A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter forty-three

f o r t y - t h r e e

*

There's nothing quite like the feeling of the wind in my hair as I sit on the top deck of a tour bus crossing the Golden Gate Bridge from Sausalito back to San Francisco, an unshakeable grin on my face and Arjun's arm around my shoulders. This is the way to see the city: with one cheap earphone feeding me facts as we're driven around the landmark sites, and Arjun talking into my other ear. His words aren't always factual. Sometimes it's a semi-relevant joke, or a question inspired by our surroundings.

Often, he's just talking. A rambling stream of consciousness, his words bubbling away besides me like a fountain. As we get to the other side, leaving the bridge behind, he takes out his phone for a selfie, struggling to find the right angle to get us and the bridge before the bus moves on.

A middle-aged woman sat in front of us, who seems to be here as part of a group to celebrate their friend's divorce, turns around with an eager smile.

"You boys want me to take a photo for y'all?" she asks in a fascinatingly southern accent.

"Oh, yes please, that would be lovely," Arjun says, slipping into extra posh mode the way he always does when he's confronted with an American one-on-one.

"Oh my gosh, you're British! I just love British accents," she says, bright-eyed as she takes Arjun's phone. We pose for the photo, and I stop myself from pointing out that she means English accents: Scotland may be part of Great Britain, but no-one would ever describe my accent as British.

"We are," Arjun says when the photo's done, taking his phone back, "and thank you."

"It's my pleasure." She hooks her elbow over the back of her seat to face us better, and I know we're in for the third degree. "So, what brings y'all to the states?"

The honest story is long and complex so before Arjun can start from the start, I jump in and I say, "We're just here on holiday, to be tourists and see the sights of San Francisco for our anniversary."

Perhaps I can lie after all.

She stares blankly at me and, considering some of my interactions with people in this country, anything could come out of her mouth right now. A couple of tense seconds pass before her expression clears and she says, "Oh, you're Scottish? For a minute there, I thought you were talking another language!"

Arjun laughs and says, "You get used to it eventually. The first couple of weeks we were together, I think I missed half of what he said."

I laugh along, and I'm glad he's playing along, but I'm also thinking that the first couple of weeks aren't even over yet. I wonder if there's any truth in what he just said, if some of what I say is lost on him, but then he squeezes my hand and winks when the woman glances away.

"Well, aren't you sweet," she says. "Where I'm from, we don't have too many, you know, boys who ... well, folk like you. At least, not who's open about it. So it sure is nice to see such a sweet young couple like you two."

It may be a slightly strange compliment but her words go a long way to make up for the shit that came out of that guy at the Grand Canyon campsite. I wasn't expecting these words from a southern woman, and I wish I could unlearn that kind of prejudice, assuming people from the south are homophobes, but it comes from a place of self-preservation that I still, unfortunately, have to hold onto.

A new buzz of confidence thrums through me, chipping away at the last remaining bricks of the wall I put up when George's role in my life changed; the second wall that sprang up when his role changed again. I can feel it crumbling, setting my heart free, as though this stranger's affirmations are a sledgehammer to my insecurities.