“One night, a friend of mine brought his new gay friend, Sam, to the rink, and I decided that I wanted to skate with Sam during the couple’s song, but I was too afraid to ask. My buddy asked him for me, and he said yes. That night we held hands as we skated and it was truly the most magical moment of my life, and at the end of the night, we exchanged numbers. That Christmas, I asked my mom the same question I did every year, except this time there was a boy in the picture. She said yes, and so Sam spent Christmas with my family and though that was twenty years ago, it was still the best Christmas of my life.” He broke down into tears again, and as his eyes turned red, he tucked his head beneath his arms.
The tattooed man beside him rubbed his back whispering to him, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” We listened to the gay man’s long, pitiful sobs before he finally picked up his head to continue speaking.
“Fifteen years ago, Sam was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. It was a fourteen month battle and I held his hand through every step of the way. Sam-” He broke into more sobs before finishing his beaten sentence, “Sam passed away.”
The seven of us gave the man our sympathy before we continued on. We went in a clockwise circle, and as such I would be the second to last person to go. Each person shared their own story; the tattooed man of how his mother was repeatedly abused by his father, the seventeen year old shared the story of how a friend of his had gone out to a lake and drowned, a young girl how her sister had passed. The next person to speak was a blonde woman my age, someone who I had noticed earlier, the person I knew but could not pinpoint. She seemed very shy, and I smiled as I waited patiently for her to tell a story.
02-Aug-2012 05:03:37
- Last edited on
23-Dec-2012 05:30:39
by
Aeraie
