O Hideous Monstrosity Morning

Then this guy -- I couldn't think of his name for anything -- said that I shouldn't be living with Matt, then, if I hated him so much.

Hated Matt?  I must have looked at him like he was crazy because he kind of rolled his eyes when I told him I never said that.

This guy was an old roommate of Matt's, and his name was right there, right there.  We were riding the bus and I guess I was talking about some of the things that bugged me about living with him.  His weight, his forgetfulness, his paint everywhere all the time.  But I didn't say I hated him.  I didn't use the word 'hate'.

(Something slightly geeky with an "H" ... Howard?  Harold?  Herman?)

On the walk from the bus stop to home I  thought of an answer to that, in case anybody ever asked me that question again.  I'd say, "Put it this way.  I hated what Matt became."

I was home early from school because I thought we were going to a concert together.  God knows I couldn't be sure.  He said last month he was going to buy us two tickets to a Chinese drumming band but not a word about it since.  So I skipped my evening class and hoped that he hadn't forgotten again.  And there he was sitting in his usual place on the sofa, reading with his feet under him, both knees to one said and all this flab hanging over his lap.  Ten years ago, when I was dating him, you could run your hand over his abs and count the ripples.  Of course, ten years ago he lived on coffee and cocaine, too.  But when he got off the coke, he totally let himself go.  He blimped out from like, a 30 pants waist to a 34 practically overnight.  I totally swear.  I know because I snuck into his room one day when he was at work and looked at the sizes of all his pants hanging in his closet.  I was surprised  that he was only a 34.  I had guessed he was a 40 or 42.  That made me kind of wonder if that fat guy was maybe hiding somewhere inside him.  You know, back then while he was dating me.  Creepy.  I know I'm thin and short and even skinnier now after the last episode of pneumonia, but I pride myself on never going to be with sad fat slobs.  The only reason I lived with him at all was because the two of us used to be friends and he gave me a pretty good deal on the rent.  Which I seriously need now that I'm finally going to college.

So.  I was home earl.  He was plopped on the couch reading a book and I didn't look at him when I walked by.  It was a matter of principle, for some reason, that I always waiting for him to say hi first.

"Hey Berny," he said.  A polite person would ask how your day was.

"Hey," I said.

"I made you a grilled cheese sandwich.  It's on a dish in the microwave if you want it."

"Thanks.  I already ate," I said even though I hadn't.  Since moving in with him I started this kind of super-gross experiment.  I started to think that maybe eating food was the most important thing in his life, so I'd deliberately leave food around and then see how much time it would take for him to get to it.  I doubted that grilled-cheese would be long for this world.  I walked to my room.

"Your bud Aldon who thinks he's straight called," he hollered at my back.  This is why he's so fat, I thought.  He's too lazy to get up and come over and talk to a person like a civilized human being.  Even if it is his house, I think it's rude to just yell at the back of a person's head.

"Weldon," I yelled back.

"What?" he screamed.  I rolled my eyes.

"His name is Weldon.  And he IS straight," I yelled and laughed.  I know his opinion of  Weldon and my other straight guy sex partners.  How straight can they be if they have sex with men?  They just are, I say, and he ever has a smart-alec remark for that.  His eyebrows would arch up when I'd talk about all the girls Weldon sees besides me, like he didn't believe it.  Like having sex with straight guys wasn't politically correct enough.

Matt's biggest worry in life was being politically correct.  He wore the awfullest gay tee shirts.  "Gay and proud."  "Gay and out."  "I'm not gay but my boyfriend is."  There was one that he made himself that only said "GAY is YAG spelled backwards."  Nobody who laughed at it understood it, but that was his not-funny sense of humor.  And he would march or picket or demonstrate in anything gay, the stupider the better.  So I didn't toss and turn at night worrying that me sleeping with straight men wasn't politically correct enough.

I shut my bedroom door.  If he really wanted to talk to me, he'd have to get up off his big back porch and actually like, move.  Because it was important now for him to stay healthy.  He finally tested HIV positive this year.  Two years ago at an ex-cocaine addicts' Christmas party he met this unbelievably gorgeous guy Francisco, and I guess they wanted to know if he was negative so they could throw away the rubbers.  He wasn't, so that ended that little fantasy.  I've been dealing with it for nearly nine years now, so I nodded and said oh gee, sorry, when he told me. But I knew it was just a matter of time. For Matt, I mean.  As long as I've known him he was ten times more promiscuous than me.  Some of the dogs I saw him go home with, too.  I remember these different weird things he'd say all the time back then, like "As long as is attitude isn't bigger than his dick."  Like he was seriously proud of  his low, sad standards.  I'm the opposite.  I've always had high standards for the men I went out with.  I mean, I couldn't be like Matt for anything.