More Than Everything (Family 3)

“Want me to hold your bag?” Selina asked, gesturing to my dance bag. I had just left rehearsal and didn’t have time to go home and change before meeting Selina for our biweekly catch-up session.

“Sure. Thanks.” I gave her my bag and walked over to the group of people.

Judging by the way they were swaying and their bleary eyes, I gathered the whole lot of them was toasted. But they were happy drunks, laughing and smiling and wrapping their arms around each other affectionately.

“Okay, get a little closer together so I can fit you all in the frame.” I gestured with my hand as I spoke. When I had them situated so that they all fit, I brought the camera up to my face. “Okay, on the count of three. One, two….” I tried to snap the picture. Tried being the operative word.

“Uh, I think you’re out of film here.” I held the camera out to Drunk Girl.

“Oh no!” She looked positively crestfallen. “We have to take a picture. We have to!” She turned to her friends and sounded frantic as she asked, “Does anybody have a camera? You guys! Do any of you have a camera?”

When nobody handed over a camera, her lip trembled, and I thought she was wasted enough to start crying, so I quickly said, “I have one. I can use mine, okay?” I flicked my gaze to Selina. “It’s in my bag. Can you please grab it for me?”

“You do?” Drunk Girl looked awestruck, as if I’d said I had a time machine or a spaceship or Dolce & Gabbana’s entire summer collection in my bag. “You guys, he has a camera!” she shouted gleefully as she threw herself back into her clustered group of friends. “The cute guy has a camera!”

Selina was cracking up and I was chuckling as I brought my camera up to my face.

“To the end of our second year!” Drunk Girl screamed, pumping her hand in the air.

“Only one more to go!” someone else threw in.

“I’m totally trashed!” a third person added.

I looked through viewfinder, gave them the countdown, and took the shot. Later, when I saw the picture, I noticed him at the edge of the group, standing as far as possible without being standoffish and smiling in a way that looked more like a grimace. His neatly combed black hair, ramrod straight posture, and dark-brown eyes, focused right on the camera, told me he hadn’t been drinking as long or as much as the rest of his crew, which made sense to me once I got to know him and realized he was a complete control freak. He’s a big guy and he tends to tower over everyone; that night was no exception. Plus, he has some pockmarks on his face, scars from acne in his youth, which give him an intimidating appearance. Though most people wouldn’t have described Adan as handsome, his intensity, his strength, and that bit of rough in his voice made him sexy as hell in my book.

It isn’t the most flattering photo I have of Adan, but it is the best reflection of the man I met that night. There were times later when I thought I snuck in under the cool exterior, times I thought the heat between us would melt all that ice away for good. But when I think of him back then, back when it all began, that rough, aloof guy is who I see in my head. So that picture of Adan clustered at a bar with his law school classmates is the next one I’m putting in the album.

Adan Navarro

THE second he walked into that bar, I knew he was gay. No straight guy would wear mint-green pants or a sleeveless white shirt, both tight enough to show everything underneath. And then there was his hair. Not the color, which was a rich, shiny brown. But the way he had it cut—long on the sides and even longer on top, and styled in a swirl thing. We were in a bar, so the lighting wasn’t great, but when I peered at his lips, I was pretty sure he had something on them to make them look so shiny and soft. And maybe his eyelashes too, because they couldn’t be that long naturally.

I was willing to bet the guy got his ass kicked on a regular basis, looking like that. Not that I condoned violence, but I figured he was asking for it. Otherwise he could have dialed down the whole “I’m here, I’m queer” look.

When I came out to my family, they were shocked. I was too strong, too big, too masculine to be gay. That’s what they said. Two years and twenty-five hundred miles later, they still refused to accept the fact that I wouldn’t someday walk into my parents’ house with a woman on my arm. But I knew it wasn’t going to happen, no matter how many times my mother cried or my father gave me the cold shoulder.