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Col:You made me realize that maybe, on very rare occasions, I can be uptight and cranky.
Col:But you never made me feel bad about it. You never pointed out my shortcomings (jokes aside).
Col:You accepted me. Fully. For who I was… Am.
Col:The best thing is, you taught me all of this not through words, but through actions.
Col:By the way you live your life. How you treat people. And animals. How hard you work. How passionately you defend and protect the people you care about.
Col:And the biggest lesson you showed me…was just to be.
Col:Remember karaoke night?
By now, I'm in tears, and it takes me forever to tap out a two-word response because my stupid fingers are trembling so much.
Wilby:Of course.
Col:That night I felt freer and more myself than I ever have in my whole life.
Col:And in so many moments I got to spend with you, I felt something similar.
Col:You have so much heart it rubs off on other people.
Col:It rubbed off on me.
I was tempted to cut in with a stupid sex joke there, something about rubbing off on me…but I didn't want to deflect. I mean, I did because feelings are gross, made worse by an entire ocean separating us, but I couldn't exactly end a text thread with some pathetic comment.
So I faced my feelings head on.
Wilby:I love you, Col.
And then I started counting.One Australia. Two Australia.
Fucker didn't respond until I reachedthirty-nine Australia.
Col:I love you, too.
The conversation ended then.
It was the first and only time we've ever said—well, wrote—the words to each other. Since then, it's gone back to morenormal topics like what our days are like, and of course, our incessant horniness.
Right up to yesterday's message.
Wilby:I'm horny. Need to see that sexy arse of yours.
I chuckle to myself. Many of those one-line messages are followed by the timestamp of a video call.
But come on, having a video wank doesn't replace or even come close to having sex with him in person.
And these daily messages we've been exchanging for over a month now are no consolation for the fact that Col isn't here.
I always knew it would hurt when he left, but I had no idea of the scale of the emotional devastation. It's so bad I'm resorting to using terms likeemotional devastation.
Me. Wilby Jebediah Linfox.
This is happeningto me. The guy who was supposed to have learnt his lesson that guys don't stick around. That no one wants the kind of life that I do. That guys are for sex and that sex is supposed to be fun. Physical. No strings attached.
So what have I done? I've gone and fallen in love with someone who not only isn't here in this country, he's on the other side of the fucking planet.
