#86

#86 was this gay boy who I had this total crush on. I mean, okay, I had a crush on #68 but it didn’t really get in the way that much, whereas with #86 I was completely anti-suave and actually quite inappropriate. It was the darnedest thing. There was just something about him. I blithered about him drunkenly to people: “I mean, he’s just so fucking real, you know?” I still don’t know how to translate that into anything that makes sense. Anyway, when he mentioned he had been interested in this female student who we thought might be queer, I was delighted: surely it meant he was sort of bi! I could work with this!

But I couldn’t really. I kissed him at a party at #84’s place, right after I kissed #70 in order to fuck with the cosmic timeshare, but I didn’t even remember it and I was disappointed afterwards to learn that something I’d been so keen to do had escaped my recollection.

I’ve got these old photos in an envelope marked “crap drunken photos May 2000”, and yeah, they’re rubbish photos, but there’s #86 looking all cool and stuff. I hung out with him somewhat but I don’t think I really knew him all that well, so my interpretation of him is likely just speculative. But he seemed really casual, really kind of low-key, and there’s something really appealing about that, when someone isn’t trying to impress and therefore they impress by just being so damn sorted and it makes you want to know them more. Um, something like that? I guess that’s a clunky way of describing what I thought about him, anyway.

I’ve got this picture of him and #87 and they’re lounging on my mattress in the Montague Street flat and they’re not close together or anything, but #86 is looking at #87 and I didn’t know that back then they had something going on together, and now I wonder if he’s thinking something in that photo or whether it’s just one of those meaningless moments that gets, you know, dissected in the Daily Mail by a body language ‘expert’ or whatever.

Anyway, so then there are these photos from when we went out for #86’s birthday and we went to the Peppermint Lounge or whatever it was called in those days, and I thought it was a good idea to take a bunch of drunken photos and I didn’t know any of #86’s other friends and you can see these looks on their faces like they’re wishing I would put the goddamn camera away and start drinking some water already. I may have been a train wreck. I totally wanted to make out with #86 and I may have tried to talk him into this, which, goddammit, is not one of my proudest moments. It didn’t work because, hello, he was gay, and I did not get a free pass just because I’m queer too.

~ by Nine on 15 February 2009.