For Justin.

I was 20 when ‘Grindr’, the Gay Hook-up App became available on the iPhone. No more sketchy back and forth emails with possible catfishes on Craigslist! No sir! It was like a Facebook for gay hookups. It was ELITE! Sign on, upload your photos, choose your position in bed, throw up all your stats with a short bio, and “bloop, bloop, bloop” – messages would come pouring in.

Some men were only interested in dating, others were interested in hooking up. I was open to both ideas. By this time I had already been single a few months and was in the mood to get my freak on.

After setting up everything, I log on and the first person that catches my eye is a headless torso of a muscular Asian dude. I’ve been baited. I message him hoping for a reply. He writes back, “Hey Kyle, I’m Justin.''.

Justin was this super cute Volcom-wearing “straight”-acting Filipino dude with tattoos standing tall at 5‘5. Just how I like em’ - short and sweet. We started chatting for a bit and I thought he was totally into me because of the way he sarcastically bashed both the music I listened to and the clothes I was wearing in my pictures. After a very short exchange, he tells me he wants to meet up and that he’d be at Royal Ground Coffee on the corner of 15th and Geary in 30 minutes. He was forward and knew what he wanted. I liked it!

Nervously, I began the walk from my house which was about 16 blocks away. It was a foggy cold night in the Richmond District so it really set the mood for a nice mocha and maybe some dick after? An 18 year-old could only hope. When I arrived, he was sitting there set up with his computer and a stack of queue cards. With a confused look on my face, I re-introduced myself and sat down. He handed me the stack of cards and said, “Could you quiz me on all these diseases? It’s for school”.

I died laughing. Immediately, I felt safe and comfortable with him. He squashed the idea of any possible hookup happening and set a boundary. It’s something I respected and envied about him, since I knew how much little respect I had for myself.

I flip the first card: “Symptoms of Gonorrhea.” For the next couple of hours, we talked about diseases and infections with the occasional insert of where we were from, what our families are like.. etc. This was a very weird first date, but I’ve been in weirder situations, so I leaned in. I liked this guy.

I learned he wasn’t out because his whole family was quite religious. He didn’t believe me when I said I came from quite the opposite, being that I was one out of four gay children. Up until this point, I really didn’t know a religious gay dude. I didn’t think it existed. We talked all night until the coffee shop closed, then he offered to drive me home. I obviously said yes.

He led me to his silver Toyota pickup truck. (Ok, hot!) I hopped in enthusiastically. He blasted some American rock & roll and that’s when I thought I was falling for this guy. But what I didn’t realize is that I had just met one of my favorite people on that planet and he was going to be a friend like no other.

I had a slight hope that our hangouts would turn into something romantic. I mean, I loved his energy! He always wore a smile, was always cracking jokes, and he wanted to hang out all the time! He even thought that wearing jeans with flip flops was okay… Opposites attract, right?

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Not every gay man that entered my life was destined to be my boyfriend or love interest. Some were just meant to be friends and that was okay. Justin always talked about tall corn-fed white boys with blonde hair and blue eyes, real “prince charming” types. I was into more queer, creative types and I had to own that. So in my heart like every queer person at some point in their life has to do, I let Justin into the friend zone, permanently.

In short, I self-sabotaged and slowly stopped hanging with Justin.

Over the course of a few years, Justin and I hanged sporadically. He was focused on work and school, while I was focused on... partying and not having any point of direction in particular. I had lost my motivation to be an all-star dancer and rarely put forth the effort for anything despite knowing the only times I ever felt alive was when I was on stage.

After not seeing him for a few months, Justin randomly calls me one night. He explains that he has something important he wants to show me and that he has a bottle of red wine as well. I zoom over. I think to myself, Oh, shit. This is it. This is the night he finally falls for me. I mean, he has wine! To me, red wine usually means sex, or at least that’s what all my hook-ups usually offer me before getting to work.

Since he lived very close to me, I power-walked over in the cold fog. He opened the door and we made our way into his room. He sat me down. Next to me is a thick stack of papers; the top page reads, “iFeel, A Musical without Song.”

“That's it,” he says. “It’s what I’ve been working on for months.”

Justin pours a glass of wine. “Tonight I want to read it with you. I want your opinion!”

I throw my head back and laugh. “Me?! I’m no actor!” Here I go again, self-sabotaging (I gave up acting when I failed an audition to be in the drama program at an arts school when I was 14.)

Justin shoved the script into my hands.

“But I’ll gladly read this with you”. I accepted the script graciously.

The play was very well written and super exciting. There was drama, there was comedy, dancing, drugs, pop music, sex, you name it, it had it.

After we’re done reading, Justin asks me if I would choreograph it. I say yes but at the same time, I also feel terribly sad because I want to act in it. Justin only knew the dancing side of me and I’d never shown anyone the acting part of me for years.

Two weeks pass by and I get a phone call from Justin. “Hey, I can’t find anyone to play Tyler that I really like. Do you know anyone that would be interested?” I hesitantly replied, “Umm, yeah I’ll try and find someone… I’m sure there is someone.” That’s when it hit him. “KYLE! You! You have to play Tyler!

Tyler is the character that represented Justin in a parallel universe. At this time Justin is not out to his parents, or his sisters for that matter because he is heavily tied to the church. Which led him to be wearing volcom I think.

“It’s perfect for you, you’re exactly who I want to be!” Justin screams excitedly. Well sort of..

“I couldn’t! there must be someone else.” I reply.

“Kyle, you have to play Tyler.” Justin argues with me. “I know you think you don’t act, but you dance and I feel like you could just kill this role. I got a slot at the USF theater two months from now with three nights approved. This is the last role to cast, and it has to be you.

Flash forward two months later.

I woke up to pounding on my bedroom door.

“KYLE, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE. WAKE THE FUCK UP” screams a woman.

My eyes flutter open in my dark room, as I lay on top of my bedding, naked, chips next to me, head pounding.

“Huh? Who is it!” I stutter.

“IT’S ESTHER! WE STARTED DRESS REHEARSAL AN HOUR AGO!, she screams.

“But our dress rehearsal is at 11:00 pm, not 11:00 am.”.

“WHAT, WHY THE FUCK WOULD WE HAVE REHEARSAL LATE AT NIGHT? GET DRESSED AND MEET ME DOWNSTAIRS IN MY CAR NOW!” she bangs my door once more.

I hear the front door slam. It all comes rushing into my head. “Oh my god. Tomorrow is opening night and I still haven’t memorized my lines. I’m fucked.” I get dressed, quickly douse my body down with cologne and meet Esther in the car, reading my lines as she drives.

“You’re still not offbook huh?” she glares. “No, I lost track of time.” I reply What I mean to say is that I’m 22 years old, a full blown alcoholic, I have zero fucks to give for my life, and I’m selfish as fuck.

“I memorized my lines two weeks into rehearsal. That’s what real actors do, they do the work, Kyle.” she spat in my direction.

Esther had been in a total of two plays in her lifetime, only at University of San Francisco. She was studying to become a physical therapist, but also felt like she was the queen when it came to the performing arts. She also just rubbed me the wrong way at the time. Sorry girl, but you just did.

We make our way into the theater. The cast is friendly, but they’re not my friends. Only Justin is and at this particular moment, I’m not sure if he even considers me that anymore.

“Alrighty, let's go from the top, and we’re off book!” He yells.

I pull Justin to the side and inform him that I haven’t yet memorized my lines. He shakes his head in disapproval and we continue on.

In this moment, I cannot believe I had fucked a friendship I truly cared about up this bad. I also was completely sabotaging the shot I had at becoming the performer I had always known I could be. I needed to get my act together, but it felt like every time I took one step forward, I fell about 40 steps down a flight of stairs. Partying and toxic hookups had ruined me. I had ruined me.

I look at Justin as I’m about to make my first appearance onto the stage. “I’m sorry,” I murmured.

I get on stage and think, I gotta do this for him.

During the dress rehearsal, I channeled the “Monkey King Kyle” who at 5 years old had been an authentic beam of light – the person I was always meant to be. It came effortlessly. I knew I had to save something of true value to me, friendship, and a person who believed in me.

We go through the entire play and do curtain call.

“Kyle, I don’t know how you did it but, goddamn, you are amazing!” Justin exclaims. The whole cast applauded annoyingly, agreeing with Justin. I could feel their genuine interest, but at the same time, their disappointment in the many weeks I had been distant with them leading up to this moment.

Justin then spent the whole day after that helping me memorize my lines. And on opening night, I was fully offbook and ready to go.

He sold out all three nights. My family and friends came to see the show and all of them were shocked with how good I was. The feeling of being back up on a stage infused me with something I hadn’t felt in years. Something I’ve put on the back burner. Myself. My whole self, the unapologetic, colorful, and loud Kyle I was known to be. This experience that Justin created alone brought Kyle back to life.

We had a huge cast party that night, and I thanked Justin from the bottom of my heart. I told him I was thinking about moving to Los Angeles and that performing in his musical had solidified my decision. I remember him giving me the longest hug and then quickly pushing me away saying, “You’re going to kill it, I know it!”

Two years later, I got a call on my cell. It’s Justin. He asks me how I am, and I open with how my boyfriend had just left me. We caught up all night about LA and my first year of sobriety, and he told me about his new boyfriend and how they 're thinking of moving in together. It was a really nice catch up.

The next morning, I wake to someone throwing rocks at my bedroom window. I look out of the blinds and there he is, It’s Justin. I ran to the front door to greet him.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE!” I scream.

“I drove all night. Now get dressed. We’re going to Disneyland,” he says.

There are few friends in life who show up in ways like this. They are a dime a dozen. He drove us to my job where he explained to my manager what was happening. And like magic, she let us go.

We had the perfect day at Disneyland

A) Because we’re both the type of people who let our inner childs out in spaces like this.

B) There was a measles outbreak the day before so the lines were very short.

Justin and I kept in touch seldomly after this as our lives were busy. I had a new life in Los Angeles as he did with his new boyfriend back home in the Bay Area.

I received a call in February in the next year. It was 10:00 pm and I was in my kitchen.

“Hi, is this Kyle Shea?” a man's voice stutters.

“Hey, yeah! Who’s this?” I replied.

He explained that he was an old party friend of mine named Thomas, and that he was a close friend of Justin’s. Justin, he said slowly, had been killed yesterday.

Everything in this moment stopped. I couldn’t process the information I was hearing. The only thing I could get out was a thank you and I asked if he was ok, but didn’t hear his reply - I just had to get off the phone.

I fell to my kitchen floor. The silence started to rumble around me and the cold tile floor seemed to suck me into the ground. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe; the only thing that erupted from me was pain.

Flashes of all our mutual friends and his family come into my head. I cannot stop thinking about all the people he had affected. This was the man who had given me a chance when no one else had. The man who always just wanted to hang out no matter the circumstance, the man who always led with kindness and love, the man who was a pioneer of being a decent human being. He was gone.

Justin has changed my life, even to this day. I’m forever grateful for him. His legacy lives on through me. I’ll always be reminded of his greatness. I’ll always be reminded of how I can believe in myself, even when I’m in the darkest night of the soul. I hope that one day I can truly make him proud. I also hope that I can do something tremendously wonderful for his family, especially for his twin who he left behind. I have a twin. And it would rip me in half if she ever left this planet early. Therefore, I wish to give you in increments a story of how your brother loved so fiercely and beautifully along the way of my own journey. I love you Justin, Thank you.