Leaving

Les asked me to move out at the end of the month.

I went to Little Sisters bookstore that has Vancouver’s best gay and lesbian bulletin board. There is a rentals posting section, where I could peruse ads for somewhere to live. I’d only lived with Les for one month, before he asked me to leave. We’d only known each other for three months in total.

In his bedside drawer I had found a sheet of paper, from his grief counselling class. It described the properties of a “rebound relationship.” I fit the bill. Exactly.

Drowning in my own loss, I found a shared home as close as possible to Les so I could be near him. My potential landlord interviewed me. He seemed to be a good choice - after all, he was a border patrol officer - so I signed the month-to-month lease.

I told Les that I was moving, and where. It was in the afternoon, after Les came home from work. We were in Max’s bedroom, now my room - the room Max lived in while he was dying of AIDS.

“I found a new place to live,” I said. I was actually very angry at Les, because he hadn't offered to help me find a place to live. I had to spend hours on the bus by myself, looking. And my finances were limited, having just moved into his house after he persuaded me to, the month before. I packed my own belongings and hired a man with a van to help me move, all alone.

"I’m living at 3230 Rupert Street. Number 32," I told him.

Les turned white. He walked silently, in shock, over to the desk in Max's room, unlocked it, and after looking through a few papers pulled out an old brochure. The brochure was for the same condo complex I was moving into. Les and Max had lived in the same building that I was about to move into, and had considered buying their suite at one point, which explained why he had a brochure on the property.

They even lived in the suite next to the one I was moving into.

After having sensed Max's spirit in the house; awakening in the middle of the night to see Max's ghost get out of the bed; the coincidence that we looked nearly alike; the flying of his picture onto the coffee table without a gust of wind; and now the statistical improbability of me finding an apartment next door to the same place Les had lived with Max - I was convinced that Les and I were supposed to be together. It was as if all the events and coincidences were pointing to the fact that Max wanted me to be with Les, to take care of him since he was gone, and these synchronicities were his attempt to communicate this to us, from the spiritual realm.

I tried to explain this to Les, but he couldn't see it this way. After all, he didn't even believe in an afterlife. Either I was delusional - seeing spirits, portents and signs that didn't exist - or Les was too overwhelmed by grief and a lack of faith that he couldn't believe in it.

I left the next morning ensuring that I didn't leave any trace of myself behind. I not only walked away from the man I loved, but also my faith in God...and in Love.