2009
This was the last time that I saw my main group of friends in Keighley, but I didn’t realize that this would be the final time. The purpose of the meeting was to have dinner in an Indian restaurant so as to celebrate Sam’s birthday. On our way there, I asked him (a Spaniard with curly and ginger hair) if there were any vacancies at his workplace. He said: “There might be an opening for a cleaner.”
Sam is two months younger than me. His birthday is in July. His girlfriend, Emma, gave me a belated birthday card that was self-made (which I still have), while he gave me a belated gift in the form of Avenged Sevenfold’s City of Evil CD despite the fact that I never proclaimed to him about being a fan of A7X (the band ripped off Overkill’s skull-with-bat-wings mascot). The CD came from his collection, and it wasn’t even wrapped. Still, I said thanks to each offering. This was out of character for Sam and Emma because they never gave me birthday keepsakes in the previous two years. I had never been invited to Sam’s birthday celebrations from 2005 to 2008. I was never on Emma’s Facebook friend list, and she never engaged me in conversation. She had been dating Sam since 2007. They began dating after I left the first college, and now I had left my second college.
In retrospect, the dinner was a farewell party complete with a parting gift. Perhaps Sam’s girlfriend didn’t like me, and wanted to hide her acrimony. Perhaps Sam wanted to assuage his own guilt. Either way, it’s bittersweet since they weren’t exactly engaged. They never did nor did they have children. They split up a few years later. She married some military guy in 2017. He didn’t look like a soldier; he looked more like an out-of-shape accountant. Emma is still friends with Sam’s two brothers, sister and some of his other friends…but not Sam. A Facebook friend list tells you more than the owner would want you to know, which is why some people hide their lists from even friends. You would think that Sam would’ve removed me from his list in 2009. Well, I removed him and his friends from mine after 2010. I decided that if they didn’t invite me to go anywhere by the end of 2010 then I would remove them in 2011. I was offended by Sam’s semi-ghosting, and I never forgave him since he never apologised.
In 2011, Sam and Isaias had permanently fallen out with Sam’s best friend (a white guy named Chris) for a reason that wasn’t disclosed to me. Only their friend Matthew had forgiven him; this might be so as to report back to Sam. It’s too bad that Sam wasn’t unforgiving when Chris used a racial slur, the N word, as a form of humour. Here is some trivia: Chris is still on Emma’s FB friend list. Anyway, I always saw it as an irony that two Hispanic emigrants from Chile had a better life in England than I did. They both have Yorkshire accents despite only living here since the ages of 10 and 9, but nobody ever criticized them for putting on an accent. I don’t sound black, yet some Brits accused of me being fraudulent. It’s sad that Sam and Isaias didn’t make the band a reality because, they could’ve been comparable to Van Halen in terms of background if not talent. Not only are they immigrants but their surname begins with V.
Then again, it’s been said that you can’t trust bands with brothers in them if you intend to be a musician. Take Van Halen for instance. With the drummer and guitarist being brothers, it was natural that the bassist and the singer would have to form an allegiance. Look how that turned out! Pantera is another such example. As for Sam and his friends, I don’t miss them because they all enjoyed doing impersonations of Indian people. One example pertaining this is 2005. I mentioned about having a crush on a white girl who went to the same schools as Sam and I. Her name is Ciara (it was pronounced key-are-ruh). Sam and his friends would incorporate her name into their Indian impressions despite the fact that I’m not Indian or any kind of Asian. Ripping on another minorities made him feel like like one. Ironically, Sam once tried to impress me in 2008 by telling me about an Indian co-worker who liked martial arts movies. Back to 2009, I saw Ciara on a social networking site called Look It’s Me. She ignored me.
