He laughed and sipped the sparkling water he’d ordered. “I’ve dated. I can’t say it’s gone well, but I’ve tried.” His face didn’t look like it’d been good at all. I thought he would leave it at that, but he continued. “About six months ago I ended a relationship with someone after about a year. He worked for the British Embassy. In the consular office.”
He stopped there and looked at the stage, but tonight I was apparently letting my pushiness do whatever it wanted, so I prodded for more. “Why did you break it off? Did he go home?”
His face turned ashen then, and I almost regretted asking. Still I didn’t change to topic, because I wanted to know. “He didn’t. He had about one more year left here when we ended things, but he left early, asked for a transfer. He never really liked Addis.” He raised a shoulder, trying to feign an indifference I could see was not really there. “This was his first posting in Africa, and I think he would’ve preferred something in Asia or Europe. Somewhere less ‘rough,’ as he liked to say.”
His face was a mix of sadness and mortification, and I felt so pissed on his behalf. The guy must’ve been one of those who went into the Foreign Service expecting to jump from European countries to “exotic” locations, only socializing with other expats. God forbid they had to interact with the people who lived in the countries. Unless, of course, they wanted to use them as part of the entertainment.
“What happened then? Did he cheat on you?” I asked, already pissed off for him.
Elias shook his head, a rueful smile on his lips. “Americans, you’re always so direct. To be honest, I don’t know if he cheated,” he said, again trying hard to seem unaffected. But I could see in his knitted brows and the lines around his mouth that it still bothered him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. Byron was very adventurous in bed and he was always teasing me about being too conservative. I wasn’t interested in sleeping with anyone other than him, and that made me a ‘victim of my country’s antiquated moralistic beliefs.’”
I felt like shit for pushing him, and almost told him he didn’t need to explain, but before I did, he spoke again. “I overheard him talking to one of his colleagues about me, and what he said was not something a person who cared for me would say.” He shook his head and looked so embarrassed. “When I confronted him, he tried to convince me I heard things out of context, but it wasn’t first time he’d been disrespectful. I think the hardest part for me was that I trusted him.”
I wanted to hold his hand, comfort him as he spoke of things that were clearly still painful, but I couldn’t. Not out here in the open. I touched his knee under the table instead, which was not nearly enough, but already much more than I could probably get away with. “That’s so fucked up, Elias. I’m sorry.”
His expression was one of resignation. “I opened up to him about painful and personal things, and he turned around and used those same things to talk to me like I was some kind of simpleton.”
He smiled and touched my hand, which was still on his knee. “Byron’s not the first man I’ve been with, but he was the first person I trusted enough to talk about some of my struggles. It’s not easy being a gay man in Ethiopia. So many times I feel like a fraud. I’m out there talking about oppression, how our power lies in not being silenced, and yet I’m too scared to tell some of my best friends who I really am. Because I don’t want them to look at me differently.” He grimaced at his words, and the urge to soothe him was almost overwhelming. “Which isn’t even fair, because I know some of them want LGBTQ rights in Ethiopia as much as I do, but I’m still afraid. It’s one thing to want something in theory, and quite another to have to confront it.”
He took another sip of his water and looked toward the stage, where one of the women setting up was waving at him. After lifting his hand to her, he turned back to me. “For some of them I would no longer be Elias, their friend. I’d be the type of person they want to believe doesn’t even exist in Ethiopia. There are people who think I’m the very symbol of the worst that colonialism did to our countries. They don’t want to hear that we were always here.” He looked weary, so different from the passionate, fiery man I’d grown accustomed to. “I shared those fears with Byron, and he used them as reasons to look down on me.”
I had no idea why Elias was telling me all this, but I knew it couldn’t be easy for him. I felt so fucking slighted for him. That asshole Byron had taken his secrets and used them to humiliate him. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, but I’m glad you didn’t waste more of your time on someone who clearly didn’t deserve you.”
He dipped his head before he spoke. “Thank you. I felt so silly afterwards, like I should’ve known better. But I just wanted so much to have found someone that could see me.”
I let out a long exhale, feeling his words in my bones. “I can relate to that on so many levels.”
He raised his eyebrow at that and pushed his foot under the table so the tips of our shoes were
