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His big news

I wrote this one just for me. I didn�t try to make you laugh like I usually do, but you�re welcome to read it anyway�

My ex has been invading my thoughts recently. Invading isn�t the right word� Condemning, perhaps. He came into my life when I placed a roommate wanted ad in Philadelphia�s Gay newspaper. He showed up in a suit and tie after work. He was exceedingly handsome, and he knew it. I was taken aback, I blushed, I was dizzy with this attention I was getting. Of course, he was giving me attention because I had an incredible apartment, but I pretended that it was all because of my radiance and charisma. I called him later that night to offer him the apartment. It wasn�t a tough choice as he was the only applicant without a lisp and an unnatural love of Madonna. One applicant mentioned how lucky I was live so close to Judy Garland Park, the notorious nightspot for gay anonymous sex. Another mentioned how he had a real talent for spinning disks � no, no � not frisbees as I had assumed, but music disks. A DJ, there�s a roommate nightmare waiting to happen. By far the best was the 63-year-old man who told me in his best exasperation, �I just can�t live with my parents anymore. They�re choking me, they�re trying to control me, and I�m old enough now, I don�t need to listen to what they have to say anymore.� If not for the Parkinson�s shaky voice and smoker�s hack that only 20 years of Marlboros can explain, I would have thought he was a very distraught but typical 13 year old girl.

He moved in a few days later, and we stayed up late and talked for hours. Armed with a couple of the best cheesesteaks in Philly, a huge bottle of vodka, and a carton of Marlboro lights, we climbed out the kitchen window to my deck. This was the city, so of course by deck I mean my neighbor�s roof, but I had set up a table and chairs facing the night skyline of Philadelphia. The lights twinkled before us, and the skyscrapers were only a few blocks away so we felt completely dwarfed under their might, and it was painfully beautiful.

We got exceedingly drunk and giddy and just as I was about to pass out, he broke the big news. I woke up an hour later to the gurgling sounds of sex in my lap. I was too drunk to care about the fact that I didn�t know him, and I was too drunk to care about his big news, and I was too drunk to care about the boyfriend I had left behind a few months before, but was still very much in love with. I was much too drunk to stay awake, and I passed out again � despite the gurgling. But he was determined, and I woke up several more times that night.

In the morning, we shared some strong coffee and warm bread from a bakery around the corner. That�s what I loved more than anything about the city. Everything you could imagine was �just around the corner.� I felt happier than I had in months, and I was thinking about how I couldn�t wait to spend every minute with this man, when he turned and looked deep into my eyes. �You know, I�m not looking for a boyfriend. But last night sure was fun, wasn�t it?� More news.

After spending some developmental years defining who I was and struggling to find a way to be genuinely proud of myself, I was forced at 22 years old to start pretending reality away all over again. He spent every night going out to the bars, and I spent every night studying at home. I hardly slept in college. I worked full-time to pay my tuition, and I went to night classes. I began studying at 11pm after class, and I usually forced myself to go to sleep around 4am so I could rest a little before getting up for work at 6am. I spent those nights taking study breaks, leaning out the 4th floor window to blow smoke into the tree outside my bedroom, and watching the traffic and the people walk up and down my street, hoping to see him coming home. We continued to sleep together, and he told me that he was faithful to me. He was monogamous, but he was 31 and wanted more than anything to enjoy life, not sit around and watch me study, so he went out. He stayed out every night, and I pretended like it didn�t mean anything.

Early in our relationship he had a seizure. I returned home unusually early that night because I skipped my second night class. It was 9pm when I walked in, and the apartment was dark and empty, which was hardly unusual. When I played the answering machine message, I heard him moaning in pain in the distance as an audibly shaken woman left a message saying that something was wrong and they were looking for any relatives or friends. He was new at this job and didn�t know anyone there. Mine was the only phone number they had, and I wasn�t there to answer the most important call of my life, and the man I was living with and making love to was screaming out in pain uncontrollably in a room full of strangers. I ran to the hospital in my work shoes. It was 16 blocks of running, and my feet were blistering from the blocky shoes on my feet, but I didn�t stop to call a cab. That would have gotten me there too quickly, and I needed more time to figure out what I was going to do when I got there. So I ran through the streets of Philadelphia in my blocky shoes and dress clothes.

When I got to the hospital, they let me into the back of the ER, and I ran and enveloped him in my arms and let him cry into my chest. It wasn�t until several minutes later that I stepped back and saw the blood all over my arms. His blood. His big news. He had hit his head during the seizure, and once he was stable on the slab in the back room, the medical staff ran to take care of the next emergency without fully cleaning his wounds. So I took care of him. I cleaned up the blood and called his parents and bosses to say that he was doing all right. No, they don�t know what caused it. No, no one at work knows his big news. No, I�m not his boyfriend, but we live together. Nice to meet you.

I stayed with him in the hospital for 4 days, and I never left his side except when the doctor came to talk to him and his parents. Family only allowed in the room, so I sat outside on the linoleum floor in the hallway and relaxed my face and let the emotions overcome me for the first time in days. I sat on the floor in my work clothes and dress shoes, thankful for the blisters on my feet because they reminded me that this was all real.

When I got him back into our apartment, I felt ok to go back to work and school. We had been through something so profound together, that I was convinced we could put everything else aside. He stayed home for another week and slept on the couch and waited for me to get home. It was the only time he�d ever been genuinely happy to see me. About a year later I was snooping around on his computer, and found his instant message conversations that he saved and catalogued for some reason. The day after I got him home, after caring for him for 4 days without pausing to change out of my work clothes and dress shoes, the first time he was alone in a week, he got online and invited a complete stranger to come over to our apartment, get into our bed and fuck him to make him feel better. Who cares about your big news now?

It required a lot of pretending to put myself through that for two years. He cheated every chance he could. He lied at every opportunity for gain. But every time he got sick, I cared for him and pretended like I didn�t mind.

If only his big news that first night had been him telling me that he would take advantage of me and make me regret nearly every moment of two years of my life. Instead, his big news was that he had AIDS and he was going to die. His big news allowed him to act without conscience, it allowed him to hurt without remorse, and it allowed me to pretend like it was all o.k.