Table For Two

4 - Harvey

I'm not sure how to feel about everything that happened. In one respect, I never want to go outside again and I might just go and become a monk so that I never have to worry about dating a guy again because that was just a debacle I can do without for the rest of my goddamned life. I'm also mad at myself for letting myself get worked up enough to have a shit-slinging contest in public. It's like I can feel my parents' disapproval and contempt creeping like a wet chill across the back of my neck. But then there's Ali. The sweet waiter who made sure I was okay and also stopped me from paying for that asshole's food. Which he did not have to do for me. But he did. Maybe there were one or two nice people out there after all.

I walk home rather than get the bus. I always got warned about how dangerous cities are. Never go anywhere alone. Always stay where I could be seen. Never talk to strangers. But... it just sounds like such bullshit now. It's early September and it's still warm from summer and the streetlamps are bright and there are people everywhere. I head back into the centre by the bus station and then bank right and follow the river out towards the uni as it runs kind of parallel to the road. It takes about a quarter of an hour to get back to the student accommodation from there.

I pretty much autopilot my way through the lobby and to the elevators, heading up to the 4th floor and straight back to my room. There's some sort of party going on in the shared kitchen but I'm not really that interested after tonight. I kind of just want to go to sleep. But my brain is going a million miles a minute and I want to be able to call home and talk to them about it but... I can't. Well, I could but that would lead to a load of questions I really don't want to answer.

That's where I am. Harvey Trent - no Facebook and no social media that my folks know about or would even know how to find without bribing someone. Because if they saw it and saw the little flags and the quotes and all the other things that signify who I am then they would ask questions and those would not be fun to answer because they've made it pretty clear what they think about that so we never talked about it and we likely never will.

And that makes me sad more than anything. I don't want to think my family are bad people. In a lot of ways they're not... but when it comes to this they turn into the worst kind of people and it just makes me hope they never, never find out about me. Which shouldn't be the way anyone like me has to feel about who they are.

But I can't change that. They are who they are like I am who I am and right now who I am is clearly an idiot because I'm still thinking about Ali - the waiter who did A Nice Thing for me and now I'm practically obsessed with him. Is this the lived gay experience? Fawning over cute guys who show you the absolute smallest bit of kindness because you're so starved of experiencing that? Is this what I have to look forward to now I'm at uni and away from home and left to my own devices.? Just a stream of bad dates being saved by heroes in stiff-collared shirts and aprons?

Wow... I am spiralling. Oh wait, it's nearly ten. Meds. Where did I pu- Ah! Okay that might help me out a lot and stop me going completely off the reservation. I open up my laptop and start playing some music on Spotify. Just a list of acoustic and folk songs that I often use when I'm trying to relax. I reduce the screen brightness to the lowest it will go and just throw myself back down on the bed, sighing. I can hear people beginning to leave for the night... that's gonna be a messy one. I press my head back into the memory foam pillow, shut my eyes and try to rest for a bit.