through me and something inside my body rattled like the tail of a pissed-off snake, a feeling that grief and the winter chill did not seem to dampen.

There was something softer about you. The shape of your face. Your voice. When you saw me, you smiled, not the sexy side-of-your-face grin you had in Manhattan, but a wide toothy thing like you were trying to make a child laugh. Your cart had a family-style tray of Mac and Cheese, a Rotisserie Chicken, and two magnum bottles of Barefoot Moscato. You caught me staring, pulled me into your arms, and asked me when my shift was up so you could come get me.

Your new house was different from the Manhattan apartment. It was homey and right smack in the middle of a neighborhood not that different from Pear Street. You had a giant TV and a really fancy oven. You seemed sad when I told you that I didn’t graduate. Were you?

I didn’t want to have sex with you that night. I wanted to take it slow. Connect in a different sort of way. But we ate the chicken right out of the container and drank the two bottles of wine, and you were naked on top of me. You asked me if I wanted it, and I didn’t say anything, and you deflated. You told me that you needed an emphatic Yes. I could feel the frustration in your voice; the way you looked away from me. Your bed sheets were comfortable. Your dog was cute and low maintenance. The TV in your bedroom was bigger than the one in the living room. I said Yes, emphatically.

Afterwards I asked if you told your dad before he died. You nodded, a serious look on your face.

“What did he say,” angling myself so I was facing you.

You shrugged, “He was intubated at this point. Your guess is as good as mine.”

“But you told him,” I said, and maybe it’s a sign of how I’ve grown up or changed, but I was happy for you. “I bet he heard you.”

“It’s all because of you,” you said, and smiled again, the big toothy thing that seemed to be the hallmark of this mid-thirties version. “That night in New York was so important. The whole thing. I don’t know. It was a moment.”

I basically moved in at this point. I still had my room with the family friend, but I slept at your place almost every night and brought groceries home after every shift.

This was when I learned some things about you.

You never cooked if you could help it. You ordered pancakes and breakfast sausage every morning from the diner down the street, ate pre-cooked meals from the co-op for lunch, and doordashed lo mein or Italian or chicken wings every night.

When you wanted to hold me, you reached out to me and flexed your fingers and chanted at the top of your voice, “I want cuddles, I want cuddles.” If I didn’t oblige, you whimpered like a wounded animal and then said you were kidding. Were you?

You called your dog your Pupperino and his treats, Treatos.

You cried at the drop of a hat. My grief brought me physical fatigue like I was in the core of the Earth. You were terminally underwater.

I didn’t dislike these aspects of your personality. The thought of you made my molecules vibrate and I’d get hungry in a way that felt ancestral. But whenever we were intimate, my body would start to shut down. I would come home, and I would want you, and there you were, and when our clothes were off, I’d press myself deep into the bedding like it could absorb me, like I would become part of the bedsheets. Obviously, you couldn’t read my mind, so you’d continue, grunting on top of me until you rolled over onto your back. But sometimes you’d stop about the time when I stopped, a frustrated groan rolling out of your throat.

One night, your arm was around me while I faced the mattress. “I think Vermont is a bad place for you to start your career,” you told me.

“What career,” I said, my words muffled, speaking more to the pillows and sheets than to you.

“I think you’d be happier if you were pursuing something that meant something to you,” you said, quietly.

“And what would that be,” I said, turning around.

You shrugged. “Art? Counseling? Basket weaving? I don’t know. Something.”

“And then I’d be able to meet your needs,” I said, finding your eyes.

You looked sad, “No, not at all, sixty seconds with my iPad meets my needs. I can just tell you’re not happy.”

“Because I’m not meeting your needs,” I said. The whole thing felt so obvious to me.

The next morning, I woke up before you and took a shower. I threw the Styrofoam boxes from the night before into the trash, tied up the bag, and heaved it into the garbage can in the garage. Then I walked it out to the curb and got in my car.

After work I didn’t go to yours but to my own place. I knew you were getting on a plane with your friends to Florida for vacation. You’d text me when you got off.

We didn’t talk for six months. These were dark—to be honest I can’t really remember what I did. What I do remember was the intersection. I was in my car, pulling French fries out of a fast-food bag at a red light, sticking six-to-seven of them in my mouth and crunching, the salt causing me to drool onto my chin.

Your fingers were interlaced with someone who looked a bit like me if I was approximately 25-pounds lighter. We made eye contact for a split second and your eyes widened before the light changed and the two of you had to jog across the street. I gunned it back to my apartment.

It was dark until one day the sun came out. Everything that was frozen began to thaw. I stretched my arms over my head, my fingers interlaced, and walked myself home.

~

We don’t live in the same place anymore.

I do something different now. I see the same people every day. When I tell them about you, it dawns on me how you were endless, then quite large, then quite small.

I get cold at night and walk around. The sky here is so big, much larger than from the city or the woods.