He had been acting strangely for oh, the last six months or so, but I never thought much of it. He was the type of friend who was always doing everything -- he held two jobs, was a full time student double majoring in pre-med and Russian, he was in a fraternity house and was also involved with Air Force R.O.T.C. And he still managed to find time to go out on the weekends and flirt with every girl he met. He even hit on me three and a half years ago, while we were still mere acquaintances and not the closest of friends.
But he had been acting strangely, not calling me as much, not visiting or going out. After about a month or two of this he came over one night at about midnight and started complaining to me about the stress in his life. Then he started to chain smoke, the man who never smoked before, the man who was studying to go to med school, the man who wanted to be in tip-top shape for the Air Force. It made no sense. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he was still complaining to me, he was still wide awake, and he still looked like he needed something to hit.
I had told him before that he did too much with his life and that one day it would all catch up with him. I figured that’s what was happening now.
Every time I saw him after that he was the same way -- irritable, chain smoking, telling me about how he’s not sleeping a lot and how he’s failing his classes. His girlfriend was studying in Russia for the semester. He flirted some without her around, but he didn’t cheat on her. But he didn’t miss her.
Recently a group of black guys beat him up on the street one night. They picked him out of a crowd and punched him in the face, the doctors figured the assailant had something in his hand, brass knuckles, a roll of quarters, for he made a clean break in his jaw. He had his mouth wired shut for six weeks. I thought maybe this was part of the reason he was on edge, sucking food through a straw for over a month has to be a pain in the ass. But his behavior changed before the accident. And he still chain smoked through the wires in his mouth.
I figured that it must be because of his family that he was the way he was. His father was a high ranking official in the Air Force, they travelled around constantly, his father was always succeeding, always being the stern perfectionist. He wasn’t like that. He wasn’t stern. He was sweet, and fun.
And now look, He’s probably giving himself ulcers, if not lung cancer.
So I finally got back into town and I decided that I had to get this all figured out. The latest I heard was that he was getting back to religion and thinking of talking to his pastor for advice on some of his problems. It sounded like a cop-out to me, I mean, religion wouldn’t give him the answers he needed but the answers they wanted him to have, so I was thinking that if he really needed help he should go talk to a counselor. He gets counseling services free through the student clinic. Oh, shit, I don’t even really know what’s wrong with him, I’ve got to try to talk to him, I hope he opens up to me, we’ve been friends for too long.
So I asked him to stop by and he came over to my place and he knew very well that I wanted the truth out of him. What was the stress from? Why did he just break up with his girlfriend less than a week after they were looking at engagement rings, why is he chain smoking, is the Air Force doing this to him, does he really need the money from his two jobs?
So he comes in, sits down on the couch next to me, and tells me that he’s been coming to terms with the fact that he thinks he’s gay. Or at least bi, he’s not sure, everything’s so confusing. What would the fraternity house say? What would the Air Force say, other than good-bye, and most importantly, what would his parents say? What would the world say?
Okay, so I was shocked, but this wasn’t the time to show it. I gave him a hug, let him talk for a while, told him I was there for him. I suggested thinking about counseling. Then we went to a sub shop and had lunch, tried to get our minds off these things.
And we’re at the counter of this sub shop and we’re making cracks about a six inch versus a twelve inch sub. He told me I was ordering the six inch because I never had him. Fuck, he’s doing it again, being his same old self, flirting with women that are friends, and I can take it in good fun and all, but this just seems a little too strange. So then I start thinking, okay, does he make these kinds of cracks to other men? Is he attracted to everything that walks down the god damn street?
So then we’re eating our subs and we’re sharing the same drink and I start thinking, should I be doing this? Is this safe?, and I still take another drink and try not to think about it. And then he says, “My problem is that I’m horny all the time.” Then he tells me about his boyfriend Brandon and from then on nothing seemed real anymore. I had to ask if the gold necklace he was wearing was Brandon’s, it’s not his style to wear necklaces. It was. He was even borrowing the guy’s car.
So I tell him to call me, and I tell him I’ll help him look for a counselor if it will help him deal with the issue, and I tell him he can talk to me anytime. And I get out of Brandon’s car and walk back to my place.
And then I just start thinking. This is the man who hit on me at a rock concert we went to three years ago by running his tongue up and down my face. This was the man that I visited on the east coast, we had a romantic dinner in a private room in the Air Force dining hall. We toured Salem, Massachusetts and took pictures posing in the witch racks they have on the sidewalks for tourists. We shopped in Maine and bought glassware and Christmas ornaments together. We went to fraternity dances, I was his date, hey, we even went to a military ball together. This is the man who would sit with me in my window sill, feet hanging out the second story, drinking fuzzy navels with me and singing rap songs. This is the man who was my roommate for a few months, we’d go to the local fitness center together and exercise, he’d be on the bicycles, I’d be on the rowing machine.
This was the man who sat with me one night in my apartment, like we were two kids in high school, and we wrote lists of all the people we made out with. His list of women was relatively short, but I didn’t think much of it. He told me at the sub shop that his list of men was longer than mine.
This was the man I went to happy hours with every Friday afternoon. He carried me home once because I didn’t eat that day and the beer went straight to my head. He called me spaghetti legs from then on because I lost all muscle control in the lower half of my body and couldn’t walk. He carried me home and put me to bed.
Another day at another happy hour when we were both depressed because we thought we’d never find someone to marry he told me that if we were both single when we were forty, we’d get married. It was our little joke from then on to say that we were engaged.
I had a dream a couple of weeks before he told me this that he told me he had AIDS from a blood transfusion. The news tore me apart, my close friend, this couldn’t be happening to you, I just can’t believe it, it must be a mistake, anyone but you. I told him I’d be there for him, I wasn’t afraid to hug him, I wasn’t afraid to kiss him. And in the dream I wanted to marry him then and there, just so he didn’t die alone.
Previously Published in Art/Life Limited Editions, Opossum Holler Tarot, http://www.poetrypoem.com/poetrybooks, Children Churches and Daddies volume 46, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, the chapbook Dysfunctional Family Greeting Cards, the chapbook Someone Else, Anyone Else, the 1994 chapbook The Written Word, Children Churches and Daddies ezine collection v7, and in the book Hope Chest in the Attic.
