ATLANTA – Never been long to southeastern U.S. for anything fun, real, red-blooded. Read Roots, watched Gone with the Wind, flown through the region’s biggest – world’s busiest airport, but never sojourned in the city proper, so he felt he done right once planned a getaway back first of year after their umpteenth fight, his own southern belle breaking her tenor, their screams apart at the seams.
Seemly October. New South Big City had pushed aside its Pride weekend by a quarter of months a whole decade prior. He wasn’t certain when, but he knew the why, too hot for real dollars the outdoors June. Cooler than expected upon arrival, deep in the South but not for long any chill. Even on those business trips he’d always been driven straight from south-side airport way up clear to mountain-north burbs where all incentivized to work and live, capitalism tax breaks reigning. This time, he rode the filthy train from lacking airport, carried own prissy luggage, stayed in heart o’ city, where he could walk to the pretty park for all the educational exhibits, interactive displays as well. He stayed all alone right on the main drag. Nice mid-city room bought with miles, biz trip travel. Would have a decent view, Sunday’s parade, out from his room, but all day and most of the night he figured, he planned, he’d be out, not in. Came out early, unlike his partner. Easy to, for him, to grow up at all where he did, fast far and away from all this confusion: the churches, the history, the looking away, constant the doors closed, the babble. Yes, unlike his partner, troubled son of troubled South, bitch. Partner didn’t need to come along, said been to that city too many times for too much good ‘n’ fun-funny, to bother to remember, not one regret left there, in any town of that Back East region long cold and shuddering stern to his new, best-better ways. Partner’s family last spoke, the very day they kicked him out, twenty-some years ago October. “Out,” the portal slammed, hurt to counter time in tailspin.
The guy couldn’t remember chunks of his fellow week-end, when on the train he headed back hangdog to the airport for a day-long flight home. Couldn’t forget some of the entertaining endured, some of the men met quick the warming, some of the week’s end gone good, right? Unsure how to. Begin. The end. Start up. The conversation in due course back home cozy in their brick-perfect-relations façade. He’d be asked plenty, he would, of hows and whos. Theirs, a closed arrangement all those many years, no secrets, no lies, no worry. To think up something honest or at least true, some way to start to open up discussion since he’d pried wide everything else, that voyage against time to place never been before seen or felt, didn’t think ever wanted to return to, warped in more than his head, sniffling over which lie to tell him first.