On the first day of the new decade, I walked into a gay bar for the seventh time in my life. Glancing around, I counted six people dispersed throughout the place. I’m reminded that once upon a time if we had come here together, facing this sad crowd, I would have worn my Ray-Bans, my navy-blue cap, baggy jeans, and that hideous grey hoodie you hated. You’d think as I took each step further in that I’d feel my heart hammering inside my chest, my sweat oozing from all of my pores, my feet ready to sprint at any moment had I spotted a familiar face. I would probably have done it had we walked in together in the past.

I found a seat at the counter. My request for bourbon so early in the morning had the bartender giving me a cautious look. The pristine black suit and well-combed hair didn’t merge with the red and puffy eyes bearing the price of a sleepless night. Maybe that justified why I needed the drink the most, and I got in my hands. Although my empty stomach wouldn’t appreciate it, I gulped down the whole glass and requested another one in hopes of forgetting that twenty years ago, on this same morning, I had woken up enveloped in the warmth of your body, with the knowledge that you loved me despite all my of flaws.

Out Zone had closed three years before my first visit to what was now known as Candor. I presume that the arrangement of chairs and tables, the faint lighting and floors would have differed back then. The bartender wouldn’t even have had the required age to work here yet. A sign advertising FREE WI-FI, the flat monitor displaying drinks and their prices wouldn’t be hanging up on the walls. Still, as my gaze wandered around, I imagined a twenty-one-year-old you: sitting two tables away, drinking a Hite with Baekhyun and Jongdae, enjoying your single days —a phase in your life I was fascinated to hear about, an experience I had secretly besought for myself but would have never dared to pursue— exchanging flirty gazes with a stranger, silly laughs, dancing, kissing, touching another man without restraint or shame.

With similar upbringings, we were preached about how we should study hard and get a good job. As we matured, the discoursed added how was meant to be saved for after marriage; that we should marry a nice filial girl (always marry, always a girl), and have children before we were thirty as if there was some sort of deadline. Ultimately, I was molded into that perfect cookie-cutter miserable life. I fulfilled all the societal pressures without any reward; I became what you had never wanted to be.

Because when you were fresh out of the military, fresh out of the claws of your traditional relatives, you went on a quest to be yourself, to explore all those pent-up, smoldering feelings. You heard those voices pointing out how morally wrong and insane you were, but you never listened to them. Because after twenty years of being stuck in a chrysalis, the imago of Kim Junmyeon had taken place and you were free, not entirely —no need to point out the limitations we still experience— but at least the kind of freedom that didn’t make you not want to wake up one day.

I remember you had asked me many times to visit Out Zone together. Your best arguments being that I could finally be myself in an environment with no judgment, patronizing, and scrutinizing faces. As I sat down on this stool, I knew that nobody here was thinking what a disgusting I was, what verse in the bible to lecture me with, what outdated science to quote me with. Regrets serve as nothing but a reminder of the courage we lacked once, yet I can’t help regretting that I didn’t listen to you back then but much later when it no longer mattered. Maybe I shouldn’t even have waited to hear your proposition, maybe I should have come here on my own when we were young. I would have anxiously been sitting on this stool, exchanging looks until you came over and I would be swoon right away. You’d give me the smile I loved, led me to believe that for one night, everything would be okay. But I had never been that brave, that had always been you.

Why homouality is a ticket to hell, had been the first cover I ever read. Every start of the month, I hated to walk into the library and see those magazines, their articles written by theology professors and medical experts, explaining that homouality was a sin and a mental disorder. They choked me with the rope of shame and ignominy, making me question myself of why I couldn’t be normal. The same words my mind had imbibed from my father and mother, the same words that had me terrified of ever saying ‘I’m gay’ out loud, seemed to follow me around like a second shadow.

Until one day, the bundle of magazines had disappeared, and the library issued a warning that whoever had stolen them would be banned. Most people wouldn’t have condoned your actions but I stood in awe when I saw you look around, grab the magazines, and throw them inside your backpack. Nothing stopped you from doing it again and again because no matter who and what Ph.D. they had, you didn’t want anybody to hate themselves because of those lies. Those bogus pages served a better purpose as a bonfire fuel than being read by college students, you explained to me much later, with a mischievous smirk, your eyes glistening by the flames, making my heart come to life in my chest as I threw in more of those magazines. And for a brief moment, the rope let go of me.

I admired your bravery, but I could never have done the same when I saw the pamphlets at my father’s office, advertising how fifteen sessions with him could cure a homoual. Something threatened to erupt from my throat as I remember my days replacing his secretary, sitting there hating myself and the look on those young boys and girls, those men and women.

There’s so much I would have wanted to say before we parted ways. If you could somehow hear this, I must let you know that I love you, always will. But also, that I never felt ashamed of you. Junmyeon, you were the most fantastic man I had ever met, the man who never hesitated to follow his heart and just do good. Probably the only person who had genuinely loved me, all of me.

Meanwhile, I was Zhang Yixing, who had purposely failed the CSAT, two times, because I thought it’d change my father’s mind about me studying medicine. I’ve seen and heard my parent’s dissatisfaction, how I wasn’t good enough, how I couldn’t compare to my cousins, my neighbors, the mailman’s daughter. But it was the disappointment in your eyes when you encountered us at the KQCF that hurt me the most, a face I feared to see again but still managed to evoke in later years. I hadn’t argued with you that morning to not attend the festival because I was worried about your safety, but I was ashamed to confess my own participation. You had been among the fifty attendees, marching for the day where being gay wouldn’t be a reason for anyone to be unhappy while I stood across and held a sign with unreasonable biblical verses. However, kindness was an essential part of you, because even as I stumbled my feeble excuses later that night, you held me in your arms. You always let me cry on your shoulder and said that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was loved, that you somehow understood, and so many sweet, undeserving, words I’m always thankful for. Because even remembering them now brought me enough solace to face another day without you.

How could anyone had been ashamed of you? I had wished I had even an ounce of you in me. So, my gut had wrenched in pain when you vented your frustrations. Did I manage to appease you with my half-assed responses? Did you believe that my shame was because of people assuming who I was based on seeing us together? That my concern was that the walls that I had built my whole life would crumble before me, exposing an interior I had tended to loathe about myself, revealing it for everyone else to loathe? Now I’m left wondering that even if they had crumbled, if the world never changed yet changed for me, you would have been there with me, us, together.

All of that stopped mattering years ago, but like everyone else, I find myself wasting time reexamining and reexamining the choices I never ventured into, sipping a drink from time to time. My wife would be pissed when she smelled my breath, but I couldn’t find a bone in me that cared. Not many things evoked emotion within me these days. I didn’t even mind the young man to my left, who had been smirking my way and giving mischievous looks, me the middle-aged man with faint grey hairs and wrinkles, old enough to be his father.

Funny. You used to believe I would have men at my feet if I ever came out. Embarrassedly, you blushed while asking how in the world we ended up together? I asked myself the same thing. You were wrong, however, and I hope of all the times I rebutted, you believed me at least once. Because it was you, who was the most beautiful person my eyes had ever seen. It was you who had everyone enamored with a smile and a brief connection with your warm eyes.

Many times, you said that your features weren’t anything out of the ordinary. But I didn’t care that your dark hair had never been as silky and smooth like the shampoo commercials depicted, that winter tended to give you dandruff. I loved holding onto your hair when you kissed me; when you held me against the bed and made my mind unaware of time and space. It never mattered that I could count three sunspots on your face that had sneaked their way despite your rigorous skincare routines. That mole on your upper lip that you disliked? I loved to kiss it. The scar near your eyebrow that you wished would fade away? I loved to see it. During your most stressful days, you carried prominent dark circles, accentuated by your round frames. Most men didn’t mind the glasses, while others had said how you looked better without them, thinking it was a compliment, but it only made your eyes roll. Regardless, I loved everything about you. I loved to see your heartwarming eyes that made me unaware of any person in any room. Every day I wake up and remember what it had been to lose myself in your eyes before the dull gaze of my wife greeted me.

“Baek!” I heard someone shout amid laughs. At a table in the corner sat two strangers, talking. From the looks of it, they still wore yesterday’s clothes and hats welcoming the new year. It wasn’t the Baekhyun I had met, too tall and too young. After all, I hadn’t seen him and Jongdae since you left.

Your friends never liked me, did they? And with good reasons. I never told you this, but Baekhyun, in all of his size, cornered me against a wall and yelled at me to stay away from you, to let you go, to just end the ing thing because what the was I doing? I think we were in our third year together by then, and I had recently told you about my girlfriend. Baekhyun had been right, I knew that, and you must have too, but you gave me a chance regardless.

Why? You could have done so much better without me. I think I could have done much better without you because then I wouldn’t be reliving a past so long ago so many times, it has become my present. Yet whenever I go back to that moment at the library when I walked in, saw you sitting there, and thought of how lucky I had been to be in the same group project as you, I wouldn’t change damn a thing. I wouldn’t be like those s in your class that had demanded to switch partners for whatever project.

My parents had been angry with me that term. Why did I apply for an English literature class as an extracurricular course? How could I handle it amid my fourth year of medicine? Yixing, you failed the CSAT two times, how the hell will you manage this? Their words weren’t a cautionary tale; however, I would have done it regardless because if I couldn’t get a degree in English, this was the least I could experience.

The details of our project have faded. What did we write about? Was it Voltaire and the Enlightenment? Or did we pick Lord Byron and romanticism?

I do vividly remember arriving late, a quality of mine I can’t get rid of. On my wrist, I’m wearing the watch you gifted me for my twenty-fifth birthday. “To help you keep track of time,” you said, but we both erupted in laughter. I left you hanging many times, didn’t I?

Another thing I recall, and I chuckle about, was lying that I used a typewriter, your bewildered countenance, and your offer to teach me the gist of Microsoft Word 97. Because, Yixing, who the hell used a typewriter nowadays? I knew your lips had wanted to say that, but you didn’t, your face had been enough. There was a lot you never voiced out that should have. I still accepted your help, all the while, my mind echoed of uncontrollable enthusiasm because I would be near you.

It wasn’t a secret that you were a member of Heart 001. During our first year, student groups for gay and lesbian students emerged across some universities, ours included. While I imagined what it would have been like to be there, to talk to someone about all I was feeling, you had attended the meetings. The groups gave you the chance to befriend people like you for the first time, and it had been here that you met Baekhyun and Jongdae, and so many more. The other students around campus might not have known your names, but they knew your faces well enough to whisper between themselves (and loud enough for anyone to hear) “there goes one of the homos.”

I still remember my pathetic attempt to confirm it from you. We had been finalizing our schedule for the project when in one of my few exceptions, I dared to ask.

“By the way, you’re one of them, right?”

You raised one eyebrow. “One of what? A sociology student?”

“No, a… A homo,” I said, whispering the last word even though nobody was sitting nearby. In the distance, I could hear my mother’s voice yelling at twelve-year-old me to never again say that: What’s wrong with the homos? Doesn’t God love us all?  Those two questions ended up with a three-hour lecture about how wrong I was, how God wouldn’t like me for questioning his sacred words, and what I couldn’t grasp back then as the dehumanization of people.

“The correct term would be gay or homoual,” you answered, not attempting to hide your bitterness or lower your voice.

A faint blush spread across my cheeks, and I averted my gaze while I fidgeted with my pencil. “Oh. I-I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry.”

The mist of anger dissipated from your voice as you explained that I couldn’t have known. Whenever the chance was upon, derogatory terms would be used to identify you all. Heart 001 advocated to change these negative perceptions and held open doors to welcome any questions regarding homouality. You said I hadn’t even mentioned it with any malice, and I never said this, but no, I hadn’t. If anything, hearing my father at the dinner table, mentioning with disgust how another or homo had walked in today, it hadn’t even occurred to me how offensive it sounded. You appreciated my attempt to apologize compared to the others that never did.

“So, don’t worry about it. At least you’re willing to listen.” When I lifted my head, you gave me a friendly smile, so heartwarming.

“O-okay, it’s just that you’re, like, the first homoual I’ve ever met.”

You let out a laugh. “And you are the nth heteroual I’ve ever met,” you teased. Years later, you mentioned that you never assumed the contrary because that never led to anything good. You would have been right about it.

“I’m not doing this right, aren’t I?”

“You’re still sitting here, haven’t called me a filthy , preached that I’ll go to hell, or asked me to stay away because I could give you AIDS. Yixing, I think you’re doing far better than most.”

“I suppose,” I said and shifted on my seat. “It must be hard…” My voice drifted away as my eyes found the bookshelves more interesting. The terrors I was afraid to ever meet, you had experienced them firsthand. Once again, I admired how brave you could be.

“Yeah, but we’re fighting to change that. You’ll see.” I never saw you wavering on that fight, this idealistic future where fundamental rights and acceptance would be achieved for everyone regardless of who they were. My mind was too polluted to even let a glimmer of hope pass through. But for you, I wish it comes true one day.

Ever since that afternoon in the library, you became my friend, the first friend I could ever be myself around, maybe even the first person. The first and only person to ever have heard me say, amid tears and relief, “I’m gay.”

We had talks that went from naming our favorite classes and professors to what the sound of a whale was like. You enjoyed quiet nights at home where you could cover yourself in a blanket and watch western movies. I mentioned how I loved cooking, trying new recipes, and experiment with dishes, my love for English poetry.

You told me about your family, about your fantastic anomaly of a mom, who decided to raise a son out of wedlock all on her own. And I saw your eyes twinkle at those memories. After finding out you liked a boy, she held you in her arms and said, “You like who you like, Junmyeon. I’ll love you, no matter what.” Her words were forever instilled within you, reverberating in your ears when someone questioned you, bringing you succor when it mattered the most. Life had been too cruel to take her away from you at your mere ten-years-old, to place you in the hands of relatives that would never accept who you were.

Then, you had worked hard and earned enough money to move on your own when you came back from the military. You got a scholarship, kept part-time jobs while studying, barely slept, but still send money to help your relatives. But it wasn’t out of kindness, it was out of pride after hearing half of your life what a burden you had been. Until they found out you were gay. Well, you certainly didn’t cry over them refusing to accept your money.

There was nothing admirable about me, choosing to live a miserable life with parents that would never allow us to walk through their door. I studied a career I didn’t fancy, quite frankly hated. Now I worked every day, suppressing my hatred for seeing blood, open wounds, and any other disgusting bodily fluids.

We were so different, you and I, but you were my friend despite the I put you through. Despite my freak out when we finally kissed, when the feel of your lips had me giddy and alive, yet utterly terrified because I could hear all the voices and see their fingers pointing how disgusting I was, how wrong it was what I felt for you. Who the hell cried during their first kiss? But you were there for me, you never laughed or judged, you simply understood. Your understanding went as far as too wait for me to be ready to admit what I felt for you.

In retrospect, I was a mistake in your life. Yet you never said it, and if someone had asked you, you would have never admitted it. Because you loved me, me of everyone else, and I was so damn lucky.

You never complained when I ed up all those times. Not when I finally told you that New Year’s Eve that I was in love with you but terrified of ever coming out. Instead, you always conveyed with words a comfort that calmed the trepidation of my heart. You comforted me, told me to take things at my own pace, that even though you knew it’ll be hard, you wanted to be with me too because you loved me. And I was so damn thankful and happy that you did. I’m sorry for all the pain that followed as well.

You were mine, and I was yours. But I don’t think you knew that I would be so afraid that when my father walked with me on campus, and you greeted me from afar, I would pretend I didn’t see you. I don’t think you expected that when we went out for a drink, dinner or lunch miles away from campus, I would pretend I hadn’t come in with you if I encountered someone that knew us, no matter how insignificant our connection was: the campus librarian, the cashier at our supermarket, that one doctor that visited the Student Health Care Center twice a month. Even years later, after we had graduated, I continued to let you down like this, to leave you to finish a meal by yourself. Had you known this, would you have reconsidered your choice?

Neither did you know that eventually, I’d meet her. And I hate myself for this. I hate myself because while you had been celebrating that victory, that homouality was no longer classified as harmful and obscene at last, I would be asking her to go out with me. You didn’t know that I’d date her and ask her to be my girlfriend, all because my family was starting to get worried over why I didn’t seem interested in women. Yixing, you’re nearing your thirties, why don’t you have a wife? What’s wrong with you, son?  You hadn’t minded my reluctance to come out, you understood it, but as I explained myself and reduced her relationship with me to a decoy, you were unsure of where to draw the line.

I remember you walked away from me for the first time, saying that you needed time to process it, to think about the implications of our relationship. There was a hurricane of emotions swirling in my chest as I waited for your return. And when you did, I’m sorry for not thinking that it would have been better to let you go, but I was too selfish, and I loved you. Yet kindness was your demise because even an undeserving person like me could still have a place in your heart.

I admit it, she didn’t deserve this as well. It was cowardly of me to involve her, but she came from another town; she hadn’t known you and who you were. I never told her you were gay. She was never interested in knowing you. And for a couple of years, it had worked. I hung out with her, forced myself to have intimacy, I took her to family meetings and social gatherings required to have a partner or else something was seriously wrong with oneself. All the while, you and I loved each other for moments that felt so brief I wished they could have lasted for the rest of my life. My favorite time of the day was the moment I walked through your, or rather ‘our’ as you called it, apartment, morning, noon, or night, the time where it was just us.

“Welcome home, Xing,” you said into my ears as we hugged each other. For the first time in hours, my heart rate normalized, my senses came to life when your hand roamed my back, when you caressed my cheeks, poked one of my dimples, and kissed me, long and sweet. I was home.

You’d watch me make dinner, breakfast, or lunch from the counter because you had terrible cooking skills. Yet that soggy omelet with ketchup you had made for me one day was still one of my favorite dishes ever. But whenever I’d cook for you, you’d say how I was the best, and I liked to believe it for a second.

Dumbly, this was how I thought our life would turn out. Then I cut you out of my life.

A long time ago, I could use work as an excuse to never accompany my parents to the annual KQCF to disrupt it with their unreasonable protest. Of course, eventually, she offered to go instead, and she saw you there. You would never deny who you were if someone asked, and I admired you for it. But your answer was all it took for her to make up her mind and accuse you of trying to lure me into the devil’s way. Truly ironic, wasn’t it? I laughed even thinking about it.

I hadn’t heard from you about what happened. But that night, she confronted me. I lied to her and said I had no idea that you were gay. I’m sorry. “He seemed as straight as anyone else,” the cowardly words spilled from my mouth. But for the first time in my life, after hearing her homophobic insults, I dared to say it again: “And what if he was gay? What’s wrong with that? Why do I have to stop hanging out with him?”

We argued back and forth until… The shame of what I did later was still palpable in my hands. Because all it took was her questioning me.

“And why can’t you not? Are you a or something, Yixing?”

The accusation made me cave in. No longer could I have drinks with you at the sports bar, attend a football match, have lunch, go golfing, meet at the cinemas wearing the hideous gray hoodie. No longer had I excuses for spending time with you at the apartment, our own little home. Years of experience had taught you what a I could be, right?

To outsiders, our years of friendship went down the drain just like that. To us, our time as lovers had decreased, even worse, because then I was transferred to the night shift at the ER. But you didn’t complain. You weren’t surprised; you didn’t yell or called me out, although I wish you would have done it because all you did was look down and said: “I guess there's no other choice.” But there was, there had always been.

The biggest betray came the next year when I once again molded myself into the cookie-cutter miserable life. Everywhere we went, relatives, friends, even strangers would question why she and I weren’t married yet. Yixing, you’re over thirty-years-old. Why aren’t you married again? Why haven’t you started a family? When will you have children? I hated it, their condescending voices, their stares. I wanted it all to be white noise, but she had other ideas. She couldn’t put it aside until I had no choice but to ask her to marry me. My second mistake was to not tell you, keeping it from you because we both knew how it’d end. Selfish, I know. I’m sorry.

The week before my wedding, we laid in our bed, your hand caressed my hair, my ears listening to the lulling sound of your heartbeat, my cheek against your smooth chest, and I had to tell you why I wouldn’t be able to see you for two weeks. With my heart bursting bit by bit, I said it.

Of course, marriage was too much for you to handle.

“Are you for real? You asked her to marry you!”

You were tired. You’ve had enough.

“She’ll be your ing wife! And what am I? What am I, Yixing?”

You needed more. You wanted more. You deserved more.

“Yeah, I can’t be your dirty little secret anymore. I can’t. It’s ing with my head. God, you do realize I’ve got no self-respect left,” you said.

I didn’t want you to be it either. I knew where this was going.

“This is it. I’m just so ing tired! I can’t-I-I. You have to choose, it’s either her or me.”

You felt horrible saying this, I could see it the way your eyes flinched in the quiver of your voice. In an ideal world, you would have never put me in this spot, but now it was I who understood.

“Yixing?”

My silence killed you, I could see it in your teary gaze, in that twitch of your lips and your trembling hands. But I couldn’t tell you that my future wife was pregnant. I spent weeks thinking about what to do, but my feet were held down, keeping me frozen and unable to go where I would rather be. I couldn’t say your name.

Had I known that night would be the last one I listened to your voice, I’d have asked you to talk to me again, and again, until it was so ingrained in my head, it would have been my own inner voice. I would have hugged you, kissed your lips, and memorized your touch, your caress on my skin, the feel of touching you, all so I could remember what it felt like being alive.

We parted ways, and I grew old, yet I kept thinking and thinking and wondering what it would have been like if I had chosen you eventually, the path I never took. Thinking of the past was as useless as thinking of the future, but I can’t avoid either. Don’t we love dwelling on what ifs?

I find myself walking through the doors of the home you would have had. Your bewildered look had you mute as I draw near until my hands cup your cheeks. I admire your wrinkles, that mole on your upper lip. I feel your hands on my hair and neck, exploring, touching to confirm I was standing there.

“You,” I say what I should have years ago, “You, Junmyeon.” 

Word after word spills from my mouth, professing how much I still love you in front of the man of your dreams and the two dogs you always wanted. I see your beautiful smiling eyes, your lips mouthing that you’ve been waiting for me, that you never forgot and that you still loved me. I can taste our lips kissing, a touch that brings every part of me to life once again. In the end, we walk out hand in hand, with smiles on our faces, two middle-aged men together at last. And for the rest of our lives, we live happily ever after, in what we thought had been lost.

Of course, this was just my wishful thinking. You’ve been gone since long ago because life was too cruel and put you through the same hereditary pain as your mom.

But the fantasies mixed with memories continue to propagate in my head while the drink in my hand shrank and refilled. Until the spell broke with incoming calls and messages from my wife and son, asking where the I was because I’m supposed to give a eulogy about the man, I feared for most of my life but would have to love in an hour. At least the alcohol will help me say out loud things I would never have.

Fifteen years have passed since I last heard your voice, but I swear I felt your lips against my skin, that witty tone of yours whispering in my ears: “Zhang Yixing, you won’t even be on time to your father’s funeral?”

“Some things never change,” I laugh to myself.

And like every New Year’s morning, like that moment years ago, when I unclasped myself from your body, I must go back and leave you behind, tucked away, hidden in the now remnants of my heart. Until the next time, I can meet you on what was and what could have been.

Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon, my love.

A/N

Damn, it's really been almost a year since I uploaded something here. Eh, life, I guess. But! I still love this sunken ship (yes, despite me writing them being unhappy lol). Hopefully, in the future, I can come back here and write some more. I do miss it.

Anyway, I have always loved writing/reading angst, so finally joining the NHE fest was fun C:

Take care~