I haven't been here in a while. At first I thought it had been close to twenty years but then I remembered a conference that brought me to this island when it was wet and cold. January is not the best time to end up out here in the land of sky and sea but the presenters were excellent and the fellowship was even better.
But it is the earlier trips that I find myself casting back for. I am startled by glimpses of times gone by with some memories so clear and vivid it's as if I am reliving them in real time. It is the older ones that I want to recall, but they skirt around the edges, teasing me with how close they seem
In junior high and high school I had a best friend. I had many friends, some who are still blessedly in my life today, but he, whom I'll call Steve, was my best friend. Those of you who knew me then will know him well, and those of you in my life who are recent, I wish that you could know him. I knew his every thought and he accepted my every quirk. We were together most all of the time; he was part of my family and I, part of his.
After high school Steve flew away. He landed here on this Island living very near the capital buildings that adorn the ocean front. From this place he would write me letters - poetic and descriptive. In one such letter he said he had something to tell me and that he would understand if I couldn't be friends with him any more. In this letter, which must have been so difficult for him to write, he told me that he was gay. The letter went on for pages after that, describing his struggle with coming to terms with is identity and thanking me for always being there for him.
To back up for just a moment I should say that the fact that he was gay was something that I had really always known. But because he was my best friend, my kindred spirit, it was my place to defend his heterosexuality. I was his date for weddings and graduations and when anyone asked about his "preference" I always stuck up for him saying that he was straight. That was what he needed from me at the time - for me to help to paint around the edges of his lie and to fill in the gaps to make it believable to those people in our lives.
Upon receipt of this letter some time after graduation I was so delighted for him that I hopped on a plane and flew out here to the coast. I needed for him to know for sure that who he had sex with had no bearing on our friendship whatsoever. We, he and I, were two and always would be.
Some of the memories of that time are vivid. There was a visit to the local gay bar - not the first I'd ever been in - where a lovely young Parisian girl tried to pick me up. I remember her vividly and recall telling her that I didn't swing that way but if I did, it would be her. I remember, of course, the great debacle of renting scooters to travel up the coast and how I completely forgot how to ride a bike and therefore couldn't for the life of me remember how to steer a two wheeled contraption. The guy who was renting to us told me that I was going too slow to turn so I revved up the engine and promptly ran into the yellow brick wall at the end of the lot. I saved the scooter but crucified myself flat up against the wall, leading with my chin. After checking to see that I wasn't hurt too badly Steve doubled over and laughed until his sides hurt, my only revenge was bleeding all over his jean jacket that he'd lent me for the trip.
There are other memories - those ghostly ones that only show up in my periphery vision. As I travelled around the Island on this trip I was reaching for them, willing them to come fully into sight. There was a friend named Larry, a red headed guy. We laughed and drank a lot and generally had fun, but there was some complication that I can't quite remember. Selective recall, perhaps? I don't know. I just know that I wouldn't know him if I met him again but may be, may be if he laughed....
As I sit with these memories, the clear ones and the vague, I wonder how Steve remembers them? I wonder if he knows how much I loved him and that I was trying to envelope him in acceptance and to reassure him that nothing had changed. He was still my forever friend. He was still, to me, the geeky guy I'd met in grade six with his small frame, bushy hair and thick rimmed glasses. He was still the guy I sang show tunes with at the top of my lungs, the one who made me fall in love with Janis Joplin and the one who wrote me poetry filled with emotion. He was then, and always will be, the guy who in later years painted a book of my life, vignettes from our past put to paper in shimmering pastel images.
Melancholy, I suppose, is the word that sums up my trip down memory lane. He moved out to Calgary with us seven years ago, lived with us for a year and then I did something that offended him. I can't quite put my finger on what it was but I'm sure that it is true that I hurt him in some way. It was such a difficult time in my life, in my marriage and my career that I certainly didn't fight very hard at all to keep him. I just let him go, always thinking that because he is my forever friend that he would make his way back to me.
I'm still waiting. I wish him well, but I wish that he was here.
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