When I met Scotty, it was just the beginning; meeting him didn’t change my life. Meeting him was the spark, not the fire that burned down the whole house that was my soul. Funny cause it’s such fuzzy memory. It’s like a faded Polaroid picture where things are out of focus and people are barely in the shot, but it has this air of romantic nostalgia glossed over it. It’s not that I don’t remember that night, though. I remember it was the birthday party of a friend from high school that I hadn’t talked to in three years. But he invited me and I was friendless and looking to get shitfaced. So when a party came along that advertised free drugs I was going. Stupid thing to do, going to a party by yourself to get crazy drunk and high in a strange part of town, I know but what can I say I was in a really bad place then.

Fast forward to the party and I was waiting in a disco ball lit room for the joint to be passed around and he is next me… I think. We started talking about what I don’t know, but for some reason despite my shy, awkward self he continues to be interested in me. We continue to hang out for most of the night smoking or getting food until we decide to leave the party to go home. And that’s it. There’s nothing life changing about that right? But that was the starting point of us as friends; that was the flash of the camera before the film develops into anything.

From that point we would spend nights in the woods behind his place, him getting high, me trying not to fall for him. See, he was graduating in a few weeks and even though I declared my gay crush for him, his gay self just wanted to be gay friends while fucking other gay guys and then tell little gay me about it. But – stupidly – I agreed. I agreed to seek nothing but heartache in this venture, which to be honest I was finely with. I kind of wanted some scars on my heart; I kind of wanted to be stripped of my innocence. So that was our routine. We get high, we roam around, and we eat (usually on him). That was us, until he graduated and moved away.

Afterwards, we maintained a friendship for a couple of months; even hung out once. But it couldn’t last. I started getting tired of being the friend he goes to talk about the guys he screwed over and him being able to read me like a book. And he got tired of feeling like I was keeping secretes from him to make him jealous of other guys. It just seemed that we were two people who didn’t want to be what the other person wanted them to be. You can tell that we were getting sick of dealing with each other. We were just emotionally manipulating each other into keeping whatever form of a relationship we had. But, it’s really hard to save a ship you keep sailing into a stormy battle. So we ended it. We basically hit reset to the point before we knew each other existed. Just memories left. The rose-colored glasses were smashed to pieces. It’s rare though, to look back on situations and see yourself as equally or more so the villain and realize how wrong you were. I regret that.