A Blue Memory

It started with a flying chair.

August 1st, 2021 — the kind of humid New York summer night that sticks to your skin like sweat and nostalgia. The kind of night when possibility hangs in the air, draped in disco lights and drowned beneath the bass of a now-shuttered gay club whose name I can’t quite say without feeling a pinch in my chest.

That night, I accidentally kicked a folding chair across the room. It skidded like a hockey puck. He caught it. Clean. Smooth. Like he was built for moments like this — suave in a way I thought only bartenders and bad decisions could be. I said, “Thank you,” assuming he worked there. He smiled, like he knew something I didn’t.

He didn’t work there.

That was the first time we met.

Over the next six months, we were what you’d call “party friends.” The kind of friends who didn’t talk much between outings but would always be paired together at kickbacks and queer events, house parties and brunches that turned into rooftop nights. Always orbiting, never quite colliding.

There was the skating party — flashing lights, Donna Summer in the background, laughter echoing on waxed floors. He held my hand once when I nearly lost my balance. It was nothing, and yet… it wasn’t.

Slowly, silently, he started falling for me. And I — being me — was oblivious.

Our first real fight wasn’t about anything obvious. It wasn’t about jealousy or loyalty. It wasn’t even about us. Not really.

He had been hiding his feelings. I was practicing boundaries I had just learned to form. We were dancing around the truth with all the grace of toddlers learning to waltz. I didn’t know what I wanted. But that night, the argument broke something open.

It made space for the truth.

After that, I started noticing things. The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. The care he put into choosing music when we were in his car. The softness that cracked through his bravado when we were alone.

And one night, without warning, I kissed him.

I initiated it.

It felt like stepping into a new language.

From that moment, things changed. Party friends became… something else. Something we didn’t know how to name. I was still unsure, still questioning — but we were doing couple things: trips out of town, double dates, late-night FaceTimes where silence didn’t feel awkward.

It was the end of January when he told me, “Ask me.”

I blinked.

“Ask me to be official.”

He told me I could take my time. And I did.

I sat with it — looked back at the moments, the friendship, the way he showed up. The laughter. The fights. The way he never left the room when things got hard.

I said yes.

But something shifted. Quickly.

The boy who once gave me strength became someone who demanded it all back. Jealousy crept in, slowly at first, then all-consuming. My friends became threats. His past became my burden. I was no longer seen as someone new to love — I was a ticking time bomb he assumed would detonate into betrayal.

He thought I saw him as a stepping stone. A “starter boyfriend.”

He didn’t hear me when I said, “I don’t know how to love yet. I’m learning.”

He didn’t understand that my hesitations weren’t signs I wanted someone else — they were calls for patience. For grace.

He didn’t offer either.

We still partied, but it felt different. Like we were imitating our old joy. Like he was wearing a mask — black suit, green card, smile stitched on for the crowd, but vacant when the lights dimmed.

My world was already cracking. My roommate at the time — toxic, manipulative — added gasoline to a fire I was trying to smother. The stress bled into everything. Into us.

And eventually, it ended.

Not with a bang. But with a slow unraveling.

Two toys from the same box — me, Woody; him, Buzz — left on separate shelves.

He popped back up a few months later.

Of course he did.

Always like that. Slipping in when I was at my most vulnerable. Like a haunting. Like a maybe.

And I let him.

We’d hang out again. Talk. Pretend we were healing.

But it never stuck. It never lasted.

Because he never really let go of the idea that I had betrayed him

Then came December. Two days before his birthday.

He looked different. Sad. Like he hadn’t slept right in months.

We talked. Tried to find closure.

Then he asked, “Did you sleep with him?”

Referring to my roommate.

And I froze.

Because that man had traumatized me. Because my silence wasn’t guilt — it was pain. Because how do you explain that you were surviving, not cheating? That what was thought to happen only years before meeting him. When I was first learning what it means to be this new version of me.

He didn’t care.

He stormed off.

That was the last time I saw him

Now, it’s just a blue memory.

The kind that glows faintly in the distance. Beautiful. Broken. Unfinished.

The memory of my first gay relationship — messy and electric.

The memory of a boy who caught me kicking a chair one night and almost caught my heart.