I am posting my thoughts and memories through another man. A man closest to me who I trust and confide in completely. I do this through him to avoid exposing my identity and consequently the identities of others related to the story to the general public. This is a true story, and some of the characters involved might be recognizable, so I will respect their privacy by not posting under my own name. It might also bring on retribution and vengeance, and though through my military background I am no stranger to violence, I don’t invite it anymore. I’ve found another way to live. There is another life I have to think about, and I would never forgive myself if harm came to him. But I want my story to be heard, even if it’s just by one person.
I have used photos of myself and my friend in this account, but I should mention that the pictures have been slightly modified. They show me considerably younger than I really am. On other photos I look a bit different. It is to make it more difficult to track down who I am.
I was born into a Deteis family. I won’t recount my whole childhood, will just say that I was born into middle-class and had relatively comfortable developmental years. Since I was very little I showed proficiency in mathematics and physical sciences. I was additionally very adept at spatial thinking and navigation. So I was selected for flight academy. I was happy about that because I loved to fly and it’s what I would have chosen myself.
For years I did work with the military advancing at a steady pace. I started by doing cargo flights, to flying reconnaissance and sensitive payload, to eventually running ops into enemy territory with a small crew. I was living my dream, flying around the universe and helping keep peace at home. It seemed that’s all I needed from life to feel good and fulfilled. I did not know there was anything else. As a capsuleer that was supposed to be my whole fate.
It turned out untrue.
Capsuleers are not known for Love. Love is an ancient myth of our ancestors. At some point during our evolution the human race lost Love and that’s how we wound up in space ruthlessly conquering galaxies and whole civilizations. I was not sure if Love ever was real for how fantastical and impossible it sounded to me from ancient texts. No other animal species can be said to definitively exhibit it. This persistent and overpowering desire and need for one single being. I thought it was just a fairy tale or a misrepresentation. Until I felt it myself.
It has somehow been that the most important events in my life have happened by accident.
The day I met him, I was supposed to be somewhere else. But I was stuck. My ship’s navigation systems refused to come online, and I was in Amarr space where public religious festivities made it very difficult to find an engineer to take a look at what was going on. I should have switched into a new ship, I don’t know why I didn’t. I didn’t wanna leave my Falcon behind.
So I stayed and waited in the empty space station, till finally I could talk to an engineer. But before that happened, a Gallente man in his late 30s arrived. He, being a Gallente, didn’t participate in the Amarrian religious festivities either. He was just in the area to pick up some things.
I observed him from afar at first. I could tell he was the type of guy who was physically fit just right. He was close to my build, and for some reason that comforted me. The way he moved captivated me but I didn’t realize the full appeal till years later. I knew there was something about him that I was drawn to, even though I couldn’t put it into words. Whatever it was, was strong enough to make an approach.
I had never had Gallente friends. Due to the nature of my work I had little opportunity to make friends with them. And I had been told they were full of themselves and dangerous. If not in a physical way — though I don’t doubt that’s true as well — then in the ideas that are in their heads and that they stubbornly try to spread all across the universe. Their freedom, and personal liberties they allow themselves. I’d been told that they don’t care about anybody but themselves. That Gallente are the embodiment of selfishness and wasteful personal extravagance so much abhorred in the Caldari society I grew up in. And I held a certain prejudice on what the exchange between the two of us would be like. But I was bored, and I really wanted the company of another human being that moment. Although, as I later came to realize, that wasn’t all that was driving me.
But no sooner had we started talking that I had to admit that what I had been told and what I saw in front of me were two different realities. Here was a friendly eloquent man who looked at me with eyes I found myself drowning in. He was open, curious about me and my cultural background, and his smile lightened up the loneliness I had felt stuck in that station for days. He was so easy to talk to and I found myself divulging information about myself that I had never told a complete stranger before. I trusted him, from those very first moments.
When he got the things he had come for, I dreaded another string of days of abandonment till finally the Amarr would be done with their celebrations. So I was greatly surprised when the Gallente offered to stay in the station with me to keep me company till the engineers would be back.
I didn’t understand what I felt for him at first. I had never been told that a man can love another man. I thought it was just friendship. And it was, but it was also so much more at the same time. And it was different than any other friendship I’d had. I yearned to be in his company, to sit beside him, to look into his eyes. No friend had had such an effect on me before. This desire consumed me so much, it was all I thought about when I was away from him. My thoughts didn’t go farther than that in the beginning. Just to see him, those dark blue eyes, and to hear his voice was all I allowed myself to think of.
But while I was telling myself I wanted him as a friend, he —of course— was fully aware of what was happening between us.
He had already shattered one reality for me when we got to know each other in that deserted station in Kor-Azor, and now he was about to shatter another.
Gotten back home, I was sent right back the way I came from to Kor-Azor. Before I headed out there again, I contacted the Gallente to joke that instead of all that trouble I went through to get back home, I should have stayed in Kor-Azor as it would have saved me countless number of jumps and time traveling between the two regions. I expected to hear his voice laughing at the silliness of it all, and maybe invite me to make a stop in Sinq Laison to show me his home – something he had already said he wanted me to see – but that was the extent of the exchange. He didn’t write back to me. I briefly mourned the possibility of the two of us ever being friends and started thinking I had let myself be deceived and here it was the cold uncaring selfishness of the Gallente man with his fleeting attention span and superficiality. I felt hurt, but the real reason evaded me.
I went back to Kor-Azor. I carried out my duties. And as I was setting myself up to spend the night at a local station, there he was. He had come back there just to see me. He hadn’t written, because he wanted it to be a surprise. Knowledge of that made me feel exhilarated —nobody had done anything like it for me— but scared at the same time. I didn’t know what I was scared of, but I could no longer feel calm in his presence. My heart was beating twice as fast as normal, and I was nervous. I didn’t understand what was making me so nervous around him.
It all became clear the moment he touched me. I should have seen it all coming, but I didn’t. And even though it should have made it clear to me at that moment what it was I felt for him — it didn’t. I recoiled from his touch as if he’d attacked me. It took him off guard. By now I know he had good reason to expect me to react positively to him, but back then I couldn’t admit it. I had been thrown into a completely new reality in a matter of a second. One that was uncharted, unfamiliar, and threatening. It was sink or swim and I felt like I was sinking.
Who did he think he was to allow such liberties with me? This is exactly what the Gallente have a reputation for — their attempts to bring everybody in line with their worldview and values. Their insolence in thinking that their values are better than others’ and we need a lesson on life. This is what I told myself was happening.
I no longer wanted to talk to him. And I rejected all of his attempts to try to communicate with me further. I prepared my ship and flew back home in the dead of night even though I needed sleep. At home, I told no-one. Nobody knew I had even met him. It would be easy to erase all memories of him.
(Thanks for Anna Dyneaux for help with the pictures).
Happy to help! It’s a very touching story so far, I’m looking forward to the rest of it.
Months went by and I didn’t see him. I was busy with my assignments and professional duties, and I was thankful for that. I thought the whole affair was a thing of the past and I never had to see him again.
But I was wrong. I saw him a few months later, this time in Caldari space. Only a few systems away from my home. When I saw him, this time I was furious. And I didn’t even try to hide it. As if I hadn’t made myself clear I didn’t want to talk to him again! Why would he still try to look me up?
I was cold and rude to him as he came to ask me how I was doing. And I fled the system as soon as I could. But I ran into him again a couple of weeks later in Jita. I knew he went there a lot, as he was doing investing on the market, but really, I had reckoned he would steer clear of me – and on this he just seemed to refuse to comply with my expectations. The biggest trade hub in the universe and I had to tick it off my list of places I could visit in order to avoid seeing him. I had to come up with these elaborate excuses to my friends and family why I wouldn’t go to Jita, that sounded ridiculous even to myself and I’m not sure they even believed me then.
I was so focused on being angry at him for his continued attempts to talk to me and to him seemingly being immune to my less than friendly treatment of him that I completely failed to contemplate the obvious. It didn’t strike me as odd yet why I couldn’t just simply tell him to stay away –I had never actually vocalized it to him-- or why his presence was all that was needed to send me into a tailspin. The intensity of my reaction to him was out of place. But I was still oblivious to it.
A year passed. I had isolated myself and dedicated my time to serving my State. It made me feel good and useful and it distracted me from my own personal needs and desires. I thought of him as little as possible and when I did I told myself I had handled the situation well and avoided being compromised. But something inside me no longer felt right. I had never felt as free and authentic as when I had been with him. And nothing erased that knowledge. Those first moments I spent with him, I couldn’t lie to myself that I wanted to live them again. Nobody else made me feel the way he did. I didn’t feel like I had to pretend or hide anything when I was with him. I could be completely honest, be myself, and he would understand.
Why did he have to be gay? We could have been such great friends. I finally met a man who understood me, and he had to ruin it. I was mad at him for that. I was angry that he took away our friendship. He thought only of himself. I had been brought up to put the needs of others before my own. But he only cared about his needs. I was getting more and more mad just thinking about it.
Gallente have a reputation for being opinionated. But what they really should be known for most is their persistence.
When I met him it had been summer time. The month of June. And it was summer time again when I found myself in Amarr, at the second largest trade hub. I was aware he frequented the market there as well, but I didn’t expect to run into him. I hadn’t seen him in a year, and I figured it was by now all forgotten anyway. He had probably moved on with his life and found somebody else. The sting I felt when thinking that didn’t register in my consciousness at first either. But I was wrong. Again. I was wrong a lot back then. There he was. He had seen my name show up in system local and he ambushed me. He wouldn’t use such a word himself, but that’s what it felt like to me at the time.
When I saw him again, I couldn’t get past how beautiful he looked. I’d noticed it about him from the get go, but I had never admitted that I thought this way about him. But now it seemed more striking than ever. And I failed to deny it anymore. I don’t know if it was the long duration of our separation or something else, but I was acutely aware how I found him physically attractive.
For his part he tried to be more easy on me. He just enquired how I’d been, and tried to make small talk, which I know he dislikes to do, but he was afraid of scaring me away again, and so he kept it pretty casual.
In the end he invited me over to his quarters for dinner. That, I knew, was dangerous. Being alone with him was the most dangerous thing in the world. I told him I didn’t have time, but that bluff didn’t go far when he asked if I really didn’t have even 30 minutes to spare.
He wouldn’t leave me alone and I was tired being angry at him. It was the easiest thing talking to him, and it still felt like he was my friend. Even after all that had happened. He was still so open and genuine in his interest in me that I couldn’t hold it against him. So I went with him. I should have known it would change everything. That I would never be able to go back to my life as I knew it ever again.
I had been the one who started this whole thing. That’s what I was thinking about as I was sitting in his quarters waiting for him to serve us dinner. Yes, he was the one who did all the pursuing. He took all the lead from there and I had held him accountable for everything. But I was the one who noticed him. I had walked up him. I had looked at him and I had started it. And it wasn’t because I was bored. It wasn’t because I had no-one else to talk to. He wasn’t the only person in that station that day. There were others. Others I never looked at. Others I didn’t feel pulled towards. Others who could have easily entertained me as well. But I wasn’t interested in them. He alone had captivated me. He was the only one I saw. I had started talking to him, because I needed to know him. Something inside me was not okay with letting him disappear into the vastness of space never to be seen again.
I had blocked this part out of my consciousness for so long that now that I remembered it, it made me feel subdued. I was silent as I watched him make grapefruit juice in the kitchen. I didn’t know what to say to him anymore. Frankly, I didn’t understand why he still bothered with me. Every other person in the universe would have given up on me. Would have walked away and never looked back. Why didn’t he? Why was he so easy on me? Not a single bad word to me, not a single off look.
‘’Are you happy?’’
He peered at me with his calm mysterious eyes, and that’s what he chose to ask.
How did he know to ask that question? Just like that? We had been talking about weather conditions and station renovation works. And then he comes out with that?
I wanted to say ‘yes’. But I knew it wasn’t true. And I couldn’t look into his eyes and lie. So I said nothing. Which, likely, was an answer in itself. He came and sat next to me. And this time I didn’t pull away when his hand found mine. And suddenly I didn’t realize why I had been so scared. Having him next to me, touching me, felt like the most natural thing in the world. And I had a reaction to his touch. A reaction I had never let myself have to another man.
He looked at me, and his eyes seemed to look right through to the core of me. I felt naked before him. Nobody else had looked at me that way before. It was the moment of truth. I could no longer detach my eyes from his. They were fixated on his soul, forming a bond with him through some invisible and indestructible force.
And then his lips were on mine and the reality shifted. This is what I had been afraid of all this time – that he would kiss me and I would like it. But why was I afraid of it? It felt so natural and pure. His warm body was right next to mine, and it felt good to touch it. My arms naturally went around him and pulled him closer. I didn’t want to let go of him anymore. I stopped thinking about anything. I was only feeling – and what I felt was the most intense thing in the world.
I could describe in minute detail everything that happened that night. It has all been etched into my memory. But the details are too intimate to share. Only he and I know exactly what happened. And this is how it should be. But that night changed everything. My life as I knew it was gone.
To be continued…
(Thanks again to Anna Dyneaux for helping out with the pictures!)
When I finally went home, it felt empty. My personal quarters and my things I had known for years didn’t matter anymore. I needed to figure out what I would do. I still had professional duties to my corporation and State. But it would never be acceptable here if I made a life with another man. But being away from him had become unacceptable to me. I felt deceived by my family and the society I’d believed in. There was nothing wrong in two men being together, but I had been told that’s how it was.
I still harbored some hope that my relationship with him could be, if not acceptable, then tolerated in my immediate circle, so that I could continue my employment and make a life with him. There were my parents to contend with, who would be completely surprised by this state of affairs in my life. There was my brother, and my sister, but I was less worried about them. They were more adaptable to change than my parents. There were a few close friends, and I would need to tell them eventually as well. And, of course, my employer. I was not convinced I had to inform them of this evolution. There was a chance they would see it as an infringement of societal conventions, and possibly, as a threat to Caldari society as a whole. I didn’t know what they would do or how far their authority in these matters extended exactly. The history was silent on this topic, and neither did I know of any real-life examples of anyone in my situation.
But of one thing I was sure of – I would not leave him. It was out of the question. I had lived the last two years trying to deny my own self. For two whole years I had put my life and feelings on the backseat to fall in line with what was expected of me. I tried my hardest to forget about my own needs. And all it brought me was sadness, loneliness, and shame. I would not live like that anymore. One hour with him had erased all of that – it had made me feel happiness and fulfillment like I’d never felt before. I now understood those ancient writings describing Love. I now knew what they meant when somebody said they were in Love. It felt like a force bigger than myself and I felt lucky to have found it.
He came to see me again a couple of days later. He couldn’t stay away and it reassured me. I knew I wasn’t alone anymore. We both needed the other, and I felt like I had to make up for the two years I had avoided him. We started seeing each other like that, at short intervals, I would go to him, he would come to me. We would spend hours just talking and getting to know the other. And then the more intimate moments that made me feel things I’d never felt or imagined before.
I had found the one. The person I wanted to share my life with. And he was another man. And nothing had ever felt so right.
I am happy for you. I grew up in the State but I do not remember much about it. I have recently found love as well, and it is an incredible story, despite ours only lasting months so far. Maybe one day I will share some of it.
That’s great to hear! I wish you the best with your love. And it would be nice to hear the story some day, when you’re ready to share it.
Part B.
Home of Heart.
For the time being I avoided worrying about the future. I still thought I could continue my employment with the Caldari. I was two years away from reaching a rank that would triple my income. After that I could take it easier. He understood it and supported me wholeheartedly, which surprised me because I knew he also wanted to spend more time with me. But we would find ways to sneak moments with each other. There was no staying away from him anymore.
For a while that worked. And I’d forgot it was risky for me. There was the gay aspect, but also because he was a Gallente and I was a Deteis. I had to think of the whole, and anything that didn’t benefit or outright threatened the whole was to be relinquished. But this line of reasoning was starting to crack the more I felt happiness and the more I realized I had the capacity to make him happy. Nothing I’d ever done had felt more meaningful to me. And I didn’t see anything wrong with that, neither why I should have sacrificed my Love just for what? How would doing that benefit the Caldari society exactly? How would our Love threaten it?
Realizations like these started to erode my lifelong beliefs and convictions. I felt more and more connected to him the more time I spent with him. He was my friend and my lover. He had become a priority I would no longer compromise. I had to find a way to live with him included in my life.
And then it happened. Somebody saw us together. It was reported to my higher-ups and all the details of our meetings that could be traced down were traced down and scrutinized. I was ordered to the headquarters to answer to what was going on.
From the start they were focused on my relationship with him. I was questioned about how I knew him, for how long I had known him, the nature of our relationship, everything. I told them he was my friend – it was the truth, even though not the entire truth. But upon further questioning I understood they thought I was secretly working for the Gallente and betraying my State. I told them it was not true. Just because I had a Gallente friend didn’t mean I was betraying my State. But my frequent meetings with him, most of which took place at night, had become suspicious to them. It didn’t look like they believed me.
They ordered me to end the friendship. Just like that, it was given to me like any other order. My whole being froze in horror at those words. I wasn’t prepared for that. They might as well have punched me in the gut, because the hurt I felt was the same. Or worse. They can’t tell me who to be friends with and who not! I tried to reason with them, but all such my attempts were interpreted as signs of me being compromised and made by a Gallente spy. In their eyes there was no legitimate reason why I needed to keep this friendship.
They questioned me some more and it became obvious it wasn’t just some small formality. My life was on the line, but nobody cared how I felt about the consequences. I had become compromised in their eyes, and in order to prove my loyalty to the State my relationship with him had to come to an end. ‘‘Simple as that!’’ I was told to end it and be done with him. I was to submit to their orders, there could be no other option. I would suffer a temporary revoking of my security clearance and be made to work analytics for a year, but after that I would get my rank and clearance back. I was never to see or talk to the Gallente again. Failing that would leave them with no options but to terminate my services altogether. It would mean loss of employment, pay, my privileges, and citizenship. I would be de facto homeless, and with no rights in the State.
I had known deep down that things could take this turn. That I could be forced to relinquish my relationship with him. But the knowledge of that possibility didn’t do anything to prepare me for the shock I felt when finally standing face to face with the reality. To say that the prospect of losing the Love I had come to know and cherish was painful was an understatement. I felt like my soul had been ripped out of my chest and trampled on. I didn’t know how I would ever recover from the hurt. He had come to mean everything to me. He was the first thing I thought about after I woke up. He was the last thing on my mind before falling asleep. My life without him in it was unimaginable now.
But I couldn’t tell them we were lovers. I was afraid it would make things even worse. I wondered whether really nobody before me had been in that situation. I desperately needed to know how to handle it. But I didn’t know who to trust with this information.
There was no room for argument. I went home. There was a lump in my throat all the way there. Everything had changed in a matter of just a few hours. I had known happiness --happiness I didn’t even fathom was possible before-- and now I had to give it up.
As with previous images, Anna Dyneaux developed them – thank you so much!
I sat in my room and it had never felt so alien to me. It felt like the fabric of the universe itself was falling apart. There was nothing solid to hold onto anymore. I looked around in my home, and my things I’d derived pleasure from before didn’t comfort me anymore. My home that was empty of his presence felt like a gigantic black hole in the middle of my life, heavy and sucking me into its miserable isolationist world. I felt depressed at the prospect of loneliness I would live without him. I understood it would kill me. Not physically. But it would slowly grind down my mind and my heart to pieces. Until there was nothing left.
But if I wanted to keep my job and status I had to end the friendship and go back to my life as it was before I met him. I’d had my job, my assignments, my sense of self as part of the whole, my friends and family. I’d lived it all before. Quite satisfactorily. For decades. Then why was the idea of going back to that so unacceptable now? Because he would not be in it. Like a person who has spent their whole life in perpetual winter, I had come to know what summer warmth and light felt like. I had seen the nature in bloom, and the idea of going back to the frigid darkness of winter was intolerable to me.
As I sat on my bed and went over the whole situation and details over and over again in my head, it dawned on me that I had a choice. It was up to me to decide what to do. For the first time in my life, I questioned the orders I had been given. It was as if a new window had been opened and I saw things in a different light than before. Something in me had fundamentally changed after knowing him.
I had to trust him. The man I’d come to know and care deeply about in only a few months. The man I’d grown to love, so readily, and so unexpectedly. And I had to trust myself. That together we would figure it out and find a way. My fate was not predetermined by the rules and ideas somebody else had come up with. Those rules and ideas were flawed if they prohibited Love.
It meant that if I stayed with him I would no longer have a home in Caldari space. I would be outcast. Never minding the fact that to my superiors it would be an act of confirmation that I was working against them, me choosing him over the State was the ultimate act of betrayal. My first duty was to the State. The public welfare and welfare of my community. I was not supposed to think of myself. Even if it destroyed me. But maybe I didn’t believe that anymore. As difficult as the choice seemed on the surface, the fact was, from the moment I was told to end the friendship I knew deep down I would not do it.
It all came down to my heart. He was in my heart. Everything about him, from the way he touched me and looked at me. From the way he smiled when he saw me. From the way he held me. The way he kissed me. And I decided to prioritize that what was kindling between us. I belonged with him.
To my mind, the act of betrayal would have been to leave him. I knew we had done nothing wrong. Our Love hurt no-one, it caused no damage. It was a force of good. Submitting to that order would have meant betraying him, with whom I had bonded. It was my responsibility to safeguard our Love. I was acutely aware of the pain and hurt I would cause if I left him now. I wasn’t thinking of myself when I made the decision. I hadn’t changed, I acted the way I always did. The thing that had changed was the object of my devotion. My duty and responsibility now was to him and his wellbeing.