Those Eyes of My Roommate

Nathan arrived in Tretorns and a rugby shirt, and I decided on sight that my new roommate was not my type.

Then I found every Anne Rice novel on his shelves, Love and Rockets on CD, and a stereo that could carry both, and I thought maybe I had been too quick.

Two months later I know his face when a song undoes him, yet I still refuse to be the gay man pining after a straight friend.

On Halloween we are going to a concert dressed as Louis and Lestat, and I spend an hour on his pale base, blue veins, dark eyeliner, and red lipstick with shaking hands I hope he will not notice.

We share a cigarette on his bottom bunk while the Cocteau Twins play, and when our faces draw nearer than they ever have, every reason I had for keeping clear begins to sound hollow.

The concert turns the night in a direction I never wanted, and I pack before he can walk in, trunk open in 1987 dark and every drawer already empty.