Never judge a book

I know I have told you about a guy in both of my summer classes that I call “frat boy.” He has “that look” as my son Jon would say. Khaki shorts and golf shirts to class each day, loafers, sun glasses turned around backwards, neat hair, etc. You get the picture. He is well spoken and seems pretty with it as far as being engaged with school work.

After our lit test today, I went to the theatre building to check the call board and then to my second class. I figured I would read in the lobby until class time. While walking over I ran into frat boy and we talked about how ridiculous the test was! It really was pretty bad. When you have to take out 2 sets of double negatives in order to even understand the statement before you can determine if it is true or false, you’ve got a problem!

Once in the Kinesiology building he asked me if I drove back and forth from Birmingham every day. I said yes, I lived in Homewood. He told me he was behind me this morning driving in and that he lived in the Forest Park/ Crestwood area. He mentioned a “partner”. Now there are business partners and partners in crime and although Tim is my partner, I do not call him that but rather my husband. Partner has come to mean your significant other if you are gay, so I asked if “he” was also in school. Sure enough I was right and his partner is through with school and works for a local bank. I then asked frat boy what class he was in- junior, senior? “I wish,” he stated. “I am going to be a sophomore.” I told him he was so mature I assumed he was older than that. He then went on to tell me that he had lost a lot of credits last fall because he was very ill. He had high fevers and just could not shake whatever he had. He went to the doctor who tested him for everything and finally decided it was mono. The Doc put him on strong antibiotics and he finally began to feel human again. By this time he had missed over a month of school so he had to withdraw from some classes and work super hard to catch up in the remaining classes.

After the first of the year his partner also became ill and they decided now he had mono. But he continued to decline and eventually went into the hospital where he was tested and diagnosed with HIV. Immediately, frat boy got tested and was also positive for HIV. He told me that if he seemed mature it was because he had had to grow up a lot in his twentieth year. His parents will not accept that he is gay so he dare not tell them about this. I told him it was OK as an adult to keep some things to yourself until you came to terms with them.  Someday he will need a family, it might not can be the one he was born into, it might be a church family or just a friend family, but that he needed to watch his stress at this time and a confrontation might not be the ticket. The right time would present itself or not, he would know.

And then Miss Conceit showed up and he of course changed the subject back to the test, which prompted her to take over the conversation. I drifted away. But it just shows that you definitely can not judge a book by its cover. My carefree, college frat boy isn’t a frat boy after all. And he certainly isn’t carefree. I guess I should change his nickname in my mind but I can’t bring myself to do it.