The devil is blonde

and in his blue eyes,

love was ignited by two little stars.

In his tie and red breeches

I find the devil quite charming

-Frida Kahlo

We stumbled home around 2 AM after closing down the club. It was Pride weekend after all. We were hot and sticky from the dancing and the fucking and just the goddamn heat and humidity of the mid-June night. We reeked of booze and cigarettes. Justin announced, slurring his words slightly, that he was “way too fucking tired to shower” and peeled off his clothes, dropped into bed, and immediately fell asleep in that way he does. It’s a gift. I pulled the duvet up around him. I showered and puttered around. Unlike Justin, who can fall asleep under nearly any conditions, sleep has never come easily to me.

And so it was that I was awake when the messages and news alerts started lighting up our phones. None of the media outlets were reporting the same details - meaning they didn’t really know what was happening and it was still unfolding. A gay club. Orlando.  A shooting. A mass shooting. Maybe a hostage situation. That much they agreed on.

The who. The why. That would come later. If at all.

And I remembered.

A baseball bat.

A bomb.

Did the who and the why really matter?

Would it make a difference if we knew? The dead would still be dead. The injured and the traumatized would still be injured and traumatized. The lives ripped wide open would not be mended if we had a narrative, if we knew what this shooter was thinking. What his motives were.

When the sun rose we would learn of all the people we knew. Everyone would know someone. Or know someone who knew someone. We are family. We are not connected by blood - we can’t be, and we continue to be prohibited from saving each other’s lives simply because of whom we fuck - but we are family. And we all know someone or know someone who knew someone.

And tomorrow, on another campaign stop, or maybe a rerouted visit to the city devastated by this massacre, the presidential candidates would spin this to fit their agenda.

Thoughts and prayers would be offered and received.

And not a goddamn thing would change.

I looked over at the man sprawled across the bed that we shared in the house we had made a home.

And I remembered.

A bomb.

A baseball bat.

A lamppost.

“I wish I had never met him.” The feeling ripped me from heart to gut. It wasn’t a thought. A thought is in your mind. A thought can be examined, argued. This was a feeling.

The same feeling that ripped through me in a parking garage as I held his limp body, blood pooling beneath him, while the cold of the concrete seeped through my trousers.

The same feeling that ripped through me as the cries of the injured and dying echoed in my ears, as I stumbled over the dead, and I felt tears pricking my eyes from the smoke, and I hoarsely called for him.

I wish I had never met him.

Tomorrow would come. Or. rather, later today. We would have to decide whether to go to the Pride parade. We don’t always go. This year our decision would be a statement. A statement that the world is a fucking dark and scary place and we have risked too much already. A statement that no matter what they try to do, they cannot intimidate us; we will never stop fighting for our lives. These colors don’t run.

There was no right answer.

And I wish I had never met him.

I didn’t know what I didn’t have.

My heart and my life, now exist outside my body. I’ve never felt such pure joy. I’ve never loved like this. I’ve never been loved like this. I’ve never known and been known.

But I didn’t know what I didn’t have.

I’ve never felt such pure fear. I’ve never prayed to a deity I’m not sure exists to please please please let me trade places with him. Let me be the one limp and cold in a parking garage. Let me be the one struggling to breathe and trying to escape a bombed out building that was once my home.

And just as soon as the prayer leaves my lips, I want to bite it back, take it back in, and swallow it. Because to trade places would mean that he had to wonder if the one he loved - if the one whose chest now holds his heart - would live. And wonder, if not, how does one take the next breath? And the next? And a lifetime more of breaths with an organ beating in your chest that is not your heart. It cannot be your heart because your heart was in him.

All the moments in our lives. All the moments in the world and in the universe that counted down to seeing him under that lamppost. And from that moment on, I could never not see him again.

I wish I had never met him.

I had never known heaven, and I had never known hell. If I had never stopped and looked up and saw him standing there, I would never have had to make their acquaintance.

I looked over and he was snoring softly, reaching his arm out as if to find me next to him.

I can’t imagine living without him.