FOR TACO Bell guy, wherever you are.
Though you may not recognize me, you have changed my life. I remember the first and only time I saw you. It was November 2012. It was rainy and cold, and when I entered your place of employment, the heat from the kitchens and the aroma of spicy ground beef immediately warmed me.
And there you were, standing behind the register, head tilted down. Your shaggy dark hair hung in front of your eyes, and it wasn’t until I thanked you after placing my order that you looked up. Your eyes, your beautiful light blue eyes, were accented with a thick line of black eyeliner. The shock of this, the incongruity, took me aback. You were such a shy, quiet-seeming boy. But the eyeliner indicated that there was maybe something more.
When you handed me my receipt, I was again shocked. On your arm, barely visible under the sleeves of your Taco Bell uniform shirt, was a patchwork of scars from wrist to elbow where they disappeared under your sleeve. Burn scars. Scars from the skin graft that had been done. My heart wrenched for the pain you must have suffered. My mind started to sort through ideas of how you were burned. What happened? Morbid, perhaps, but I couldn’t rest until the full story was revealed.
I sat at an incredibly uncomfortable table in the restaurant dining room, my mind racing with plots and theories. In that feverish bout of brainstorming, Graham Parker was born.
In the end, Graham transformed beyond his original conception. He was not the quiet, withdrawn boy who hid from the world. He turned into a gregarious eyeliner-wearing soccer phenom from St. Louis who would change the course of one Connor Fitzpatrick’s life.
And thus, from our brief meeting on a cold November night, Guyliner was born. So thank you, wherever you are. May life treat you right.