My elementary school closed after my 4th grade year, so I had to attend 5th grade at another school. Going from a school of 75 kids to one that had about 60 in just the 5th grade was a shock, and not a good one. It was a bad year.
But in that bad year, there was this really cute boy named Aaron. When I look at our 5th grade class picture, I still think he's cute; most would, I imagine. Green eyes, olive skin, brown curly hair and a slightly crooked smile. My conservative family was anti-dating and anti-dancing (worrying about how exactly people ended up married with kids in that culture is a whole other topic), so I never told them Aaron was my boyfriend. He invited me to a dance that year and I said yes. Unfortunately, the 10 year old me never got up the nerve to ask my parents if I could go or tell him that I already knew they wouldn't let me. So he showed up to the dance with roses for me and ended up giving them to a teacher instead. I'm sure he ended up talking about that in therapy at some point. I found out from some of the other girls.
In middle school, we were still really good friends. His parents divorced at some point. My mom worked at the school so we often hung out in her office. We lied about him missing his bus so that she would drop him off on the way home and we could spend more time together. Aaron-my-boyfriend had disappeared and he was just Aaron-my-friend. Then, he moved to the next school over and it was high school before he returned.
And I had my friend back. Kind of. He wasn't the clean cut, good student he had once been; I was working on graduating first in my class and running every student organization at the same time. I didn't quite know what to do with this guy who now had piercings in places I didn't know could be pierced. He was sullen. He cussed a lot and drank even more. But he was still Aaron, and we still laughed and talked more easily than just about anyone else.
It was another year or so after he re-entered my life that he told me he is gay. It was via ICQ, an instant messaging service that was very cool at the time and one I accessed via dial-up. It seems worlds away now. When he told me, I wasn't shocked. I was shocked that someone I knew, someone who was a teenager in northeastern Kentucky, would actually say that. We operated much more on a system where everyone knew but no one talked about it. I just wasn't shocked that he is gay.
I know my response wasn't the greatest. My church had told me clearly what I should think about being gay; I added a liberal slant to it, progressing to the bullshit of "love the sinner, hate the sin."
I also was overwhelmed by my own internal response: I still loved him. I couldn't shake that feeling and I couldn't think about him the way my church told me I should think about gay people. So, for the first time in my 15 years, my response was, "Screw the church."
Aaron was a gift from God. I knew it even then. He was there through the sucky 5th grade year and the differently sucky middle school years. He was there late at night. He loved me and let me love him. He listened to my pleadings for his safety during his rocky years, not stopping drinking, but at least not getting in cars with someone who had been. I treasured him and wanted the best for him. Looking back, it was the beginning of a radical change in me and my theology. And I still say it was from God. Wholly, wonderfully a gift from God, from beginning to whatever point we're in now.
He didn't graduate from the same high school as me. The last time I saw him, he was working as a manager at McDonald's. I ran into him on my way to my parents' the year after I graduated from college. When I pulled into a drive-thru for a snack, there he was. It's northeastern Kentucky, so it was only natural that I put my truck in park and talked until a car pulled in behind me. It's northeastern Kentucky, so that was 45 minutes later. It was like we'd never been apart.
These last weeks, I've thought more about him and looked for him on Facebook. I didn't find him. I imagine, though, I'll run into him again at some point in the future. And I imagine my reaction will be the same, "I still love him."
He is, after all, a gift from God.
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