I am staying with our mutual friend for a few days and he comes to visit one evening. My heart clenches at the sight of him. I’m so happy to see his stupid face and his big, tired eyes. We kept in touch through memes and birthday wishes but it’s the first time we’re in the same city in a long while. He seems so closed off and I worry that we cannot bridge the distance I put between us after I moved to the UK and left him in Warsaw years ago.
We’re alone. Our friend went out for a smoke and I didn’t even know she started smoking again. I should’ve kept in touch more but I couldn’t.
He sits on the couch, deep in his phone. I can’t find my place. I dig into my purse. I move my things from my suitcase to the chair and back.
I don’t know what to say. It’s like hearing your favourite song and realising you don’t know the lyrics anymore.
After a while, I cannot take it.
‘Hey, are you mad at me? You’ve been weirdly silent the whole evening.’
I sit on a couch next to him.
‘Um, well, I have to tell you something,’ he says. ‘I’m gay.’
I start crying because he starts crying.
‘Oh, babe…’ I’m an intellectual and totally know what to say at this moment, but at least I put all my love for him into that sigh. We’re both sitting on the couch cross legged, hugging, our arms and heads intertwined. I cry into his shoulder and he cries into mine.
I don’t know what I said after that. Maybe I said ‘that’s a huge thing to realise.’ I worry about how difficult his life in Poland is going to get, even in a big city. I hope people can get better, I hope we as a society can do better. I can imagine him in a few years, self-assured in all the ways he feels frail now. With a wonderful partner who smoothed what today is a jagged edge. And don’t get me wrong, a partner doesn’t magically make one’s life perfect but a good one can make it so much easier. I want his life to be easy. I think about how my grandma would’ve reacted and how my mum would’ve reacted, and about what my generation knows now.
But in that moment we keep hugging and talking and I hope he can feel all my love for him.