I posted this on Reddit, in a sub that talks about pleasant encounters you've had with people that left a good impression on you. Here's a tale of an platonic stranger encounter I had when I was 21...

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When I was in high school, I was a hormonal gay teenager who had two minute crushes on any cute guy that crossed my path. There was this one guy, I can't even remember his name now, who was a senior when I was a freshmen. He was an artistic type, with auburn hair with sideburns that framed his long face, big brown eyes, fashionably thin, and alabaster skin. Very good-looking. I never really approached him or had any kind of sustained crush on him because we never had any classes together or ever interacted, but I definitely noticed him.

About six years later during the start of the 2007-2008 school year, I was a college student hanging out with this group of alternative hipster types, who would throw parties. I went to the house barbeque of one quirky hipster girl that did like me, but the party was about to move over to this one guy's house, who did not like me at all. When that party started breaking up, Jake told me this bullshit story about how they didn't have enough room at his house for me to go. I didn't really make a big deal about it,

Some guy who straggled and was kind of sitting outside in a lawn chair basically struck up a conversation with me slightly before Jake came out to talk to me about how "there was no space for me at his house." As dusk turned to night Guy and I talked a bit about our lives. In retrospect this guy was probably very high and very much in need for someone to talk to, which made him way more candid than a young guy usually is to some random dude.

Guy told me that he was a struggling heroin addict. He had been dealing with this dramatic relationship with a girl that he was very much in love with, but also using with. Guy told me about how he had a period in his life where he felt very strong, how yoga had made him very muscular and fit, and how much he loved his girlfriend and tried to have a life with her. Guy was also very fascinated by Japanese culture (I think he mentioned doing martial arts), and he wanted to move there someday.

But his heroin addiction was destroying him, both physically and emotionally, and he wanted to get out of it but couldn't figure how. When we talked, I realized that Guy was the cute senior guy I remembered crushing on whenever I saw him around the school....he looked a bit different...still beautiful, but his face had become slightly bloated, he was stockier as opposed to rail thin, his hair was much shorter and spiky instead of curling around his ears, and his skin was patchy. Again, this was just a guy I thought had been pretty cute...not any guy I spent more than two seconds thinking about after I saw him walking around the hallways, so it took me awhile to place him.

I just listened to Guy talk about his problems, and I shared some of my own. Then Guy listened as Jake went on his b.s. speech to me about not having room at his house. After Jake left, Guy told me, "You know that Jake just doesn't want you there because he doesn't like you, right?" I gave him a "No, duh" face and then he continued telling me about how Jake had told him what an annoying, douchey guy I was.

Then Guy said, "But after talking to you...the guy that Jake described, and the guy that I'm talking to right now...you're nothing like that. And whatever beef Jake is having with you, it's not on you. You're not the bad guy here. There is nothing wrong with you."

This guy, who was all of about 22 or 23 years old and struggling with some VERY serious demons, took the time out to tell me that he thought I was a quality person, after someone had just Mean-Guyed the hell out of me.

The conversation soon broke up and we went our separate ways. I don't remember ever seeing him again...I didn't really hang out that much with that crowd going into that school year because I made a good friend that I hung out with a lot more, and hipsters were not his thing, and Jake continued being adamant about how much he didn't want me around so I stopped getting invited to the parties they threw. Which was fine by me because I had made friends I fit in better with by then.

I hope Guy's in a good place. At 21, I thought it was just cool that this guy that I had randomly run into this guy from high school that I had never interacted with before. I had appreciated him thinking that he thought I was cool, as stoned as he was. At 29, and from the perspective of losing a very good friend to a heroin dose, I just hope that Guy found whatever inner peace he was looking for, and he's just another happy 30-ish year old guy...maybe in Japan with a loving wife doing yoga all the time.

Guy was just as beautiful on the inside as I thought he was on the outside. He deserves to be living a good life, and I hope he is.

As a post-script, Jake came up to me in a bar about five years later to say hi. I was shocked, but then asked him about his life and talked about mine. Then Jake said to me, "Dude, I really just came up to say hi." Then walked away. I thought to myself, "Thank you for reminding me why I hated you so much back then, Jake!"