“Try to remember it always,” he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting.

“Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.”
– Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

********************************************

     I think you feel it, too — a distance between my new arrival to the gay nation and your years on the scene.
Kev and I have a lot to figure out that you guys did a long, long time ago.
Last week, I started to learn the necessary roles that must be played to protect from state violence while in the temporary city-state of the DuPont Circle gym sauna. An experience I’m allowed only when Kevin explicitly tells me I am.
Today, I bought clothes that made a specific statement that I wanted to say. Cute underwear, too.
All of it a new language I’m trying to learn, inspired by my time with you guys.
Whenever I tried to write you last week, I couldn’t think of something to tell you about that you might want to know. The new mapping technologies I’m learning? The surprise of seeing my nerdy co-worker bring a husband to a work party? Him asking me to listen to musicals in the office the next morning?
I think I have to blindly feel my way through these lessons myself for a while, as it’s never been safe for me to show myself to the world until just now.
You have shined bright for so many years, Greg, but you can’t teach me my taste.
My therapist says that only I can do that.

🌟

Also, I think Medusa gets a bad rap.
She has just always been in so much pain.
But she can heal, and I have faith that one day she will.

I love you, Greg.
You’ll always be a citizen in my country.