Follow Carmen, a young and deeply closeted gay teenager as he navigates the 1980's and 1990's yearning for love and trying to find where he fits in.
This story is rated M because it contains elements of death (including children), homophobia, religi...
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Sitting directly behind us was Bruce, my ex. Of all the things I thought might happen on my first date with Troy, having my ex sit behind me was not one of them.
I was just thinking about how if I'd known it was him I would have made out with Troy just to spite him, when I noticed that he was not alone. Standing next to him was a confused looking kid who looked to be 16 or 17 years old. I made the conscious decision to try to be nice, mainly for Troy's sake.
"Oh! Bruce! Fancy meeting you here!"
Bruce forced a smile and got a worried look on his face. I found this interesting. Looks like I was going to have fun with this after all, oh yes, and at the same time I was going to see to it that he was honest with this kid, so he didn't screw around with him the way he had done with me.
So much for being nice...
"This is Troy, my date. Our first date, actually, though we've been chatting for months. Troy, this is Bruce, my ex. I've told you all about him, of course."
I watched the blood drain from Bruce's face as he reached to shake Troy's hand. I could see the large bump on the bridge of his nose from when I had broken it when he grabbed me the night I had found out about his wife. Excellent.
Even better was the look on the kid's face. He was clearly upset at something, and I could guess what it was. Sure enough, he spoke up:
"Your ex? You didn't tell me about any exes!"
I feigned shock. "What? Bruce, we were together for over a year! Did our time together mean that little to you that I didn't even warrant a mention?"
I then turned to the kid. "I'm Carmen, Bruce's ex boyfriend. We used to live together but split up under, um, less than ideal circumstances. This is actually the first time I've seen him since we split up. Oh, and how rude of us! Who might you be?"
I had decided against mentioning Devin or the circumstances of our breakup.
Bruce spoke for the first time. "Oh, uh, this is Hunter, my..." He trailed off. Young Hunter shot him a dirty look and finished for him.
"...His date. I'm Hunter, his date. This is our first date, too. We met on IRC."
I could well imagine which IRC channel they had met on, but I didn't say anything about that.
"Oh wow!", I said instead. "Such a small world! I go on IRC all the time too, my nick is Asterixx! Shoot me a message some time! Imagine, Bruce, both of us out on our first dates and just stumbling across each other in a movie theatre in the city! And on a Friday, at that! What are the chances?"
Bruce looked like he was about to have a stroke when I mentioned Friday, and well he should, since he usually returned to the valley to be with his wife on Friday nights. I was actually starting to feel a little bad for putting him on the spot like this. Even after what he had done to me, all the lies, the cheating, the hurt, I almost felt like he didn't deserve this. I had moved on, so what could I gain by ruining Bruce's chances with this kid?
