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A summer of texts, road trips, and melodrama
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He messaged me sometime in December. I was back home for break, scrolling Facebook.
Hey
I think we’ve met in Austin
I knew we hadn’t but I couldn’t believe someone so stupidly cute was messaging me. I drafted five or six replies before sending back a very smooth
hey
I don’t think we have.
We talked into the night. We flirted and made bad jokes. We sent each other links to videos and music, and then, the days were passing by. I told him about my friends in the suburbs, and we talked about our majors and how uncertain we were about getting jobs. I laughed about his violent typos, and he called me out on mine. For the record, he was right. I was being a total hypocrite about typos.
The weekend he finally came to town, my break was long over and I was back in school. We’d been talking for weeks, but the mounting pressure of meeting in person had me melting at the seams. The plan was to meet at Kiss & Fly, once the most popular gay bar in Austin. It was big enough to slip away if it didn’t go well and small enough to feel like a full party.
I got there first and waited in the back, frantically scrolling through my phone with the foolproof guise of “chill person standing around for no particular reason.” He eventually stepped onto the back patio, and I spotted him, smiled, and hid behind a tall person. I’d just wanted to inspect the situation. He was shorter than I expected but beefy. Shoulders wide enough to be a 6-foot-2-inch athlete. He wore a simple blue-striped shirt, torn jean shorts, and Nikes.
He was as funny as he was in his messages. When I finally said hello, he pretended he didn’t know me, but only for a second. He listened and laughed at my stupid jokes, then added to them without thinking. I told him I was happy to see him, and he said he felt the same. He said he couldn’t believe we’d waited so long. I said I had to make sure he wasn’t a serial killer. He said he still wasn’t sure if I was or not.
After something like an hour and two vodkas, we were dancing. The sweaty mess of underage kweens and overage queens filled the floor and swept us together. We started…
