NoboI wish I did dishes as soon as I was done with them. If I have a cup of coffee, I 'should' wash the cup and the coffeepot immediately after I'm done. Right?
Ah, no.
That seems so inefficient to me. And what about wasting water? Running water to clean one cup?
I got my first apartment when I started law school. Until then, I lived in dorms or with my clan. I owned four plates, four bowls, a set of flatware for 8 that my dad bought at Maxwell Street (a flea market in Chicago that is now a very pale version of the very cool thing it used to be), one serrated knife that I got at a grocery store when I spent $30 one week in 1975. I still have that knife, too. For many years, it was my only sharp knife. I still use the flatware my dad bought that year. A friend from college, Mike N. came to visit me once. I had visited another college friend in Colorado and Mike impulsively decided to ride back to the Midwest with me, see a bunch of old friends. A free ride, why not?
On the road we talked about everything and nothing. Mike is gay but this was 1977, he was not yet out to me and I was a little clueless about homosexuality. On that trip, I had stayed with Mike in Denver a few days. He had a female housemate I never met, she was out of town when I was there. This female friend, Mike told me, was traveling with a rich businessman who did not want to date her but he paid her to accompany him on some business trips posing as his girlfriend. He paid her living expenses, paid her rent and gave her living expenses. Basically, this female friend, Mike said, was a paid companion to a rich businessman who did not have sex with her. And Mike was living in the house, freeloading off the female friend's freeloading. It was her job, Mike explained to me. And, Mike also carefully explained, since Mike and this woman did not have a a sexual relationship, the rich business guy didn't care if Mike was around. In fact, Mike said, they were all friends. But Mike did not have sex with the female, the female did not have sex with the rich businessman.
I was so naive. I don't remember asking if that young woman had sex with anyone or if Mike had sex with anyone. What I mostly remember is Mike kept asking me, over and over, across Nebraska, then Iowa, then Minnesota. .. what reason would that rich business guy have to hire a female to be his date if they weren't having sex? Why didn't the guy just get a girlfriend? or hire a professional escort?
Mike must have been lying about something to me. Or, if not lying, dong something way weird.
I think he was trying to see how clueless I was about homosexuality. I think I was supposed to guess that the rich business guy was gay, using Mike's female housemate as a beard. Maybe I did make that guess.
Looking back, I think Mike was struggling to come out to me. If I had said the right thing when he kept pounding me about the weirdness of his female housemate's relationship .. . . Mike also said that this rich guy was thinking of moving to CA, and financing the female and Mike to move there. And not long after, Mike did move to CA. Then he became a Unitarian minister and, many years later, he came out to me in a letter. An old fashioned letter, the kind with ink and paper, longhand.
He wrote to tell me he had graduated from ministerial school, ordained and had accepted a job in Kansas, which is where his parents lived. Mike had not grown up in Kansas, but his folks had and they had returned to Kansas while Mike was in college, which meant Mike ahd to leave our college for a cheaper state school in Kansas.
I must have seemed to blindly naive to Mike. He and I got drunk together a few times when we were freshmen. Once, drunk, he asked me why I never came onto him for sex as I had with a friend of his. I had a crush on his friend and roommate Dan. I had no idea, when Mike asked me, why I felt like a buddy with him and felt sexually attracted to Dan, who was totally not interested in me. I guess one night, when very drunk, I had made a fool of myself with Dan, asking him to have sex with me, noisily and shamelessly. Guys do that all the time and they aren't fools. Whatever.
Years later, when he wrote to tell me he was not a full fledged Unitarian minister, and was leaving CA to take a job with a church in Kansas -- gosh, who would go to Kansas? and what gay educated minister would do so of his own free will? someone with a good family? -- Mike wrote about moving to kansas and then he wrote that his heart was breaking because his dear friend, his best friend in the whole world that he had been living with for the few years of ministerial school, Josie, would not leave CA to be with him. Like I said, he wrote in longhand. Then he crossed out Josie and wrote Jose, with the accent on the 'e'. I don't know how to write the accents to make Spanish look right.
That's how Mike came out to me. That was the last time I heard from him. I google him once in awhile. I'd love to be in touch, see if he is happy. I really loved him. I still do.
I wish I had asked him why he was never attracted to sex with me.
He asked me, very drunk, "What would you say if I told you I am very horny and want to have sex with you?' and I said "I think I would tell you to walk it off." And he was hurt. But I was a virgin, we were so not in love. We were best friends. He was a best friend. He was my first guy best friend.
Mike had curly blonde hair, a screechy voice, a shrill laugh. and he was dramatic. He talked me into doing some crazy things. Nothing arrest-worthy.
Once, Mike, Kenny T, a black guy and I carried all the desk-chairs in the unlocked classrooms in main hall in the stairs blocking the inside of the entrances to Main Hall. We exited through the basement. It took us all night. It was a ton of work. Classes had to be cancelled because no one could get in, except through the basement fire exit. And all the furniture was stacked in the stairwells blocking all the main level doors. The desks were the kind with half-desktops attached, so you could put a notebook on the desktop and write. The desks were old, metal framed, lasted a lifetime. They weighed a ton. It took janitorial staff a whole day to put them all back. The word was that the authorities thought quite a lot of students had been involved in the stunt. There was much debate about whether it was vandalism. Nothing was damaged. We thought it was a classic college prank. I don't remember why Mike wanted us to do it. I went along because it was fun, imagining professors coming to class and being unable to enter. We didn't think it through. It didn't take all that long to drag all those chairs down and we thought the janitors were being lazy cause it took so long to help.
We never told anyone it was us because it was never made clear if the activity was considered a crime.
Why did we do it? It doesn't sound like fun, does it? It wasn't that much fun doing it but it was fun seeing college administrators and professors trying to understand it. We never wrote a note to explain our behavior. We thought it was self-evident: old fashioned college prank, but it seemed to befuddle many.
Maybe -- and this might be manufactured -- maybe Mike or Kenny had a big test that day.
And now I am wondering if maybe Mike and Kenny were gay.
I also loved Kenny.
I'm lonely tonight, longing for old friends. Do people who were my friends for two years in the early seventies count as friends tonight?
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