I rushed to find his painting album when a friend mentioned that he had just published his first. After searching through several bookstores I found a soft-covered album colored in black with the title painted in silver and his name on the bottom. It had a single lettered name, S. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I should pick it up. I thought I’ve forgotten it all yet all the memories came back fiercely like a tsunami that had overwhelmed my brain. I quickly paid and rushed back home. I lit a cigarette and finally sat down with the album in front.
It all happened in my senior year of high school. A kiss that had haunted me days and nights. It was so simple when it started. The complication escalated quickly when I somehow decided to kiss him in public, and when the others looked us frightened as if it was wrong. Two boys kissed. That was it. The next thing I knew my parents were trying to send me out of the country. Then I did something I would regret for the rest of my life. I gave in. I knelt down and said it was him who seduced me, that I was straight and that I didn’t know anything. Lies. The lies that the world would believe to be the truth. I acted as the victim. He called me once. He asked why. I couldn’t speak. He hung up without waiting for my answer though I couldn’t even give one.
I heard he dropped out. I heard his dad kicked him out. I heard he was still in town. I heard…… For a long time I couldn’t think of him. His name became a dagger constantly stabbing my heart. I couldn’t imagine how he could survive through. After all I was the weaker one. I opened the album. It was beautiful, peaceful in a desperate way. I flipped through the pages until I saw me. I was smiling with sunlight dancing on my skin. It was titled Happiness. I couldn’t help my eyes were blurred. I tried to breathe slow. The ones after seemed to be somehow different, gloomy. He went to a lot of places. There were ocean, desert, plateau, prairie and more. And the last one was him, a view from his back standing on the top of a mountain. He was thin yet strong. Pride, that was the title. I remembered back then how he refused to apologize, how he insisted it was not a mistake, how he fought against the world when I pushed all the pressures on him. I felt breathless. The darkness encroached around my field of vision and I was suffocated.
I remembered the first time we talked. I was following him home after school. He turned around and asked if I wanted to walk beside him. He smiled, looked like an angel that lightened up my surroundings. That was all I wanted.