When talking about flirting w boys at conferences, we had an awkward moment where I assumed Greg was more innocent when traveling than he is. Jeff heard Greg try to deny it, and then off-handedly corrected his husband, laughing as he told me that Greg doesn’t usually wait on an opportunity.

Greg wants us to come over to their house for another dinner with the Charleses, but this admission was just the final piece of evidence confirming everything I’ve known all along.

I’ve been continuously duped into thinking Greg and I were something we never were. While I spent every day pining over him for two years, Greg was sleeping with everyone he possibly could. Including a year-long, ongoing sexual relationship with my once-best friend whom he fell in love with. My old best friend who fell in love with him, too, and then abandoned me in my time of need to pursue it.

Our family was created solely by my unreciprocated labor — just one more link in the long chain of people who colonized my whole being simply because they saw the opportunity to. This never was what I thought it was. He, too, always treated like the faggot that Baltimore taught me I was. What a tough lesson to learn, that even the people who helped me learn the skills I needed to break free couldn’t resist the urge to abuse me in my powerlessness.

In my considering the invitation for dinner in Baltimore with some old queens this month, the answer is clear: No, absolutely not. I never want to go to their house again. To that hellish city of my total devaluation.

It just doesn’t feel safe.

If I give him anything more, it will be exploited against my will. There was never a moment it hasn’t been, from the very first moment I met him.

And that will never change.

I used to picture my family as an open country where everyone was welcome — one without citizenship, without borders — but he did considerable damage that he later compounded with lies.

He built the walls around my now-closed nation state, and it is on him to tear them down, whatever that looks like.

I guess we’re still a family, but I have no more energy to devote to this project.