no loitering

There's one sad ending in my life I don't think can ever be changed for the better. When S and R and I split up, I went to Florida to live with J and her husband St, ostensibly to be their two daughters' live-in nanny in exchange for a room and meals. Four or five months later I hurriedly packed all of my belongings into my van and moved into a motel. The straw that broke the camel's back was the fact that R was coming for a visit and I was told that he wasn't welcome there. I questioned J and she said it was St's decision and she had to stand by him; I decided that I had to stand by my man as well, what else was I to do?

That was one of many straws. When their families came to visit, I was bumped out of my room and had to sleep on the couch in the living room amidst the activities going on around me, sleeping around their schedule, no matter how late they lasted or how early I had to rise. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't comfortable, so at least on one occasion, I went to a motel, on my own dime.

I was struggling with my relationship with R, and I was struggling with a lot of other things in my life, and often voiced my struggles with J, who was at the time my oldest friend in the world (we met in Houston when we both worked at a R&B club, and our friendship continued after I came out and moved to New York, and she traveled all over the world, eventually ending up with St and pregnant). I think that J always told St whatever I said, and I don't think he had the same filters available to help him understand where I was coming from.

One of the things I wanted to do when I moved off of the road and settled was to get an HIV test, not because I feared I was Positive, but rather because I had only done so once before (at the insistence of the woman I had mistakenly married as we were splitting up, sort of a punishment). I got tested shortly after I arrived at J & St's, but it was around the holidays and the clinic was closed for the holidays, then was permanently shut down at the beginning of the new year. The phone number was disconnected and I couldn't remember where the place was, and blew off making the necessary calls to find out where to get my results, and didn't really want to start the process over again.

J asked me several times -- I believe at St's insistence -- when I was going to get my results and I was non-commital at best. In the meantime, they asked their pediatrician if a gay man with HIV lived in their house, what precautions they should take for the safety of their daughters (at the time four- and two-years-old). According to J, the doctor told them that an HIV-positive man shouldn't share the same bathroom. That was why they were so interested in knowing the results of my test.

But a lot of other things were going on. I was having a hard time paying bills (the cost of the van S and I had bought together and I was now left with was nearly $500 a month); the only job I could get that was flexible enough for my nannying schedule was at the catering company where J worked, but I couldn't take any of the same shift she took because they needed a sitter because St had his own business and often worked around the clock.

J seemed shocked that I would move out just because they wouldn't let R stay with me. I made some comment about having to stand by R as she followed me in and out of the house as I carried my belongings to the van. I had also somehow found the results of my HIV test by that time and as I left said, "Just so you know, I don't have AIDS," or something insensitive like that.

It was a horrible couple of days when I was performing in a play (for some reason I thought I had time to do that) and R and my gay uncle were both in town to see me perform, and we were all staying in the same motel room, and R and my uncle ended up having sex together. (I encouraged it, I'm not sure why.)

I moved from the Beach to Jacksonville proper and saw the girls a couple of times before I left Florida for good. Once was at a catering party, the other was right before I moved; J met me at a park with the girls because she didn't think it was a good idea for me to come to their house.

A year or so later, when S finished the documentary about our life on the road and it played at a film festival in Tampa, J drove down and she and I stayed the night in a motel and tried to figure out what had happened to our friendship. We cried a lot, we apologized a lot, but St's name never came up, and R's only a briefly. The next day, we went our separate ways and haven't spoken since. In my mind I seem to remember that she said she was going to send me a T-shirt from a company she had started, and I waited for her to contact me, and it never happened.

Occasionally, I Google J to see how she is doing - or what she is doing, rather. The T-shirt website disappeared and her name showed up alongside St's for his business. Another time, I found that she had started her own catering company, but more recently saw that the business license for that company expired. Just recently, I found her name in a list of people in her county who had given money to the Democratic Party.

I'm happy that Obama is doing so well in Florida; I wish we could see the same thing happen in Texas. It would be something to talk about, I think to myself. I have J's phone number phone but I haven't used it in a long time; I don't know if it still works.

I wish her all the happiness she can have in her life, but sometimes I think that if she and St split up perhaps there would be a chance for us to be friends again. We were such good friends for a long time. Otherwise, it could only be secret meetings here and there, maybe some emails sent back and forth, but with no mention of the men we stood by back in the day, and what kind of a friendship would that be, really?

My obsession with R has subsided, but I wouldn't be comfortable telling J about that, and I really don't have any interest in St. I do miss those girls those, more than anything. I guess they're about ten and eight now.