“Yeah but bro,” roomie bro would say, “it’s not that complicated. That all may be true, but it’s not about that. At least not now. Not yet. Y’all may well have been all those things to each other, and might still be again. Down the road. But for now? No matter what y’all were to each other, the fact y’all were intimate is the only part that matters. That part is in a different category, not bc of some ‘hidden sexism’ at play, but bc that type of intimacy forms a bond y’all gotta actively break. That it takes effort and intention and deliberate separation to. Like, when things started going south with S—”

“That shit’s not the same, bro!” I’d yell.

S was roomie bro’s ex. I’d been homies with her too—the three of us kicked it hard that weekend I came back to school to graduate. She was in the class I eventually graduated with, and roomie bro had been living nearby at the time so came through.

They’d lived together—where we lived now—for the year before I moved in.

The wild thing I’m only realizing now, writing this, is that roomie bro had tried to live by that exact spiel I always made. About how the ‘woke’ move would be to see our partners as not only partners, but myriad other things also.

This probably why he was so adamantly against it. He knew where it got you.

Late in their year of living together, they both decided they wanted to see other people. To open shit up. S lived in the bigger room roomie bro lived in now; and roomie bro, in my current closet room.

Roomie bro started lowkey seeing M, a friend of both of theirs.

S started seeing this other dude, Roomless Dude.

M and S stayed friends.

I remember coming over two Marches ago and being so confused.

S and M were posted upstairs in the big room, stoned, watching random videos on their laptop.

Roomless Dude was in the kitchen, making soup, his shit strewn all over the living room. Bc he’d recently lost his room and so was now roomless. He lived there.

But roomie bro was the only one working a 9-to-5; and so, effectively, was holding down this spot for a whole gang of folks who only sorta fucked with him anymore.

After S moved out, roomie bro held down the spot on his own for like two months.

When he asked me if I wanted to move in and I asked when move-in was, he said Whenever.

He wasn’t tryna live with anyone else.

“If you ain’t tryna move in, I’ll just hold this spot down solo till the lease runs out.”

•

I slept out in my van the first night in Delaware even though there were mad couches.