Last year, I took a Creative Writing Non-fiction class, and despite the not very good teacher, I had a lot of fun writing and re-writing the two assignments that we had for the course. Although I’ve previously written about my first relationship, I decided to write about it again, since it was a familiar experience and as my first big assignment, I didn’t want to do anything too out there. Anyway, I’ve been hesitating to put it on my blog because I considered sending it around to publications but never got around to it. I figure that I can still send it out and if it’s an issue, I could always take it down from my blog.
With that said, enjoy.
The World Behind Closed Doors
Like all Harlequin romance novels begin, it started with a message – sent via an online dating site.
I was 19 at the time, and my world was built upon piano keys, papers of all sorts of writing, and crushes on boys who would, one way or another, never end up with me. Because of my lack of any working gaydar, I had resigned to meeting other gay people online by signing up on a few gay online sites. I met Kemuel that way, and assumed he was just going to be another name added to my list of people I met online who, after meeting them once or twice, would be yet another boring guy I’d rather not talk to again. I remember the message he sent me: he mentioned that from my profile, I liked music and went on to tell me he that music was also fundamental in his world – he was a student at UBC in the Music Program. At first, this surprised me – not because he was in the Music Program but the mere fact that someone in cyberspace had 1. bothered to read my profile despite it not having keywords like “bottom boy”, “casual”, or the popular misspelling, “cum”, 2. sent me a message that didn’t include the aforementioned words or have the generic “how r u?” and leave it at that but instead, 3. sent me a message that actually mentioned my interests and started a stimulating conversation. Now this was profound.
We instant-messaged each other a few days before he wanted to meet, insisting sometime soon. Still being wary of meeting people from online, it already felt rushed to me.
(continued in part 2…)