Never Have I Ever

Chapter 8

      Repairing my relationship with London was important, but moving on was even more important. And the first step in achieving that would be talking to other people. But I had entirely no idea on where to even start or how to go about it.

      You see, being in the LGBT community, you can't really just "date" like everyone else can. It doesn't really work for us. It's hard to find other gay people in general and then be completely sure that they are gay, let alone find someone you're interested in. I can't just go up to a guy and ask him out or give him my number. Dating in the gay community is more like getting a good job, and you either have to know somebody or get referred in. There was really no way around it. And other than Allen and Kevin, I didn't know any openly gay people at my school. I'm sure there were some around but we had never crossed paths.

      But as I was sitting around thinking, I remembered a conversation I was having with London about a month or two ago. She said she had met this really cute guy when she was at the coffee shop the other day.

       London works at the grocery store right next door to the coffee shop, she often takes lunches breaks and walks over to the coffee shop. She was basically telling me how cute he was and how she was really trying to flirt it up and then she remembered she had a "whole boyfriend out here". But instead of ignoring him completely she decided to talk to him anyway. She described him as being about 5'11 almost 6 foot, light skin with long black dreads. Kind of muscular but not too much. She said he looked like he worked out but she forgot to even ask about that being that her breaks were only so long. But before she left the coffee shop, she told him to follow her on Instagram, and she would follow him back. He did, of course, and they had a short conversation between direct messages. She ended up learning that his name was Chevon (sha-vaugn) but the convo didn't go much further than that. But after looking through his Instagram for a couple of hours she had noticed that most of his likes and comments were mainly from other guys. Which made her suspect the obvious....... he's probably gay. This was the reason she brought him up to me. I guess she figured I was desperate enough that I needed some help finding somebody. And in her defense, she wasn't wrong. I was hopeless trying to do this by myself, so why not? I followed Chevon on Instagram in hopes that he might just follow me back and to my surprise, he did just that. And with swiftness, he decided to comment on one of my pictures saying "DM me." Now in my head, I'm thinking how In the hell does he already know who I am? London didn't say she introduced me so he should have no clue of who I am?

The curiosity was killing so I hit him up in his DM's only to find out that he basically just guessed I was London's best friend is that we "have a lot of pictures together".

Damn, I felt stupid. He was only using common sense.

      After getting over the awkward bump of "how do you know me ?", he then asked if London was single or not, to which I told him "no" of course. He replied with "aww okay, tell her to hit me up sometime when she wants some fun". I kind of just laughed his comment off and said: "Will do lol". The conversation basically stopped there. He stopped replying and so did I. I really hadn't thought too much of it being that it stayed this way for a couple of weeks.

       Strangely enough, one day, while sitting in class, I got an Instagram notification saying I had a direct message from someone. I figured it was just some random person promoting their music again or asking for a "follow back". But as I check, I see Chevon's username at the top of the screen. Confused, I open the message only for it to ask me "what I was doing". Still confused, I reply to him asking if he meant to send that to me. And for a good hour or two, I got no response which basically put my anxiety through the roof. All I kept thinking was why would he hit me up, of all people? I tried to keep my eyes off my phone but the anxiety of waiting for a response was killing me. I couldn't even focus on the teacher.

      Finally, the bell rung and I could check my phone without feeling bad about it. As I checked Instagram for the 20th time in the last hour, I open my messages to see I have a response from Chevon. And for some unknown reason, I was extremely excited about it. His message didn't say anything other than "yea I meant to send it to you." I'm still beyond confused as to why he would ever think about hitting me up.

"What made you send this is the question" I sent.

" Idk I just think we should be cool with each other I guess" he replied back.

    Maybe this was just some clever way of him getting closer to London but regardless of what it was, I could get used to the attention. I don't have anybody else prying to get at me so why not you know? The beginning conversations were a bit dry and lackluster to the point where I even started responding slow, and I never respond slow. I don't know if it was me or he just wasn't an exciting person but this conversation dragging on longer than P.E. on weight training day.
As I was getting ready to hit him with the good ole "I'm getting sleepy and gotta get up in the morning" routine he decides to hit me with

"I have a question"

    Here we go. he's gonna ask the million dollar question that oh so tired of hearing. the same question that plagues every gay person from even before they even know they're gay. The same tired ass questions no matter how it's asked still feels incredibly awkward, uncomfortable and a bit rude. The good old

"Are you gay ?"

    I had initially felt that we had a long enough conversation to where we could have avoided this but clearly that was not the case. And of course I was correct, he did ask the question but it didn't take the direction I thought it would at all, to say the least.