Max

September 14th, 2011

I hadn’t talked to him in five or six years. Even though it just feels like yesterday. And thanks to this so called wonderful thing known as Facebook, I saw that he had finally joined the rest of the world in being united together through wall posts and status updates. I was so excited to see him, or at least his profile. He was dating some blond now, and was still located in his own country.

Max… what can I say? He helped me to form a standard as to how I would judge men. There were men like him, and then there were the others. Men like him came to my house to take me to our classes party and optioned staying over when he found out I couldn’t come out. Men like him kissed me out of jealousy of everyone else. He could build me up so easily and make it seem like nothing at all. No one would think to look at him looking at me. He was as stubborn as I could ever dream to be, even in my strongest moments my hard head could never match his. It had only been a month, maybe two and already this guy was becoming my best friend.

And yet. Leave it to foolish teen stupidity to mess things up. It was a cool night and it had been raining. Five foreign kids were bored in a living room with nothing to do to fill their time, except trouble of course. And it was a mix of said boredom and desire for something new that found me and an Australian alone in a German’s bedroom. His clammy hands shook as he placed them on my hips. I was nervous too. He leaned in and kissed me. I had known that I would kiss the Australian since the moment I met him. It was just a matter of when. I felt his hands go from my hips to his pants and I heard the jingle of him undoing his belt buckle.

I pulled back. “What are you doing?” I looked up at him. I was sitting on the bed and he was standing in front of me. He looked confused for a moment. And it was the look in his face that let me know exactly what was about to happen. Even at sixteen, it’s easy to be unsure of intentions sometimes. “Fuck! No. I can’t do this. This was a bad idea” I jump up from sitting on the bed and open the bedroom door bolting out.

Max is coming up the stairs as I do this and for a moment we lock eyes. And then he looks at the Australian as if to suddenly put two and two together. “What’s going on?” he was confused. I looked over at my friend Ying who sat across the room. “Come on Ying, we’ve got to go home. NOW!” she looked confused as well. But stood up and followed my lead.

Max now jumped in front of me. “What did you do with him? You had sex with him. Didn’t you?” I was trying to read him to see what he was feeling, he just laughed. Trying to make it come off as no big deal, like he wasn’t hurt by all of it. “We didn’t do anything I swear.” I had no idea then that those events that took place over a matter of minutes would change everything for the rest of my year abroad.

The next night, I was standing on Max’s balcony with him. Both of us were staring out onto the street two stories below us. “So you had sex last night?” he broke the silence with an abrupt question. I looked over at him trying to read where he was coming from.

“No. Max. Nothing happened. I swear, we just kissed. He undid his pants and wanted to do something, but I…” I could tell he was no longer listening to anything I had to say. Why bother to try and explain myself? “So kiss me.” he said five minutes later. And I kissed him. I knew once I did it, that it was a revenge kiss. Something to tally up to what I had or had not done the night before.

For the rest of the year, he would argue with me over what did or did not go down in his bedroom. We were never really friends again. Even after the Australian left at Christmas. And it’s only now that I’m finding him on facebook. And we’re talking again. And there’s playful banter, jokes about him coming to visit me, or me visiting him. The same jokes we made together before a kiss ruined it all. To be honest, it feels so good to have it back. It’s kind of funny, because it’s almost like opening a time capsule to find something that is just the same now as it was six years ago when it all started.