In about six hours I have to be back at work. Right now I am feeling an awful lot like the way I feel when it comes time to do something which I have promised I will do. The longer I wait, the less likely it becomes that the promised thing will happen. So here's the quick and dirty conclusion to my nostalgia over Peter:
I think the bike on the roof stunt got Peter fired, but because he was close friends with many of the people I worked with—and who knows, maybe because he actually liked me—he and I continued to cross paths, a lot. Peter was a sailor in the deepest parts of his heart. He shared with me his plan to live on a boat, not on a houseboat like a shoebox on the water, but on a sleek, big seaworthy sailboat. As he shared this with me, late in our acquaintance, I was aware that it was his own mythic plan, expressive of worlds more meaning than the mere details contained. This was Peter's vision for his place in the world, detached from all that would have him lead a conventional life, yet plunging bow-long into a more dynamic, more threatening, more invigorating life. He shared with me his personal mythology for engaging life more fully than he had ever been taught, and I believe he achieved it. He was an absolutely capable person around whom I always felt secure; there was no challenge he could not meet, no goodness could occur that would not glint more brightly off his soul than any other, and there was no visible end that I could see to the mirthful kindness in his eyes. Peter Wiedenman made a place just for me in his myth of joyous life; he told me that I would have a place with him on his sailboat when he got it, and he told me that he had intended to make no such place for anyone, until he met me.
Such precious gifts I walked away from, pretending I did not recognize their value. The absolute, non-erotic, spiritual beauty of generous souls like Peter has more than once scared the shit right out of me. But worse, it scared me on a level too deep for me to know, for long before I met Peter I had chosen not to feel such depths, and to function in a superficial safe zone, unmoved by deep currents. And even as he was loving me in the way he did, I was aware enough of its significance to carefully keep my distance from it, and to maintain the scrupulous pretense that I didn't even know it was there.
Peter's father had a heart attack in California one day in that summer of 1988, and Peter got on a plane, not knowing if the man would be dead by the time Peter arrived. He came back weeks later oh so subtly changed, with just a twinge of skepticism, or maybe a slight little hint of fear. His father survived, but I think in the ordeal Peter realized that certain relationships will never be what they could have been, and certain people will never reach that mythic place he has prepared, even when it becomes real. I think Peter knew when he returned that some men will forever be victims, no matter how much he loves them.
Sail on, sweet Peter, over whichever shining sea you have chosen, while here I publish another whiney post, and get...
More coffee.