As told by Dana Milton

Nathan and I were classmates from elementary school to high school. We shared every single class during most of our formative years. 

He caught my attention early on.  I was desperately insecure and lonely back then, and I guessed that my best bet to survive was attaching myself to the other pariahs of school.

Nathan was the Pariah God. Just like me, he was on the heavy side, which was frowned upon in our perfection-seeking social environment. He was a foreigner from Latin America. He barely spoke the language. He captivated the bullies the second he crossed the classroom door. He was perfect.

I tried to reach out to him, but the poor thing was so terrified of everyone that he wouldn’t let me in. Every time I said hi, he was so startled I feared for his cardiac integrity. I thought it was best to let him be until he got settled. 

He never did. He went from scaredy chubby kid to overgrown, scary delinquent once we reached high school.

It was then that I felt drawn to him again. I harbored a new urge to befriend him. We were both fifteen by then and well over our bullies. He had become too dangerous to be messed with, and I simply started not to give a shit and talk back. I am blessed with a quick wit and a sharp tongue, and I eventually became too annoying to bully. It was easy to expose my torturers’ stupidity publicly, and they eventually found meeker victims to abuse. Besides, by then, my older brother and his friends, who were all very big, had gotten wind of my woes and were vigilant of anyone bothering me.

So now the timing was perfect. I was becoming the magnificent bastard that I am today but I still lacked friends, and Nathan was still isolated but tall and muscular enough not to fear anyone new approaching him. 

He inspired in me a very familiar sense of kinship, and even though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, I knew something was going on with him.

What was going on, as I would very soon find out, was that Nathan was quite literally unfriendable. 

To my surprise, I discovered the guy was willingly ostracized. He wouldn’t engage, no matter how clever and interesting my conversation openers were. He was constantly suspicious, and he’d rudely cut me off if I got too insistent. No matter how many times I approached him and introduced myself, he’d always stare down at me as if it was the first time he’d ever seen me.

Soon the usual cretins started making fun of us. I didn’t pay attention to their bullshit until one of them laughed at the fact that the fat school f*g had the hots for the bodyguard of the skinny school f*g.

I meant to ask the idiot to expand, but Nathan rushed to him and beat the shit out of the whole group, and then forced the dude to apologize to me for the slurs. His holding the bleeding bully by the neck and choking an apology out of him was the closest thing we had to a conversation.

But it was enough to fire up my interest. The bodyguard of the skinny school f*g. 

My instincts were on the money. There was yet another person who had been forcibly outed at school. I had heard of him (everyone had, poor thing), but I didn’t suspect he was connected to my taciturn classmate.

Nathan played basketball on the school’s team. My older brother Matt was the team’s captain. I interrogated him as soon as I got home from school.

My brother has a most inconvenient set of unbreakable values and a high moral conscience that rendered him very reluctant to talk about his teammate behind his back. All I could get from him was that Nathan was a loner but a good kid, that the team really liked him, and that they were worried about him being caught in a toxic friendship with a senior student.

The only reason he told me that bit of intel was because he hoped I could become friends with Nathan. He considered a 15-year-old needed more friends his own age, and most of the team members were older kids. I swear my brother channels the spirit of a proper Southern old grandma sometimes. 

I began following Nathan around, waiting for a chance to talk to him in a discreet place, away from the public eye. I was planning to thank him for beating those bullies to a pulp in defense of my honor and force him to continue the conversation beyond the grunting noises he’d probably make.

But the chance never came, because Nathan was never alone in a discreet place, away from the public eye.

Like a chained dog that someone lets lose, as soon as our classes were over, he’d sprint to the seniors’ classrooms.

That’s when I found out about Eli. The skinny guy. The “other” queer kid in school.

If I had felt a natural interest in Nathan, meeting Eli was like a reunion with a long-lost twin.

He and I were so similar in a visceral way. Besides the queer thing, he was also blessed with a quick wit and a sharp tongue. He was persistently bullied, and even though he had Nathan’s titanic frame to protect him, he would always disarm the assholes by sheer verbal manipulation.

Ah, he was stupendous. He had no filter, no shame, no sense of decorum. He would lash out at everyone, blatantly using against them whatever piece of information he could gather in the loudest, most public way possible. And he had a lot of information. Buckets and buckets of sweet, sweet tea.

He was part of a hundred school clubs, committees and extracurricular activities. He knew everyone and everything. People told him stuff, particularly that nasty type of straight girls that watch too many sitcoms and think it’s wonderfully quirky to have a gay bestie.

In the span of a fortnight, he had broken up three couples, forced a kid to change schools, got a teacher fired and a girl expelled (you do the Math on that one), and turned a whole group of rugby bros against each other.

I had to meet him. And in meeting him, I would probably end up befriending Nathan. Win/win scenario.

Well, I was wrong. Damn, I think I’ve never been more wrong in my life.

Eli and I quickly became friends. It was a no-brainer; we were entirely compatible and clicked instantly. 

But I soon realized that there were some unusual mechanics at play.

Simply said, Eli and Nathan were tight. Joined-at-the-hip tight. They were each other’s best friends, they had each other’s backs, spent most of their time together, and were weirdly obsessed with one another.

It didn’t take long for me to notice that they also had the hots for each other, but were painfully and willingly handicapped by a carefully crafted state of denial.

They were each other’s whole world, and there was no room for anybody else. You could be friends with them on a superficial level, but you would never ever get in. 

I remember asking Eli if the three of us could hang out, as I wanted to meet Nathan.

He was startled but concealed it immediately. It was hilarious.

“Sure, we can hang out if you want,” he said nonchalantly. “But I better warn you, don’t waste your energy. Natei hates this school and everyone in it and has made a point to avoid everyone until he graduates.”

I chuckled inwardly with a perfectly serious face. I couldn’t resist the urge to tease him a bit.

“That’s weird,” I answered, playing dumb. “You know Matt, my brother? He’s the captain of the basketball team, and he says everyone likes Nathan. Maybe he gets along better with the jock type of guys?”

Eli was uncomfortable. Hurt, even? He managed to mutter a curt “maybe” and changed the subject. Man, toxicity alert. I knew right then that I wouldn’t be able to befriend both of them. At least not right then, while they went through that codependent phase. 

So I decided to stick by Eli, and in time he became my best friend, even though I knew I’d never be his. And I thanked God for that.

So! Okay. Flashback over. Back to the future.