Hope and despair

I need to take a small break after this...

THE THIRD LOVE

I don't know exactly when I fell for him...
but first, some background.

The second love, in retrospect
I had accepted I was gay in high school. I also suffered from a years-long deep seated affection for a kid in my class.

We started out as kind of friends, but then I fell for him, and couldn't tell him, and wanted to be with him, but I knew I never could, and he never would.

Why? Because no one else in the world was gay. Even in the early 80s. I bet you didn't know that.

I lived with that daily pang of unreturned love. But I never made the effort to tell him my feelings. I remember making my way on an hour train ride to be at a video game arcade close to his home – because, you know he might show up here.
I became completely pathetic.
So I went from friendly, to sad and hostile, and eventually pushed away.
But everyday I hoped I would just see him for a second. Just so my heart would skip a beat.

During this, like I said, I finally knew I was gay. But as far as I could tell, I was the only gay guy in my world. Even though we were about to enter the more enlightened 90s, this was my truth – there was no one in the world I could love that would love me back.

Return to humanity
One thing that restored my bearings, in the last year of high school, was my discovery of a source of release. It wasn't the same as the love that I craved, but it took the edge off. I became determined that I would never trap myself in the pit of "love" again.

I had successfully not fallen in love for two years after high school.

Now I was in college! In a new town, away from the past!
Life was poking along with no silly interruptions. Yeah, I had to wait to go home to get to that other release, but I was dealing, I was maintaining.

It's amazing when I think that I had a nice group of friends. Guys and girls. We studied and drank and laughed, sometimes cried, sometimes pissed each other off. And I kinda muddled through.

A new hope
One late entry in my life was a kid, a year my junior, who I always thought hung out with the jock types. But, somehow he began being friendly to me. I think he was interested in a girl who occasionally would be seen in my vicinity. Also, he lived on the same dorm floor. Weird but for some brief moment, we clicked – like laughing at the same tv shit or playing computer games in my room, or whatever. It went on for a little while just like that.

I don't know if it grew slowly or just snuck up behind me and whacked me on the head, but suddenly I found myself with familiar feelings when he walked in the room: a quickening of the breath, the skipping beats, a mild and pleasing choking, a smile crossing my face, all Charlie Brown like, almost a feeling of bliss – if I would have cried at those moments, it would have been tears of deepest exultant joy. But I didn't call it a crush. I didn't call it love. I didn't want to be there again.

Where was Coldplay when I needed them

green eyes, you’re the one that I wanted to find
And anyone who tried to deny you must be out of their mind!
Cause I came here with a load
And it feels so much lighter, since I met you
Honey you should know, that I could never go on without you

Again
Once he was playing on my computer when I was pretty tired and, like on other random weeknights with other friends, I fell asleep while he was playing away. Even falling asleep, I had some inner happiness that he was even close to me. But not for love. No, I said, he just made me strangely happy.

When I awoke, as usual, the computer had been shut down, the door had been considerately shut.

And I looked to my side.

And I was alone.

And I cried.

It all began again.

I was in for a world of hurt.

The decision
Time passed and the anxiety grew. Same as it ever was. I wanted to be with him and he wanted a girl. (A fun girl, if I recall. I think it would have been fun if I had been gay with her. Might have been a blast.)

The next to worst night, the kid, the girl, some other good friends and I were hanging out at a bar. There was even a comedian. – all that I remember there is there was some joke with a punch line from the song "that's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh."
But even though we were laughing, it snapped in my head. I was sad and angry. I was once again doomed in love.

I didn't even know Led Zeppelin songs, but, with all of us later on in the room of the girl, I gained a respect for the band as their music drove me to rage and despair. I stormed up to my room.

Everyone was confused.
The kid followed up later.
"What's wrong?"
I was sitting upright but curled in a ball. He really wanted to know.
"Look," he said, "I think you're a good friend – I'm worried about you. What's wrong?"
I was choking on my words. He went through a list of possible things.
Finally, "are you in love?"
My eyes shot up, I nodded.
"Well, with who?"
No easy exit. I couldn't speak.
"Are… are you-" and he stopped short.
He probably figured it out right there. But he said, "hey, I hope you feel better." and he left.

(There is a side story – the only reason I didn't simply cry myself to sleep and die was because of another budding and unexpected friend who forced his way in that same night and roared at me – he was so pissed at my sudden depression. That set the stage for my final love for the loveless. But that was long after. And yes, my fourth and final -I hope- unreturned love.)

I was reaching insanity point... something had to be done. And I knew. This time it had to be different. I had to at least try to tell him what I felt.

But time passed, and I still couldn't.

the moment
At the same time, all of us had a good friend who lived in the same dorm. I had suspected that he just might be gay. Turns out I was right. He was attractive but all my eyes were 100% desperately focused on the kid.

And, for the first time in my life, I asked for help.

He agreed. He would tell him. The next day.

All that day at classes I was in a daze. I burned myself with acid in Chem lab, I was so in a daze. I was scared and excited. He might say, "I understand … let's talk… I've felt the same things… I'm scared too." Or he might pick up a gun and shoot me.

Coldplay played to the past:

And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

I came back to the dorm after a long day of classes. My fellow traveler was in the main lounge with others watching Jeopardy. The kid was there too. I sat in the back. I waited. I watched. I sweated. I was dying.

Everyone had left but my friend, the messenger. I sat in the next couch, already partially curled up.

"What did… did you talk to him?"
"Yeah."
"…?"
"He was kind of shocked, but he kind of knew."
"…?"
"he didn't know what to say."
"…?!?"
"I don't know what to say."
"…"
The look on his face though... "Stop…It's over."

-the end-

When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
could it be worse?

I crawled up to my floor.
Many times he'd be hangin out at the forth floor lounge couches. Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. People generally hung out on our floor.

No one was there.
I walked by his room.
The door was closed

I stared out the lounge window, a city in the far distance.
And the campus full of budding geekiness and budding love.

I walked back and forth between the two wings of the floor, staring out each window.
No one.
I just paced back and forth.

I stopped in the middle, next to the vater.

I had revealed my secret.
Even though by proxy, I had opened my heart. I stretched out my neck to the blade.
And the answer was no.

For the first time in my life, I saw hope possible.
And I saw it torn away.
I was alone.
Once again.
And I knew it.

I curled down. Squatting, folded up, with my teared eyes in my arms.
The floor of my world had crumbled.
And I fell into the endless fall. The long death of the unloved.

If a camera panned away from me, it would have had a long hall down which to travel backwards. It would see a boy crumpled into a ball.
Weeping.
Inconsolable.
Alone.

The camera moves on backwards, the crying boy shrinking away, the room still empty, passing through the rear window into the night air, the squat 4 floor dorm pushing away into the distance, the night full of possibility to someone who knew better, and a speck still visible in the window, still crying. And the window becomes the speck. Then the building. Farther back, the cityscape, with the lake in the background, is lit up, an energetic night for the connected, the fortunate, the loved. And the camera continues to the constellations - the far above where none of this matters

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face…

Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face…

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones…

But no one's there to fix you.