You will always be my first love...

I think I should have started this many posts ago. Before any reader can understand my love for Parker, a study into the past is needed. And for me, love starts with Michael.

The first time I saw Michael, I was in the tenth grade, and he was in the seventh. I noticed him in the hallways and we held each other’s gaze. I smiled at him and he smiled back.

When he was in eighth grade, I knew who he was. He was Nona’s little brother, a wanna-be thug, running with an older crowd, a bad crowd. He was in and out of trouble, in and out of school. It was when he was in ninth and I was a senior that we had our first conversation. He was in chorus, a first tenor. He sat in the last chair. I was in chorus, a second tenor and I sat in the first chair. We sat close. Sometimes, too close. I knew that the same fires that burned in me burned in him. I chose to ignore the heat. He decided to touch it.

I was an athlete in high school. I played football and ran track. It was after football practice that I realized he was also in JROTC. He was my friend’s Nona’s little brother and he needed a ride home.

From that ride, we started hanging out. When the seniors went to the haunted house for Halloween, he was there. When I had my eighteenth birthday party, he was there. And when I –

Michael wanted me. I was what he desired. He had planned this pursuit. I was his prey and he was the answer to my prayers.

The first time we kissed, I melted into his mouth. The first time I shd, he melted into mine.

In many ways, in a short period of time, he became the biggest part of my day. I thought of him constantly and I tried to live in the memory of his lips against my skin- my lips, my neck, my back.

We engaged each other for four months before he told me that “this” was not what he wanted. He told me that he never wanted to kiss me again. And he didn’t. After four months, we stopped cold-turkey.

Today, he’s a married youth minister with two children.
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When Michael told me he did not want “this,” I understood. I did not want “this” either. I wanted to be normal. I had tried to be normal my entire life. I tried out for the football team so I could be seen as a normal boy. I kept quite in most classes because I realized that the other students, and sometimes the teacher, did not understand what I was trying to say.

It was when he told me told me he did not want “this,” that I was forced to question if I wanted this. Suddenly, the burning that had made me different could be extinguished, or at least placed under a bush, and I had to decide if this was something that I wanted to do.

I thought, at eighteen, about the wedding I would never have and the children I would never rear and the family that would never understand and I realized that I did want this. That not only did I want this, but that this was a part of me.

Suddenly, this became an epiphany. There were no tears or pained realization that this was the course my life had taken.

This was something I wanted and finally had.

Today, there are no triangles, rainbows, or loud declarations. Only a self that is actualized and a mind that is finally free. This is a part of me, but not all of me, or even the biggest thing in my life. I am a Christian and black and educated and a lover and a brother and a son and a friend and a teacher and so many other things make up who I am and who I will be.