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Jus
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Ben was my friend. He was more than a friend, in retrospect, but nothing was a straight line in 2008. We were all pre-20’s, drunk on lust and drugs, and tunnel visioned.
I loved Elliot but I also loved Jess, Kari, Brooke, Alicia, Scott, and Ben. All gay, or gay adjacent. All sexually and emotionally affiliated with me in some way. Elliot was different. I called her my Edward. That was why no one who came after our meeting would ever truly touch me, not in an actual, physical way, but in a deeply spiritual and emotional way. We weren’t officially monogamous until 2010, even then she slept with whoever she wanted to, but the moment she texted, messaged me on MSN, or called, I was hers – completely and promptly. Kissing her was like hot electricity, a little pain mixed in with the love. A longing, perhaps, or a knowing that it would never last. Passionate love, I would come to understand, generally came with the fiery sting of agony. It’s what poets write about, what pulled Odysseus across Aegean sea, and what made me blind to the fact that Ben was most definitely not just a friend.
I wore the necklace she gave me as him and I drank wine and made out, half naked, in my bed. My fingers traced the outline of the evil eye pendant while he snapped photos of me pensively smoking a cigarette – thinking about her no doubt. When I caught him, I screwed up my face to ruin the photo. It’s one of my favourites.
He only asked me out once. It was Valentine’s Day 2007. We both worked in the service industry; I was a caterer, he was a dishwasher. An hour into our shift I found him in the linen closet, crying and blotting blood from his face with a cloth napkin. I didn’t know him very well, he had just started, but I put my tray down and asked what happened. He was taller than me by at least a foot, all arms and legs and a bobble head, so he had to lean down a bit for me to inspect the wide cut on his top lip. He frantically explained how he didn’t mean to break the dishwasher, the screw simply exploded into his face. He paced back and forth, waving his arms, shrieking about how the owner would fire him on the spot if he found out. I would come to know that Ben was a walking hand grenade with the purest of hearts.
After I got the bleeding to stop and put a Band-Aid on, I assured him that Frank, the owner of the catering company, wouldn’t dream of firing him, at least not on one of the busiest nights of the year.
Throughout the night we checked in with each other. The machine worked fine, no one even noticed the missing screw, and Ben slid around the pit on old skater shoes like he’d worked there for years.
When the service was over, I hovered over trays of spring rolls and spanakopita’s, eating my first solid food of the day like I didn’t know where my next was coming from – because I didn’t. My diet before 10pm generally consisted of French-pressed coffee and Pall-Mall cigarettes.
My back was turned to the dish pit, I had the thought that I should bring Ben a few spring rolls, but before I could scoop a couple into a napkin, a red heart-shaped doily floated like a leaf in front of my face and onto the counter. It had a phone number on it.
I picked it up and inspected it, then laughed (a nervous tick when I know I’m being asked out). I turned to see Ben, laughing back at me.
The only thing I could think to say was, “I’m gay,” to which he replied, “so am I.”
We were inseparable after that.
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