Somedays it feels like sickness. Bill if I’m gonna write you another letter I’ll never send I think I should get a grade for it.

Two summers ago you would have too much and yell at me with this big smile on your face. I’d get to laugh, shake my head and tell our friends I knew you’d love me, I knew we’d be the best of friends. And I was right. That autumn our friends went back to school but our classes were still online. We slowed down drinking and got real close. I loved how you listened to people, you’d get real quiet and nod your head when someone spoke. When I brought new friends over, you and I would listen to them all night long. I was just mimicking you, trying to listen like you, but when my friends left you’d tell me they were geniuses. The same way you think everyone’s a genius for something. I would drive home after a night out, curl into bed and text my partner to tell them I loved them, and then I’d text you to say thanks for listening. I told you once, that you reminded me of a science teacher we’d had way back when, who really saw people.

I moved into my apartment here in Baltimore a couple of weeks before the semester started. In the hardly-two-months I’ve lived here, I’ve been preoccupied with school, finding work, finding affordable groceries, and going to the gym. It was a friend’s birthday this week though so her and I hit the town on Thursday. We pre-gamed in my living room and talked about how we’d never been out without male partners, or male friends and that tonight felt both liberating and unprotected. I’m not too far from Federal Hill so we walked along the bar strip, heading in and out of bars until we found one we liked. The Charles was hosting a four-year anniversary party (which seemed pre-mature and anticlimactic to us, but maybe four years is a long time to be established in Baltimore?) in which most people were dressed in suits and spring dresses, and others showed up in VOLO jerseys and shorts. Our outfits landed us somewhere in between, but the bar wasn’t playing Wonderwall or Santeria and that seemed good enough to us.