Another love
I confessed to my roommate, Ethan.
His response? He crucified me online. A post on
the campus forum, practically naming me,
screamed, “My roommate is a disgusting,
perverted faggot!”
I had no choice but to switch rooms. My new
roommate, thankfully, was “one of us“-no
judgment, no disgust.
But Ethan? He completely lost it. Like a man
possessed, he started spending every night in
my old room, lingering until lights out.
- 1.
Before confessing, I’d braced myself for
rejection. I figured it was a standard confession,
two possible outcomes: success, we’re a
couple; failure, we’re strangers.
But when that forum post–the one calling me a
“disgusting, perverted faggot“-hit number one,
I knew my life wasn’t going to be standard
anymore. A dull ache spread through my chest. I
gripped my pen, Ethan’s twisted way of
6222
く
answering me. A lesson in not overstepping, in
not having silly, naive hopes.
Liking a guy, apparently, was perverse,
disgusting, a stain too filthy to even mention.
Only I was naive enough to think I just liked a
guy. No big deal.
Ha. Like it wasn’t a big deal.
- 2.
I walked back to the dorm, pale and under a
gauntlet of stares. My three roommates were
inside, arguing about something. The moment I
opened the door, silence. Three pairs of eyes
locked onto me. I looked up. My bedding was
piled in the middle of the room, soaked. It
reeked of alcohol.
My RA, Chad, glared at me with disgust and
pulled on a face mask. “Who knows what kind
of germs you perverts carry,” he said, his voice
muffled. “Disinfecting is the least we can do for
our own safety!” He waved a form. “God,
sharing a room with a freak, how gross. Did you
guys fill out the room change requests?”
く
I paused, hand on my chair. Room change?
They were leaving? Because I…liked guys?
My gaze shifted to the desk next to mine.
“Ethan, you too?”
Ethan, legs propped up on the desk, was
playing a video game, seemingly unfazed. He
paused, looked up, and stared at me. Then, with
a smirk directed at the other two, he said,
“What else would I do?”
- 3.
Any hope I’d clung to turned to ash. I muttered
“Oh” and started packing. “If you want me out,
just say it. Don’t need this whole charade.” “I
like guys, I haven’t suddenly sprouted boobs.”
They kept talking about moving, but none of
them actually packed a thing. This whole
performance was just to pressure me, to make
me leave. All this passive–aggressive bullshit.
They were the ones being dishonest and
cowardly.
My anger fueled my movements, and I packed
roughly. A Tang dynasty–style horse figurine
<
Ethan had made for me in pottery class
tumbled out of the box and shattered on the
floor.
Ethan’s face went white. He tossed his phone
aside. “Shit! Caleb, are you insane?!”
- 4.
I can’t even describe how I felt. I wasn’t
normally impulsive. If I hadn’t sensed something different from Ethan, a tiny signal, a flicker of hope…I never would’ve confessed.
That horse. Ethan made it for me, not his clingy ex–girlfriend. She’d begged, sulked, and
threatened, but he refused to give it to her.
Finally, she’d snapped. “You have to choose!”
she’d cried. “The horse or me!”
Ethan just laughed, carefully boxed the figurine, deleted and blocked her number right in front of her, and walked away.
Back in the dorm, he’d plopped the box on my desk, grinning. “Dude, I dumped my girlfriend for you. Maybe we should just get together, you
can be my girlfriend.”
<
He said it often, almost like a catchphrase. Our roommates were used to it, used to his
favoritism towards me. By sophomore spring,
after every girlfriend dumped him for prioritizing me, Ethan, a notorious player, stopped dating altogether. He’d been single for over six
months.
