Nonfiction: "Our Necklace"
DAVID SOLINSKY // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
I fumble trying to take off my button-down. I awkwardly laugh, hoping that by acknowledging the situation I’m making it somewhat more tolerable for both of us. Finally it gives way and I climb on top of him, going through the same tired motions I always do before I finally grow exasperated by the chain clanking on my chest. I pause suddenly, taking special care to remove the clasp gently before resting the necklace atop the lamp on his bedside table.
“Remind me to get this before I leave,” I tell him.
I’ve worn the same two items of clothing to almost every hookup I’ve embarked on at the College of William and Mary. First, I adorn a black bomber jacket from H&M, one with too many zippers and too few pockets. It makes me look 10 times edgier than I actually am, and I like that because it signals to the men I’m meeting that I don’t need their validation.
My vulnerability lays just out of view, tucked beneath my bomber jacket. To every public outing, every class, every dinner and even every hookup, I wear my most prized possession: a discrete silver necklace with three narrow rectangular beads, which respectively read “Dublin,” “Virginia” and “O.”
The “O” stands for Owen, a boy from rural Ireland who I’ve spent the past five years with in an enigmatic, long-distance “relationship.” I use quotes around “relationship” because we’ve taken on so many different labels within the past half decade that trying to define us in a word is nearly impossible. We’ve been friends and we’ve been boyfriends; we’ve been on and we’ve been off. We met on Instagram’s Explore page as two plucky, closeted gay boys back in 2014 and have since then spent almost a quarter of our lives living side by side — or at least as side by side as we can get with 3,500 miles between us. For most of high school, we clung to each other; being a queer high schooler was hard, and we were each other’s life raft.
When we headed to university two years ago, we ambitiously envisioned ourselves staying monogamous boyfriends until graduation. Inevitably we discovered that college wasn’t the best environment for fledgling long-distance relationships, and our relationship outlook turned from sustainable to cynical. After many depressing video calls about “us” and “our future”, we tried going on dates with other guys and exploring broader romantic horizons, in Dublin and Williamsburg respectively.
This is the decision that’s led me to countless dorm rooms late at night, trying desperately to numb the sensation of missing him by pursuing random encounters with guys who barely remember my name the next morning, let alone make eye contact with me around campus.
This unenviable situation is not what I expected from my four years at the College, and it’s not what I envisioned when Owen and I had these challenging conversations at the dawn of our undergraduate careers. After being one of the only openly queer students at my high school, I expected Williamsburg to be a verifiable den of eligible gay boys. I figured I’d explore my romantic tastes for eight semesters as my beau did the same abroad, then we’d both neatly decide in May 2021 whether to pursue something long term. I saw us casually dabbling in other relationships, treating them like practice runs before we’d both eventually embrace each other after our respective graduations and run off into the sunset.
DAVID SOLINSKY // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
Instead, we’ve both crashed and burned through a series of interpersonal endeavors. Over winter break I started dating a violist, with whom I enjoyed three weeks of bliss before he revealed himself as an emotionally abusive prick. Owen started seeing someone from Northern Ireland who vaped after sex, and it wasn’t even one of the good flavors. We’ve both tried to get out there romantically, only to realize that things out there aren’t that good — which fortunately has kept us going back to each other regardless of how difficult distance has made things.
Throughout the last two years, we’ve kept up the fixtures of couplehood. We send each other good morning texts. His always arrive around 4 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and I send mine every night on the East Coast before going to bed, so he sees it when he wakes up a few hours later. We FaceTime every week, exchange recipes, complain about coursework, plan trips together and do about everything a stereotypical couple could do from so far away. We end every FaceTime with “I love you.”
Sometimes the “coupleness” of our relationship culminates in exquisitely intimate gifts, most notably my prized necklace, which he gave to me for my 20th birthday last July. It was one of four small tokens of affection he gave to me, alongside a collection of short stories from my favorite author and crimson elephant pants from his recent trip to Greece. Every day since then I’ve worn it out. It’s a constant reminder of him as I rummage around Williamsburg, doing mindless tasks and working on classwork. When I get stressed, I fiddle around with it, letting the “Dublin” bead sift through my fingers. I’m not sure whether I’m channeling his presence or trying to communicate with him from afar in these moments, but it’s a comfort regardless.
This is why I panic when I realize that I’ve left it behind later that evening, when the boy I was with texts me “You forgot your necklace” when I’m half a mile away back at my dorm. The symbolism is dizzying. Taking off the necklace during a hookup and removing Owen’s presence near my heart — it felt too kitschy to be true.
For the rest of the night I can’t think of anything else. I can’t focus on my homework and I struggle to talk with my friends. As if being an ocean away wasn’t hard enough, now I’d abandoned the one thing linking him to me, made even worse by the fact that it happened doing something in an attempt to fulfill the void left by his absence.
Pathetically I text back, asking if there’s anyway I could pick it up later that evening. He obliges and a few hours later I’m in the library, waiting in front of Aromas Cafe at Swem to retrieve my coveted jewelry. He hands it over, and the necklace is ruinously tangled. The beads look dirty and the chain is twisted up in clumps, so I trudge home, lay in bed and undo the knots. Ten minutes later it’s unfurled and I lace it around my neck, letting out a tremble of unbridled relief.
I haven’t taken it off since.
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