I've always thought about what it would be like to write about the experiences I had when I was first exploring my sexuality. Had some extra time on my hands and figured I'd start documenting them like a journal. Having said that, these stories are obviously dramatized for entertainment. Some things happened, some things happened in my head. I'll leave it to you guys to think about which is which. But please take it easy on me, as it's the first time I'm putting my writing out there!
Lab Partner — 1.1
The first time I saw him I had to do a double take.
We were in the lecture hall, maybe two hundred seats, tiered rows, fold-down chairs, a huge whiteboard at the front. I found a seat somewhere in the middle, got my notebook out, wrote the date at the top trying extra hard to write neatly. I’d say about half the room took notes on laptops and the other half was still using pen and paper. I retained things better writing it down. I was nineteen and three weeks into my first semester and still figuring out that university was just high school but nobody cared if you passed or not.
The professor was already talking. I was half-listening, scanning the room for a familiar face, anyone, someone I'd nodded at once in a hallway, even someone from orientation I was forced to say hi to. It was always nicer knowing someone in your class, even if you didn’t know them well. Made the semester a bit more bearable when you had a friend.
I was mid-scan when I saw him.
Three rows ahead, slightly to the left. My eyes caught him and I went back. Double take. He was sitting with one elbow on the desk, pen in his hand, not doing anything remarkable at all, and I completely lost the thread of whatever the professor was saying.
Maybe five years older than me, probably taking the class to fill credit requirements. Short buzz cut, jet black hair, strong jaw, handsome, but cute at the same time. Relaxed. Grey hoodie, dark jeans, just sitting there taking notes like a normal person while I spent the next forty minutes pretending like I wasn’t staring at him the whole time.
I grew up in a predominantly white neighbourhood. Seeing other people of color was already something I was still adjusting to at university, and when it came to hot guys, in this case, a hot asian guy, I had no frame of reference at all. Philip was built, and confident, and I genuinely did not know what to do with that information sitting in a two-hundred-seat lecture hall at nine in the morning.
I wasn't out yet. Just beginning to allow myself to say out loud that guys were hot. That was as far as I'd gotten. This was not helping.
I imagined myself saying hi to him after the lecture, or running into him on the way home, but I didn’t. Obviously.
I had my first lab for this class three days later.
I walked in and felt the same disappointment I did scanning the lecture hall. Not a single recognizable face. A room full of people I'd never seen before and had no particular desire to. I grabbed a table in the back, dropped my bag, opened my notebook to look like I was doing something. Class started, the TA introduced herself, and then we sat there going through the syllabus: what the labs would cover, how grading worked, nothing that required more than half my attention.
I was two pages in when the door opened.
He came in fast, head down, trying to be as discreet as possible. He got clocked immediately. The TA looked up, the whole room turned to stare, and he did this small apologetic thing with his hand — sorry, sorry — and started scanning for a seat.
There was one. Next to me.
He made eye contact, quick and assessing, and said quietly, "Can I sit here?"
I said yeah, sure, and moved my bag.
He sat down, unzipped his hoodie slightly, dropped his backpack on the floor with a low thud, asked what he'd missed. Nothing really, just started. He nodded, exhaled, got his stuff out. Up close he was more built than he'd looked from three rows back. Lean, kind of a sleeper built, but when he reached across the table for the textbook his forearm flexed and there was definitely muscle there. Veiny, defined. His hoodie pushed up past his wrist, and I quickly looked back at my notebook so he wouldn’t notice me staring.
The TA told us to find a lab partner for the semester. The room started moving immediately, chairs scraping, people turning to friends, the hum of everyone pairing off. I didn’t want to look desperate for a partner but I obviously didn't know anyone. I was doing the math on whether I was about to spend four months partnered with whoever was left over when he turned to me.
"You want to be partners?"
My ass started sweating immediately. As if I was surprised. We both didn’t know anybody, we were already sitting together, and we were the only two asian guys in the room.
I said sure. Casually. Even though I was absolutely dying inside.
He nodded and turned back to the syllabus.
We sat through the rest of class mostly in silence, following along. Somewhere near the end he leaned over and said this was supposed to be a GPA booster for him. I said same. He laughed, and relaxed his shoulders for the first time since he'd walked in. Meanwhile I was still dying inside, fake laughing along with him.
Near the end of class he said, "I'm Philip, by the way."
"Cole."
"Cool." He wrote something down. That was it.
We exchanged numbers when it ended, lab purposes. He said see you next week. I said yeah, for sure, and watched him push through the door and disappear into the hallway.
I looked back down at my notebook. At the top of the page, next to the date, I'd written his name without realizing it.
I closed it and went to my next class.
