Years back—at the height of the social media craze—I re-connected with a former classmate I met in junior high school on a "friends" site, like so many of us who work with computers do. He wasn't part of my circle of friends back in the day, but I remembered him as a nice, quiet, serious boy; not exceptionally bright or gifted, but nice. My impression of him was confirmed during our reacquaintance in a series of IM chats through the online site that tended to go on and on, because he wouldn't disconnect from me first. He went to a SUNY school in the city for toy design that I thought was really neat, except that it wasn't for him, because he wrote to me that his architect dad "pushed" him into the program, when he really wanted to be a car designer. Oh.
It didn't make sense to me. No one can (or could) "force" me to be an Illuminator, especially my non-artistic immediate family, so how did it happen? He still really didn't know. He worked at a company for ten years that he described to me as his "dream job", in direct contradiction to his other messages. But, like me, he moved back from out west to Rockland County after years away, so we had that in common, along with design and martial arts. He got his Judo black belt from a strip mall dojo with a self-appointed "guru" who sold them potions while they were still on the mats, so I didn't expect much from our playful sparring, and he never competed. He sat on me with his full weight, and then told me that was a "pin" in judo, which I guess means a "win" without any technique or effort on his part. It was weird. "What do you, just sit on people?" Well, yeah...that was his strategy. Okay.
We diverged again artistically. I didn't remember him from any of my art classes at public school, and I'd taken them since childhood—even when they weren't offered on the curriculum—at my urging. He didn't strike me as an artist at all, nor do I remember any of his works. I'd simply never seen him in our studios at school. He was tepid about that, too. But, he did like to get the fuck out of his parents house while he re-established his career on the east coast, and that we very much had in common. My overbearing mom eases up immediately around strong men, because they telegraph "hetero" in a big loud voice that she doesn't like, so she skitters away vaguely. It gave me the head space I needed to endure dysfunctional family visits during their holidays—that they wrongly describe as "parties"—by having an excuse to leave, which was also noticed and attacked.
"You have to 'visit' with people when you come over!" my mom would say to me, only to either ignore me for the rest of the "visit", or abuse me into working "her" weirdo "party" filled with other headcases by serving and waiting on their lazy fat asses, only to have them insult me to my face. Fuck that! I can punch anyone of them in the face, hard enough to do serious damage. I don't have to sit in some overheated room to shove my face with bad food made for other addicts. We'd escape in his car for "joy rides" made through the twisting hills of rural Rockland County with the windows open to stave off motion sickness that sometimes didn't work, hiking our way through the trails we grew up walking. It gave us the counterbalance we needed in the mentally ill homes of our youth, as we adjusted to our adult roles of leadership in these families too sick to care for themselves in our absence.
He picked up visits to the acupuncturist his mother frequented in Nanuet, working out as a bodybuilder in New City and going to the local bars there. He established a suburban routine much quicker than I did, because I still worked as a designer in the city, and I had my own apartment in Park Slope that he immediately wanted to move into (not uncommon for me), by planting himself and his cat there for a length of time that was to be determined by me. He left on Monday morning. Besides his rather generic interests and habits, he also had a bland "white boy" sensibility about travel that was filled with dull cruises that he referred to as "cruising" online. I finally responded that to him that it's the go-to phrase for gay men on the make who are also fond of ships at sea. Oh...haha. Yeah. Did I like "cruising", though?
Oh, fuck no, "white boy". For a Filipino boy from New York, he had a lot less flavor than me, and he knew it. He told me he was always upset by people's reactions to his appearance, because he said he wasn't that exotic. "I'm kinda like a 'white boy' in L.A." Yeah. No shit, homeboy. You're kinda "white" here, too. It was doubly odd because the dude looked like a younger version of Jet Li or Donnie Yen; like, a good-looking martial arts movie star with an incredible physique. So, what gives with that? Why no "flair"? He didn't know the answer to that question, either. The last girl he dated was a homeless meth addict who slept on his couch (and with him) because he "felt sorry for her".
He just liked to drive around aimlessly (he sent me the video links to his really dull driving videos that he made with a smartphone mounted on the dash of his car...yay), and his boring cruise ship pictures that could be anywhere with anyone. I immediately got tested after we broke up (negative for disease), and developed a much better attitude about men from my homeboy, so thanks for that. We had parted ways without any physical violence at all, which is quite uncommon for two martial arts "action heroes". No harm, no foul. It was a totally clean break from a kid who loved me from afar for many years, a schoolkid crush that he had made real for a short time, and that deserves some "kudos". But he doesn't deserve me, or a relationship with me that's a marriage with kids. That's for another superhero entirely.
