March 1, 2009

Submission 1.

I was never on my high school track team and I barely jogged at the gym. But that night I ran. I ran so far. I can’t tell you what was in front of me, just behind me.

My best friend T. and I just graduated from Georgia State University. We decided to go with a bunch of our friends to some bar on Lafayette Street in Atlanta. T. wasn’t really into the whole idea, he had never been a drinker and he had this constant fear of what could have happened to us in any parts of the city we didn’t know very well.

I met T. freshman year of college when we both were in Comparative Politics he was the quietest in the room, and when sophomore year rolled around we ended up rooming together with two other guys. That’s when T. really opened up. He told me he was raised southern Baptist, his father is a republican state delegate in northern Georgia, and his favorite dish was a hot milk cake with coconut frosting. T. always knew I was gay, and I knew he was gay. It was just unspoken really until Junior Year when we started going to Pride events and going on dates with other guys. He was really opening up.

Senior Year rolled around and I convinced him to come out to his parents. T. was so scared; he had to write a letter. For weeks there was no response, he tried calling but they never answered. Finally one day we were watching a news conference on our state assembly attempting to pass a constitutional ballot initiative against gay unions. There was his father, the republican state delegate standing with twenty or so other men voicing their support. T. just wasn’t himself. He was crying randomly, and he wasn’t very social. I think it was around February when he finally came out of it. That’s when we were drunk one night in our dorm and we ended up kissing. It was awkward at first but we kept kissing and kissing and kissing. I guess that made T. and I boyfriends by graduation.

T. landed a job with the Barack Obama campaign and I was set to teach math in a suburb of Dallas. That weekend was supposed to be our last chance to set free. After leaving the bar a few guys outside started yelling to us. They called us faggots, queers, perverts. I recognized a few of them; two of them went to the same church T. went to each Sunday. Before I knew it we were running, the four guys were chasing us. For a while T. and I were running together, but we thought we would split up on 62nd Avenue to throw them off. I kept running. And running. Ten minutes or so passed and I was a few blocks up when I noticed no one was behind me anymore. I called the police and they were on their way to the bar. As I walked back I kept calling T.’s cell phone with no response. It just rang and went to voicemail. When I got to the split on 62nd Avenue I heard his phone ringing. I ran as fast as I could in an attempt to find him, I kept calling his phone and yelling his name. And there he was in a dark alley directly next to the building where we split. He was face down in a pile of blood, a metal pipe laying near him. I screamed for help, but no one came. I just sat there and held his lifeless body, sobbing.

The police finally came, and then an ambulance, reporters and crowds. In the weeks after his death the media discovered who T.’s father was. I read somewhere that he resigned shortly after. They never caught our attackers, I knew who two of them were, but what does it matter. Justice will never be served not here. Not in Atlanta. T. is dead. My boyfriend is dead. My best friend is dead. He was right that night, his fears came true and I ignored them.

Somewhere down the line someone taught those guys that it was okay to kill, that it was wrong for someone to be something they are not. What is wrong with our society in the year 2008 now that we allow this to occur? Gay rights groups will add T. to their facts, their numbers. But I won’t see him as a statistic; I will see him as T., my college roommate and friend who lost his life to bigotry.

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