Winged Words Story #4
When I moved to London in 2017, I knew nothing except the address of my empty, waiting apartment, and the name of my supervisor at work. Paris had signed the first email I was ever sent with a meme of the Queen of England waving through the screen, and beyond that, I had absolutely no idea what my future boss would be like. I walked into my office for the first time, heavily jetlagged and naively optimistic. I found him sitting at his assigned desk in the closet-sized communications hub of the hotel that was working at. He was my height, with faintly accented English that was the only sign of him having only recently learned to speak it. He grew up in Hong Kong as the only child of a single mother, whose English name is Nina, who worked as a private chef for a wealthy Chinese family. He carried his father’s last name with palpable reticence until this past year, when he changed it to his mother’s, Young. He would soon become my best friend.
Paris always knew he was gay. That didn’t make it any easier to tell people. He had told his closest friends, but few others. Most importantly, while his mother vaguely knew he had a boyfriend, she didn’t know much about him. The distance between them made for an easy way around needing to explain himself. What he told her was the only truth she had, and she was never given much of a reason to question it.
Every year, the family that Paris’ mom worked for spent a few months in London. She’d move into his small, two-bedroom flat he shared with a roommate, and she’d explore the city and entertain herself while he worked, on the days she didn’t have to. In the evenings and on weekends, Paris would show her the places he’d found in the six years since he’d arrived in what would be his new home. In exchange, Nina would cook for him, recipes from his childhood that he could not make for himself. A few weeks after we had met the first time, I got as sick as I can ever remember being. She sat me down at Paris’ dining room table, and served me some traditional Chinese remedies. Some ingredients I couldn’t recognize, but one I remember was a soup of sweet potato and sugar. I don’t think it did much for my pneumonia, but the combination of her miming at me to eat more, and whacking the back of my hands gently when I didn’t, did a lot for my soul.
Ahead of my second summer in London, Paris decided it was time Nina understood that this part of his narrative was a permanent one. She accepted him, but out of context and out of sight, it was apparently hard for her to understand entirely what she was accepting. Regardless, it was a start, and Paris had a few ideas.
Her return to London crossed over with the Pride parade, and in a fit of what I would have considered insanity, he decided to bring Nina as his date to the world’s largest gay street parade. He had enlisted my help to get Nina safely from his apartment through Oxford tube station, London’s busiest stop, and out into the street. We made the first of a couple of human barricades between Nina and what felt like the entirety of London, and made it out into the July air.
We managed to shuttle Nina to a spot right against the barricade, so that all 4ft 9in of her could watch to her heart’s content. Paris’ intent was to show her that Pride is not as much about being different, but that being different doesn’t stand as a barrier to anything. He wanted her to see that there were thousands of people just like him, and that those people could be happy and open. I think, in part, he was hoping the parade would speak to the things he hadn’t found the words to say, and show her a vibrance he hadn’t been able to describe. With an arm on either side of Nina as she watched the floats roll by, we hoped that she’d see what Paris was trying to show her. Even before we had the answer, Paris was the happiest I had ever seen him.
His only requirement was that we distract her when the pups walked by (pups are men wearing leather outfits that make them look like dogs, complete with collars), because he wasn’t sure she was ready for that. Naturally, as the caravan of friendly leather-bound men approached us, we heard the parade would be delayed there momentarily. We wound up having a prime view of the pups, and I believe Nina collected stickers and swag from five of them before they finally moved on. Paris looked like he had seen a ghost, but it turns out, when Nina was asked to pick a favourite float later that night, the pups won hands down.
A few days later, Paris found a copy of Love Simon, a movie about a young boy coming out but with slightly more Hollywood flair, with Mandarin subtitles. He and Nina watched it together on his living room couch. Perhaps he wanted Nina to see what Jennifer Garner’s character went through. Perhaps he just wanted to not have to do much talking. Either way, the movie finished, and they both sat there as the credits rolled. Nina looked over to Paris, and simply said, “I think I understand.”