Part 15 Back Stories
Let me start this part of the story with a back story. Probably a year before I met T on the Whisper app, I had made a friend with a young guy who was also from Michigan. He was in his early twenties while I must have been 32 or so. We got to chatting about I don’t remember what, but the conversation veered towards our sexuality somehow. He said he was struggling with his. I told him I’m gay and we became online friends ever since. I’ll call him John. He was heavy set, White, wore glasses and he worked at an insurance company. Imagine a younger Peter Griffin.
John was a cool guy. He had a lot of emotional and physical issues. He was abused as a child, the sa kind of abuse by a family member and it really messed him up. He was constantly getting surgery for one proplem after another that he had. I did what I could to lift him up when he was feeling down. I made him laugh a lot and I think that’s what helped cheer him up a lot of times. We were both huge Family Guy fans and I had a video clip, gif or meme ready at all times during our conversations. We talked via text or Facebook most of the time.
John let me know at some point that he found me attractive, but I didn’t feel the same about him so I didn’t think anything of it. We got pretty close and we talked just about every day about everything pretty much. Eventually, we met in person once because he was going to the state next door, North Carolina, and he stopped by. He drove all the way from Michigan to pick up a new pet dog from there on his way back. He had a zoo practically with like 4 dogs already at the time plus some other small animals.
It was cool meeting him in person. It was around January or so when he came so it was kind of chilly at the time. Chilly for me being from South Carolina is like 60 degrees lol. John wanted to go to the beach so he drove us in his rental to Myrtle Beach. We just talked like we normally did via text and got some burgers from a diner there. We went to a few shops and walked along the beach for a bit. There was a pond by a dock with a bunch of catfish in it with their mouths wide open hoping to get thrown some human food thrown. In my mind, I pictured them holding a sign that said “Will suck for food.”
. The way they were opening and closing their mouths wide open like that was too much haha
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I couldn’t remember if that was his first time by the ocean or not, but it was way too cold to get in the water. Myrtle Beach was about 45 minutes from my hometown so I had been there plenty of times. My first time in the ocean there was around 5 years old and I can still remember the taste of that disgusting salty water going in my mouth lol. I remember standing in the sand and it feeling like the ground was moving.
Anyway, after we wrapped up our trip I can’t remember if he stayed the night or not, but he had to get to North Carolina to pick up the new dog and I gave him a big hug before he left and he told me it was the best hug ever.
After he got back he started to act differently with me. I think he liked me a little bit too much and it was understandable. Long story short, one day he just stopped talking to me. We talked about everything under the sun, but there was this one thing that he couldn’t talk to me about so he stopped talking. I instinctively knew it was because he had feelings for me that I could not return so I gave him his space. Just like that my everyday buddy was gone.
I try to be so careful not to encourage anyone who likes me who I can’t return the feelings to, but nothing could have been done about it by this point. Fast forward a few months and then I meet T on the same app, Whisper. I told T this whole story about John one day, probably months after we were living together. I told him how John fell for me, but couldn’t tell me. I told him how they both lived not that far from each other in Michigan. He had the weirdest reaction to the story which was no reaction at all! T was the type to always respond with something, even if he wasn’t super interested in what you had to say. I guess his silence actually spoke volumes.
When T first started acting weird after he first moved in, I got the same vibes from him. There was something weighing heavily on him that he felt he could not talk to me about. I got the same vibes after he hooked up with that girl and started acting weird toward me again.
I’m gonna end this with one more backstory that’s relevant to this whole T situation. So my second year in college, I transferred to a third school because the first two were too damn expensive. I eventually graduated from this one with a degree in Nutrition and Food Management. I went for Nutrition but had to take all kinds of other bullshit classes I wasn’t interested in.
Anyway, this was the fall of 2003. I had just finished US Army basic training and AIT, which was training for my specific job in the Army Reserve. After registering for school, they connected me with my future dorm roommate’s number and they encouraged us to reach out to each other to discuss who would bring what as far as TVs, electronics, and whatnot. So we talked and decided who would bring what so we wouldn’t have 2 TVs in a tiny dorm. I’ll call him Danny. He seemed cool on the phone. I never got close to any of my past dorm roommates, but I hoped we could be friends.
So fast forward to move-in day and I had just gotten a new car, a used 1995 Infiniti J30. It was my first luxury car with leather seats and a sunroof. When I entered the room it was full of people. I spoke to everyone and asked which one was Danny. I shook his hand and told him nice to meet him or something like that. His mom and some of his friends were there helping him move in. From the moment I shook his hands he avoided eye contact with me and he was ice cold. His friends were way more friendly than he was.
My last roommate was kind of cold but this man was unimaginably cold. The ice-coldness didn’t end there either! For the next couple of days, I tried to make conversation with him, but he just wasn’t having it. He still wouldn’t look me in the eyes and he was just silent with me. He came to life only when his girlfriend or his friends were around. They all talked to me but he never did. I gave up after a few days and didn’t bother trying anymore. I gave the man nothing but friendliness from our first phone conversation so I told myself the issue is with him.
We only spoke occasionally, like to borrow a textbook that we both used or something like that. I remember him needing something simple like a stapler or something that I had, but instead of him asking me he went out in the hall and asked everyone else instead. It was insane lol. I just did not have luck with roommates, but this was unbelievable.
It wasn’t until the end of our final semester as roommates that I figured out what his problem was. I had to show him something on my computer one day and he squeezed in the seat with me and I could tell this man was attracted to me. He didn’t touch or grab me, but I could just sense it. I had an aha moment and I was floored. I said to myself, “Is that why he was ice fucking cold from the moment he saw me?
As I said, Danny had a girlfriend who went to the same school. Sometimes I would come back to my dorm and they would both be there. I would always jingle my keys for a while before I opened the door in case they were getting intimate in there. I’m sure that’s what they wanted to do sometimes, but since he never talked to me he wouldn’t say anything so I didn’t give a fuck lol. If I had nothing to do I was in my room.
I don’t know how the hell he had some instant attraction to me, but I knew that was the case 100 %.
Now how does this relate to T? T had the exact same energy as my old roommate did, not talking to me, avoiding me, and not looking me in the eyes when he used to all the time. It was the same exact behavior. I never imagined I would be dealing with that type of energy again from a roommate and friend of my own choosing, but I was living it all over again with T. The only difference was it wasn’t constant with T. From one day to the next after I told him my feelings for him were gone I never knew which version of T I would get.
Some days he would be all friendly again and then he would get upset all over again and give me the cold shoulder once again. He put me through an emotional roller coaster.
Thanks again for reading guys. I really felt like George RR Martin with this story lately, like I had writer’s block even though I lived the story lol. I have been super busy, but I’m going to see this story through to the end!