It's the first day of the last month of the second millennium. Ooo.
I get cranky around the holidays every year--this millennium has been no exception. I wonder if I behaved like an adult in centuries past? Did I acknowledge the importance without above the terror within? Is this whining?
In some lifetimes; at least once; and yes.
I have to go to have blood drawn today. Probably contributes to my crankiness. It is very cold out, but clear, with none of the snow they predicted. Riding my bike to the hospital won't be unpleasant, and the process of having blood drawn is not repugnant, just tedious. But somewhere within these chores is the kernal of my rage.
I have to go. I have a headcold besides, sneezing violently all over the place. Later...
That's my desktop image. That was our world at about 9:00 AM today. I especially like the way the clouds up over the North Atlantic are imitating the curl of the Cape--five times as big. We can easily endure our puniness when we can appreciate the whimsical majesty of this wet stone from the perspective of space.
Perspective. I wanted to write about Number3, the music teacher, who I don't want to go out with again. I didn't want to say that. I don't know what good denying it did me...
But I got all distracted (or, more accurately, I distracted myself) with all this links and images stuff; HTML tags, page formatting, floating images, blah, blah, blah. All in service to this idea of 'perspective.'
OK, so Number3 was right; I don't want to go out with him again, and in general, I don't know what I want. Maybe I was pretending I did just so he wouldn't be right. (Sounds like some of the LTR's I've seen, and after only one date! ..maybe that's progress.) In my last message, I told him I wanted to go out on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. That would be today.
I did go out, but alone, on the way home from my lab appointment. Had a wonderful garlic-crusted tuna steak, in a cherry pepper sauce with shrimp. And a glass of white wine.
I came home for coffee and ice cream. I came home to write. And I came home to get perspective. Not going out with Number3 is not all that big a deal, even though I promised so assuredly that I would. Not so big a deal in the full scheme of things.
Only 19, he was already starting to seem old. Like in the Leo Sayer song, he was just a boy giving it all away. "Thank you so much," he said. "I'll really stop using this time, I really will." He was on the street, didn't know anybody in Worcester, hell, he didn't even know me. But I knew him.
"Bobby, it's OK," I said, but he didn't get it.
"No!" he fairly yelled. "No, I will, I mean it. I'll go to more meetings, lots more. And I'll stay away from those, ..those, ..people in Boston." His reference to his using friends was fraught with a depth of conflict I will never know. "Man, you got no idea what I been through.." He turned away from me, shaking his head and took a drag on his cigarette. It sounded like a little moan when he exhaled. "I can't keep going like this." His voice was little, and weak; no yelling now. Turning to face me, he said in a tortured whisper, "I can't give you anything, I can't even take care of myself..." His eyes were wet.
"It's OK. Whether you stay clean or not, or even IF you get clean, it's OK either way." He seemed to hear me now. "It's OK, Bobby, no matter what."
"For real?"
"Yes. For real."
He was small and beautiful. Yeah, you're probably right, I am just a lonely old fag. I was then, too. And this would be just another story about a gay man with a house and a pretty boy with a need, except.. it was him. And it was me.
He took a shower while I made a huge pile of spaghetti. He needed both, bad. He came into the kitchen in my sweatshirt and my shorts, both way too big. He seemed like Marilyn Monroe in a bathrobe, only male. He had straight light brown hair, hadn't been cut in a month, big blue eyes and pouty red lips. I had a problem.
During his second plate, I said, "I have to set some ground rules." He looked up at me, like, uh-oh, here it comes. "I'm gay," I said. He raised one eyebrow skeptically, then--I saw it happen--he shrank, he shut-out everything, and zeroed-in all his attention on playing with the food. He had probably been similarly beseiged before, half dressed in some other lonely fag's kitchen, just before bedtime. Then, I said, "But under no circumstances are you and I going to have sex." Abruptly he looked up from the plate, surprised, with about twenty strands of spaghetti hanging from his mouth.
I wish he had balked. I wish he had complained, "Why not?" I wish he had been honest that night, and told me he wanted to sleep with me. He was just as needy as me only he had the additional burden of being young and cute. I forget the cute ones are human, just like me. And Bobby had so many needs, it was easy to overlook his most tender need.
He said, "Whatever," and he finished eating.
The first night he slept alone, I worked third shift that night. And I borrowed a cot for him before our second night. He tolerated this facade for almost a whole week. Then he got me, in the kitchen. We ended up in bed, and stayed there for two months. Except for work and other essentials, we never forfeited the others embrace. I returned the cot. It took me almost a month to beleive he wanted me, and was not trying to just get something else by having sex. I didn't believe Bobby loved me. Shit, I didn't know if he even knew what love was--especially since it involved me. Until he cried.
"What's the matter?" At first I thought I had hurt him, but then I could see it wasn't that kind of pain. We were in the middle of making love. Every time before that moment was just 'having sex.' I never really made love, until Bobby cried.
He couldn't answer me right away. He was crying hard. Finally, "Make it stay," he pleaded.
"What? Make what stay?" I was baffled.
"This. You and me, what we got. I always lose everything that's important. I don't want to lose this, ever. I don't want to lose you. I love you, Joey."
That did something to me. Maybe it doesn't come across in the telling, maybe you would've had to be there. It only comes across in the feeling. He was as sincere as any human has ever been. He was as serious as a heart attack. You ever had one? That crushing pain like a truck on your chest, like a vise on your throat, like so much pain trying to get out that your rib-cage is going to explode. It gets your attention, and focuses your whole existence; it gets its message through.
I never loved anyone before or since like I loved Bobby. I don't say I can't in the future, but I haven't found him yet.
Bobby stayed clean for quite a while, about nine months. But it's when he lost a crappy job that things fell apart for him. I kept telling him he was better off, just get a new job. But I guess he was right; he couldn't keep from losing everything that was important to him.
When he was 22, Bobby died, on the floor of a men's room in a bus station in Boston, with a needle in his arm. I cry. Still, I cry; make it stay. Godammit Joey, make it stay.
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