Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:12:41 -0800
From: Max Jensen <mxjnsn09@gmail.com>
Subject: This Is Not a Love Story, part one

Disclaimer stuff: If you are under the age of eighteen or are in a state
where reading this material is illegal, please go away. Thanks. Also, do not
post portions of this story or text anywhere without written permission by
the author (Max Jensen).

This story is true. And it's currently in progress. I, of course, have
changed names and details to protect the innocent, and frankly, the odds of
you knowing me are slim. However, if you do, send me an email so we can
discuss this and I can be really embarrassed and try to deny it badly.

You know another reason to email me? Comments! Good or bad! Send stuff to
mxjnsn09@gmail.com.

Now, onto the story:

"This Is Not a Love Story" - Part One

When I first met Will, I hated him.

Here I was, less than three days off of the plane, in a new country and a
new city that I hadn't been to before, and all alone, at that. I had decided
to get my master's degree in creative writing and literature in London, a
city I'd wanted to go to for years, ever since I was a kid. When all the
master's programs back home in the States had rejected me, mostly based on
the fact that I'm considered on the young side to get my master's (even at
25, most rejection letters insisted that I was good, but needed a bit more
time to be "less green." Less bullshit, I say. But I digress), all the
pieces fell together when the program in London accepted me. Student loans
came through and through the school's website, I was able to find flatmates
that were attending the same school as me (though they were undergrads, but
that was fine with me).

My registration was a few days after I landed. I was still slightly affected
by the jetlag, though not as much as I had expected, and I was nervous as
all hell. I don't do well in social situations, or at least, not in ones
where I don't know anybody. I'm naturally shy and quiet in groups where I'm
uncomfortable, though I was going to break that habit this year. My program
was only a year long, and I didn't have the luxury of waiting two years to
really get comfortable with my classmates like I did when I was an
undergrad. The only person who I sort of knew was another American student
named April, who I'd met through the school's Facebook page, though we
hadn't met face to face officially yet.

I was standing in the conference room when the creative writing MAs were
having their registration. I looked around at all the other students and
wondered how I looked to them. I don't know if I'd call myself good-looking.
I mean, I'm not ugly, but I definitely am not what the world would call
"hot." I have black hair that is very difficult to tame if it gets past a
certain length, but brown eyes the tone of maple syrup that I consider to be
my best feature. I have a high bridge on my nose, and a very, very light
brown complexion that usually leaves people wondering what my ethnicity is
(I'm Hispanic, but with my speech, demeanor, and refusal to adhere to any
stupid stereotype, most people assume I'm at least half-white). I'm
above-average height, 5'10, and I have a bit of a tummy. While I wouldn't
ever consider myself obese or anything, my few experiences in clubs have
left me feeling that the gay community would consider me a massive slob. Or
a cub. Who knows. I'm not into the scene, I don't know how those things
work.

Standing there, nervous, I decided that I needed to speak to someone. There
were about fifteen people in my program, all milling about, talking to each
other. I looked around to see who wasn't tangled up in a conversation
already. There was a guy standing in a corner. He was tall, about 6'1 or
6'2, broad shouldered, slight tummy like myself, with a massive mop of curly
dark hair and a sort of scraggly beard. He was wearing a long dark coat and
had a surly demeanor on his face. He had striking green eyes.

I walked up to him to introduce myself to him.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Max."

"Will," he responded, clipped British accent with a slight tenor.

"Where are you from?" I asked, as if I knew the entire geography of England
at that point.

"Manchester," he responded, his voice lacking the typical Mancunian northern
accent (a detail I learned later on). "You?"

"The States."

"So I gathered."

"San Francisco."

"What kind of writing do you do?"

This question always baffled me, and I hated answering it, but I had come up
with a ready-all response: "Mostly autobiographical stories, conversational
tone, where I make fun of myself a lot. You?"

"I don't feel like telling you. Bye." And with that, he turned to talk to
someone else. I felt completely pissed off: this British asshole had made me
answer this question that I'm not a fan of answering and refused to do the
same, with a slight sneer all the while. I got the feeling that he enjoyed
withholding the information, and I'm sure he saw the frustration in my eyes.
It may not seem like a big deal to most people, and I have a tendency to
take some things out of proportion, but this felt really mean, and I decided
right then and there that I hated Will and that I wouldn't be his friend.

Of course, this didn't turn out to be the case.

Over the year, I warmed up to him. At first, he seemed to be the asshole I
thought he was: he would make controversial statements in class just to make
people upset (such as "The only thing that is worth writing is bad crime
fiction, since that's the only thing people read" or "I've never read Jane
Austen or Charles Dickens because they're dead, so what's the point?"). I
got the sense that he viewed most other people as experiments and would make
outlandish statements just to see their reactions. It was incredibly
manipulative and cynical of him, but I also learned that he had a
razor-sharp wit and a really fun fashion sense (he would go through phases
of clothing - for a month, he was in a cardigan phase, where he would wear
cardigans of every color and texture imaginable; for another month, it was
shirts with very loud colors, which contrasted with his dry personality;
another month was ghetto-boy jeans, etc.). He also had a very lovely smile,
which he showed a lot since he was constantly making jokes, or rather,
making fun of Allistair, the pretentious jack-ass of the group, who really
enjoyed all of us teasing him.

He was also very generous. He came from a wealthy family, and so his parents
owned a lovely huge flat in London. Will always offered to host our course
soirees there - class meetings, Christmas parties, Burns night, birthday
dinners, even Thanksgiving when us Americans got really homesick. He never
made a big deal out of it, even when other people carelessly volunteered his
house for such events.

He and I became particularly close when we worked on a research project
together. We got along and discovered a shared taste in music. Because Will
has this obsession with getting to know everything about a particular person
he's interested in, he began calling me in the middle of the night, just to
talk and get to know each other. Apparently, he had done this with the
people in our course that intrigued him, and it was now my turn. We spoke
every night for two weeks for at least an hour each night, getting to know
each other and finding out that we had a similar sense of humor and
knowledge of the pop culture spectrum.

By the time April rolled around, Will was my best friend in London, and
slowly becoming my best friend, period. I was distancing from my best friend
back in States, Adam, and we were speaking less and less. But where Adam was
fun and we got along splendidly, he could be judgmental about certain
aspects of myself - he didn't approve of my smoking and, most importantly,
we never ever spoke of my bisexuality. Talking about girls I liked was fine,
but anything having to do with guys was strictly taboo. I think there were
two reasons for this: 1) Adam came from a fairly conservative religious
background, and while he had renounced his religion, it's difficult to rid
yourself of something you've been raised with. I always felt guilty around
him for being myself, and really, that's not the best thing. I mean, that's
what my parents are for, right?

But Will wasn't judgmental about anything, really. And especially not about
me.

I still have a LiveJournal, and somehow in his insanity, Will found it. To
this day, I'm not even sure how he found it, and he won't tell me. But since
I had become fairly iffy with it, he told me that I should write an entry,
something revealing. I'm not sure when the moment came when I began enjoying
Will's approval, but by that point, it was there. So, I decided to write
about my being bi, which was something that I didn't write about often. I
then waited for his response.

He called me later that night.

"Wow," he said. "I didn't know that about you."

A big part of the entry made reference to the fact that Adam and I had
fooled around a few times when we were in college. Ironic, really, since we
couldn't really talk about that side of me, but you know how it is -
straight guy is totally up for blow jobs and fucks, but when it's over, it's
like it never happened.

"Yeah. It's true."

"Huh. Why don't you tell people about it?"

"I don't... I don't like advertising it. I kinda feel embarrassed about it."

"Why? You shouldn't be. It's really no big deal."

He kept telling me to tell people, even saying which coursemates I should. I
didn't. I figured that if I wanted to, I would on my own time. He respected
that, even though his suggestions were half out of concern for me, and half
joking.

I don't know when my crush on him started, either. But I do know that by the
time another American student at our university, Becca, who I had a minor
crush on (and had been drunkenly rejected by), started hanging out with us,
I would feel a sting of jealousy when she would give him massages at the pub
after class. At first, I thought that I was jealous because she was showing
him more attention. But then...

We were all sitting in a booth in the pub, with me sitting on the outside in
a chair, and Will against the curve in the booth. Becca sat on the cushion
itself, so that her legs were on either side of Will, who's back was to her,
and she was massaging him. Will was a notorious massage-fiend, casually
asking anyone to massage his shoulders at any given moment. Her fingers were
inside his shirt, massaging his neck and shoulders. And I stared at them,
and I thought to myself that I wanted to be doing that, I wanted to feel the
warmth of his skin, the muscle underneath. I wanted to make him feel good
and give him the goofy smile that he had.

Then it hit me. And I knew I was screwed.

---

That's it for now, guys. I know no sex here. But there will be in the next
chapter! Any feedback is welcome, as long as you're not a jerk about it.
Thanks!