Ambivalence

It's not that I'm unaware of world events, and tend to react with a hell-in-a-hand-basket attitude even though I know full well that history sets a precedent for kicking and screaming into our future; only the names and technology change; and, the hair on my legs is nearly worn away.

Welcome to that club, anyway.

There is a fervor growing. Forty years out of secondary school and folks are getting antsy for a reunion. To get alums wound up, someone has started a list of all those who have died in that span, including the younger and older. I could add a few, but I won't, for that will just encourage others whom I either don't care about or remember to get chummy, forgetting that they'd rather forget as well.

My lord, I just saw a lot of them ten years ago, still using nicknames from way back when. A vestige, I suppose, for I could only recognize a few and was told likewise. I was gracious until my third scotch, which neatly coincided with a trip to the john where I was asked if I was a homosexual. As arthritic as my hands were from hand weeding and picking acres on my hands and knees, and taking this as an antagonism to put me in my place, I offered not to assume that familiar position on the farm but to take the discussion to another level. (One of my best friends in high school, also in attendance, is gay. Another guy who I wrestled to see who got the appropriate weight slot, instead of moving up, was gay. My best friend in college was gay. The wrestler, dead from a heart attack. My college friend, dead as well, and surely took some folks with him.) Ah, but he is a man of God, and my memory is long when it comes to proselytizers who come skinny dipping with the lot of us, all unattached save he with his girlfriend in tow, and stayed longer at the floating dock than everyone else. All fine and good, except for the chastising we received from him the next day at school. All sinners, we were.

No, he was asking only because it had come up in conversation the night before, meaning that known for my liberal politics back then, there was only one recourse for my sexual preference. That and I had never done the deed with any in attendance, a few former beauties among them. There is something to be said for dating gals from private schools.

I might go if they promise to have karaoke (a word that is not in my Webster's College Edition from back then). I mention this partly because for the rest of the evening I pretended to be gay.  Imagine the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four" with a heavy lisp. And, let's say an equally drunk classmate's husband was also at the party.

But I wasn't fooling anybody. Her last words: I'll never see you again.

My impressions of that night are not all what I care to remember, spending the majority of the time talking with her, for I recall another scene.

I don't recall his name but see his face plain as day because he got in mine. The whys and wherefores I can't remember but he offered to take a tussle. I declined in a manner that should have gotten me clocked right then and there. Anyway, for some reason he had brought his niece along, somewhat younger, indeed, and who, it seemed, took a fancy to me. That might have been it, the reason, you know, for his challenge. Maybe. Maybe he was sitting right there when this exchange took place:

She: Do you think my uncle will get mad at me for flirting with you all night?

Me: Why? Are you coming back to my motel room so we can fuck?

She feigned a negative reaction. All this long before I took up poker. Talk is cheap.

Some might call me a mean drunk. My gay friend who is still alive did. My bright smile of anger. In an attempt to verify this, I down a few shots on ice. The problem is that I do this in solitude. I note that my hands and arms take on a red color not seen before in the bathroom light. I become both worried and enthralled, repulsed and eventually inspired. The romance of decaying leaves relies on their fresh-fallen color or the stain left by tannins. The brown in between, not so much.