TW/CW: underage drinking and sexual assault (unwanted kissing)

I saw a friend I grew up with on the apps. I stared at Michael’s profile and felt so many things, curiosity, shame, excitement, nerves. I pictured us at the ten-year high school reunion that didn’t happen and wondered how much more intense the feelings would have been to learn face to face that he’s now single. That I didn’t know he and his college boyfriend had broken up did not surprise me, he’s one of the many people who I went to grade school with but with whom I have struggled to keep in contact.

It is not that I never go to my hometown, Santa Ana. After all, although fewer and fewer family members live in the city with each passing year, my mom and sister are still there, my godmother and aunt is still there, as is her son. In fact, I was over at my cousin’s place when I noticed his profile. I didn’t know whether to say hi or not, didn’t even try to remember the last time I had seen him. The second thing that came to mind was a horribly embarrassing entry I had recently read from my high school journal, concerning this friend’s twin brother. At first I figured I would use the application’s “Are you interested?” feature and said yes, in a way putting the ball in his court. Then I realized how silly that was and changed it to a no, thinking it would be better to leave him alone.

Outside of family members, I struggle when interacting with anyone I grew up with. It feels as if, were I to allow myself to get close to people who knew me back then, then I would immediately fall into my old self-destructive habits. This fear reasons that, back then, I had to hide so many aspects of myself to survive, so these people only knew that masked self and the ways I struggled to cope. Seeing me now, less burdened, they might ask me to reconcile the difference. This fear suggests that, having the question posed and in the time between their ask and my response, I may knowingly obfuscate and lie or on the opposite end, may overshare and embarrass myself. At no point does the fear allow for the fact that the people I grew up with have had their own lives, which do not revolve around me, and so may not question what has happened in the time since, attributing the differences to just that, time passed since last we spoke.

However, that’s just the general concern for people in school, not for those old friends of mine who enabled the destructive tendencies. See, there are two friends, Sarah and Remi, specifically who I wanted to get away from, both very integral to the social fabric of my hometown friends. Remi is possibly more complicated. My last post was in response to an audio/visual piece he recently posted and I am worried that there is more to the story of our hometown friends to relate there and at another time. Sarah though, she was that friend I texted when I wanted to forget about life, get drunk and hang out. It is at her place that I spent the evening before SATs, showing up hungover the next day and then going back out with her in the evening. Not all of our memories centered around alcohol, the most harmless memory was driving out to some outlets with her to help get her a prom dress, only I’d never driven on the highway before, only had a learner’s permit, and we got caught in a storm on the way up. All in all, a fun time. But most of the time it was about us getting shitfaced drunk and being rowdy. As I got older though and tried to leave the excessive drinking behind, I found that I had to also distance myself from her and her family, who either encouraged us getting blackout drunk or expressed concern but never actively prevented teenagers from drinking in their home. 

It is this trend of getting black out drunk with Sarah that leads to one of my worst memories with Michael. We had gone up to visit him for his graduation in Santa Barbara. I was taking some extra quarters to wrap up my engineering degree and wouldn’t graduate till the following year, 2015. Sarah had not gone directly into a four year university and had spent some time in community college to reduce the cost of her accounting degree and herself would not wrap up for another handful of years. The day started as playful drinking and a land shark in the early afternoon. There was some perceived flirting on my part from Michael, despite that at the time he was living with his boyfriend and had been with him for several years. As drinks and bars wore on, his boyfriend decided to go home and Michael and I danced and grinded on each other. At some point, Michael finally got too drunk and had to go home as well, we put him in the back of a taxi and called his boyfriend to let him know he was headed home. Sarah and I stayed, I found another guy to dance with, somehow lost my glasses, almost lost my shirt, and I think ultimately got kicked out of the bar too. Thankfully at the time, Sarah had a boyfriend that guided us back to Michael’s, because I was fading in and out of consciousness at the time. 

As we got back to his place, I remember all I could think about was wanting to get with Michael and playing back the sultry smiles and jokes that we had exchanged. We got to his place and his boyfriend let us in. I moved around him, perhaps saying I was going to the bathroom, but beelined straight for their bed. I woke Michael up and we began to make out. In a very real sense, I was assaulting him, as not only was he asleep moments before, but I had helped carry him into a taxi because he was so very drunk by that point. After making out for a bit, he said he couldn’t and I left, forgetting what happened next but suddenly waking up in the morning. 

Like many nights back then, these blurs of recollection did not come all at once, nor was I aware of the fading consciousness as it was happening. The morning after, I showered and cleaned myself up, then noticed I didn’t have my glasses and also that I had given my number to the other boy I had been dancing with. From there I pieced together the night before, remembering some of what had happened. I began to search for my glasses, which Michael’s boyfriend noticed and he helped me look. Michael woke up too and began to search, at which point I asked if they would mind if I just checked their room. “But you never went in there,” I recall the both of them saying to which I looked at Michael and responded, “Well, I just peeked in last night to make sure you were ok.” They seemed to accept this, which was some relief for me as I did not want my drunken sloppiness to ruin his relationship. 

We didn’t find the glasses. We even turned back up at the bar and called their lost and found, only I was informed the lost and found wouldn’t open until the bar did. We didn’t want to stick around. As for the boy from the bar, I never saw him again. Apparently, during the dancing, I had bitten him, roughed him up a bit, and although he said I had definitely crossed the line. It didn’t surprise me to learn that I had done that, so I apologized despite having absolutely no recollection of it. 

I wouldn’t learn my lesson about my drinking for another several years. The next time I saw Michael was another alcohol infused outing, this time after the presidential elections of 2016. I was not happy to learn who had won and through Sarah, had gotten together with other friends from growing up, who could relate to my mixed status family better than my college friends. That night, I had a lot of pent up feelings to let out and mostly cried on the phone to my parents, one who had only recently obtained her residency through my turning twenty-one and applying. However, before I got to that point in the night, I had asked Michael if he was aware that I had gone into his room and did as described above. He had no idea that it had happened but he wasn’t mad about it. I said ok and dropped the issue, not sure how much more to process what had happened between us. 

It was with all this weighing on my heart that I decided to leave Michael alone. Instead, he reached out to me, “You’re alive!!!” We chatted a bit, and as I feared, he invited me out to hang with Sarah and some other friends on Saturday. I mentioned that I had lost touch with many of these people. He said it was understandable and that I didn’t have to explain myself. As we’ve left it, I’m not sure if we’ll end up meeting or not, but then again, Santa Ana and Long Beach are not that far apart.