I made a de facto promise not long ago to explain a reference I made in a post about my ex-fiancé.  My newest fan read my description of having found a picture of a significantly larger version of my former betrothed and questioned what this was all about  when she had read my blog and happened to know that “that is not how you swing dude.”

It is true, that is not how I swing.  But coming to that realization was a long and difficult journey, one I’d say, truthfully, I’m still in the middle of, but there was a time, when I was younger, that I thought I swung that way… Or at least I could swing that way, if I could  just find the right girl. Yes, this post is probably just for that one new reader, but if the rest of you find something new from this, so  much the better.

I was raised in a very conservative, Republican, Christian family, bordering on Fundamentalist in thinking.  It never felt like the right fit to me and I never really thought of myself as conservative or fundamentalist, but I didn’t know any better than to be Republican and Christian.  (Don’t get me wrong, I’m still Christian and am not ashamed to say so, but I see things differently now than I did then.)

Growing up, I had it firmly instilled in me that homosexuality was a thing that is unnatural and without question results in the eternal damnation of the individual who lives his life as a homosexual.  I really didn’t know any better at the time, than to believe these  things I was being taught and so even though I knew deep down that something was wrong with those beliefs, it never occurred to me that it was because I was one of those people.

I was very unpopular in school and as a result, pretty much of a homebody so it was easy to explain away my lack of romantic  entanglements.  I had one “girlfriend” in middle school, Jennifer, and, in truth, we were really only friends, but we were “going together” as they said back then.  I had gotten the idea in my head, because of my mother’s highly verbal scoffing at any other notion, that boys and girls shouldn’t kiss until they were serious with each other, that they should be sure of who they are and what  they want before taking that step.

After a few months, Jennifer broke up with me and she said it was because I wouldn’t kiss her.  Interestingly, the idea to plead with her to stay together and to offer her a kiss never crossed my mind.

I had one girlfriend in high school, Cindy.  It lasted about three months and then she dumped me to get back together with her  ex-boyfriend (the one who had dumped her right before I came around to pick up the pieces.)  I kissed her plenty.  I even enjoyed it, but mostly just relished the idea that I was somewhat normal, because I could get a girlfriend.  I was disappointed when she broke up with me but not devastated.

I had a friend named Bernie, who I was close to.  Bernie was a year younger than I, and we were in choir together.  We hung out a lot and she would ride with me to all the choir functions.  We went out on the week-ends a lot, but never as a date.  We were very  affectionate and flirtatious with each other but it was all in jest and we both knew it.  We had a third wheel friend, Amy, who spent time with us sometimes, but she was very sheltered (and if I was calling her sheltered, she was sheltered) and she found our behavior odd.  She would get upset and looking back I think it was jealousy.  The three of us sometimes hung out at her house and her parents  used to comment, that if Bernie and I weren’t dating, we probably should be because we acted like it already.  There were many  people who commented similarly about us and eventually, we started to listen.  We decided, collectively, that maybe they were right and we should start dating.  The only thing that changed was that we said, “We’re dating” (because we already went out all the time)  and we kissed.  Kissing Bernie didn’t feel right to me at all, and from the moment we kissed the first time, I avoided contact with her as much as possible.  It took less than a week for her to ask me why I was avoiding her and all I could say was I thought we’d made a  mistake and should just be friends.  She said fine, but I don’t think she was really OK.  She self destructed after that.  I’m not saying it was my fault she did, she had a lot of family and emotional problems, but regardless, that’s the night it started.

I went on one other date the entirety of my high school career.

However, while I was attending my senior year of high school, I was also working at the local grocery store, and I’m not kidding when I say local, it was built in the field that used to be my back yard!  Working there, I met and befriended someone who was two years older than I, married with a son, and worked in the cash office of the store.  Her name was Kerri (pronounced Kear-ree) and we  became friends fairly quickly.  Kerri offered to give me a ride to the company picnic once when she asked me if I was attending and I  told her probably not because I didn’t have transportation.  I met her husband and son that day and it was the beginning of our more-than-just-acquaintances friendship.

Not long after that, Kerri and her husband separated and we began spending more time together.  We talked about my plans for after graduation.  I didn’t plan on attending college right away, and then at the last minute at the end of the summer, I changed my mind  and decided to go after all.  Kerri was disappointed but encouraging.  She told me to keep in touch and we exchanged a couple of  letters.  In one of her letters she told me that she’d decided to get back together with her husband and give their marriage another  try.  I was happy for her and encouraged her to make it work.

The second to last day of finals week, my first semester, I apparently misread the turn signals and break lights on the back of a Ford  F-150 and ran my sister’s Geo Metro into the back left corner of the truck.  The truck was unscathed and the car was severely damaged.  I wasn’t hurt, but my father had only provided liability insurance on the car and the cost of repairs came out my pocket.   College was over for the time being (turned out to be a lot longer), and I went back to work at the grocery store in my back yard to  pay for the repairs.

Wouldn’t you know it, not long after I arrived back home and announced that I was staying, Kerri informed me that she and her  husband were splitting up again and that it was for good this time.  I felt badly for her and offered condolences.  We resumed our  friendship and spent quite a lot of time together.

One night as we were driving around Tulsa in the dark, she asked me how I felt about her.  I didn’t understand what she was asking  me; obviously, I liked her and enjoyed being her friend.  She asked me if that was all because, she said, she had stronger feelings for  me.  I can’t honestly say what the process in my mind was.  I remember telling her I’d never given it any thought because she was  married and that made her off limits but that if I thought about it, then yes, I supposed I had stronger feelings for her.  I told her that  if she weren’t married, or when her divorce was final, we could talk about dating.

We did start dating.  We spent every possible minute together.  We were in love (or at least we believed we were) and we were very  affectionate.  We kissed often, we made out frequently and being a 19 year old male, my body responded to the affection.  I wanted to make love with her and she refused, stating that she believed that due to premarital sex (and the unplanned pregnancy that resulted) God had punished her and her first husband and that was why their relationship didn’t last and she didn’t want that to happen to us.  But it was OK, because I’d finally met the right girl and everything was going to be great! I can’t help but think if she had agreed to have sex with me, I’d have figured myself out a whole lot sooner.

Kerri and I dated for almost a year.  While I never got down on one knee, we had discussed and long since agreed that we were going to get married the following year.

I was 19 years old.  I was naïve.  I believed we could make a go of it, even though I didn’t own a car, she had a son and between the  two of us we had three jobs.  I still lived with my mother and things were really bad between us.  My father offered to let me stay with him, and drive one of his cars until I saved enough money to buy my own.  The hitch was, he lived in Ohio and Kerri and I lived in Oklahoma.

We discussed the arrangement and agreed that it would be best for me to go, for six months, and then come back and we’d get  married.  I was gone for three weeks when she cheated on me with a random guy at a club.  Apparently, she is neither capable of  being alone, nor of being honest about her feelings.  Kerri has made an absolute disaster of her life and I can’t begin to express my  gratitude that I was not caught up in the middle of that storm.

Throughout my life I have had inclinations as to my true orientation.  It’s true that I always found guys to be attractive, but  convinced myself that I was just recognizing what makes a man attractive, not actually attracted to them.  As I’ve mentioned previously, I used to come home from school, when no one was home, and masturbate while looking at Undergear and International Male catalogs.  But I always told myself, I wasn’t gay.  I wasn’t turned on by the guys on the pages; I was turned on by the thought of being like them…  Yeah, right.

Every gay person has a process they have to go through.  A gay person who grew up the way I did, in a fundamentalist environment often takes longer.

First you must accept the idea of being gay and this is much harder than it might sound.  For me it took 30 years to stop lying to  myself and stop making lame excuses to myself for feeling the way I did.  After that I had to deal with my feelings and beliefs  regarding the apparent disparity between my faith and my sexuality.  It was difficult to do, in some ways I suppose I still am.  It’s hard when your personal beliefs are different from everyone you’ve known and respected as authority your entire life.  But ultimately, I realized that only I could decide what to believe.  I had to pray, and meditate and listen to my spirit and only then could I decide what I believed God was telling me.

Once you get over this hurdle, you have to actually accept, not just the idea of being gay, but that you actually are gay, and that it’s OK.  And then, if you’re really brave you start telling people.

Frankly, I don’t know what comes after that because I haven’t gotten past that point.

So, I could have answered the question with a simple, “I didn’t always know I was gay and yes I dated a girl.”  But really, it’s not a  simple question and it deserved a more complete answer… and now it’s got one.

Wow.  Who… What was that?  Hmmm.

OK.  Let’s talk turkey shall we?  It’s not really as bad as all that… Most days.

Most of my readers already know that I’ve struggled throughout my life with clinical depression.  It runs in the family.  It wasn’t formally diagnosed until  about seven years ago when I went to the Employee Assistance Program  office of my company for advice on how to deal with a co-worker with whom  I was in conflict.  I never did get the answer to my question.  The EAP person asked me why I was there, I told her, she proceeded to ask me a litany of  questions about things that had nothing to do with the problem and then  finished the session by saying, “Sounds to me like you’re depressed.  You should get some help with that.   Have a nice day.”  OK, she wasn’t quite that cavalier about it, but pretty close.

I was irritated by this, but not really surprised by what she had told me and with great trepidation, I did seek help, first from the Adult Psychiatry department of my health care provider, which was a joke and then from medication which was a stop-gap measure at best.  Even more to my dismay,  I sought out and found a therapist who operated on a “sliding scale” fee,  meaning the fee was based on my income and often, as in my case,  discounted from her regular fee.  My health insurance doesn’t cover this and  I am paying out of pocket for her services.  Its money well spent, but it’s a lot of money that could be well spent in many other ways.

About a year and half ago, I hit a slump and on the advice of my therapist I took a leave of absence from work and took part in an “Intensive Outpatient Program” for depression.  I was in this program, three days a week, for three weeks and I felt like it was a complete waste of time with the simple  exception  that it kept me from having to go to work.  Three weeks away from work and I was feeling a whole hell of a lot better.

Then I decided that five years on anti-depressants was more than enough and it was time to stop taking them.  I weaned myself from the pills very slowly to ensure there were no side effects or withdrawal type symptoms.  When it was done, I felt even better.  Actually, that’s not quite true.  Or it is true but  entirely too simplistic.  In a lot of ways I felt exactly the same.  I felt the same level of depression, same amount of fear about what happens next.  But at the same time, I felt good about having taken control of the situation, taking it  upon myself to manage my life and my symptoms.

For almost ten months, I’ve been “drug free” and it’s been going fairly well.  My job is still a trigger for me and often times I feel like crap while I’m at work and then snap out of it when I leave.  (My job, in a very real way, is killing me and I have to do something about it.)

This past week has been a real struggle for me.  Money is tight. I’ve taken on additional responsibilities. I’ve made some positive steps, but I’ve also had  to make some difficult decisions. And yes, for a couple of days, I felt as if the darkness might win out.  The interesting thing is I immediately started to feel better after I wrote my last post.

 

Through all this, I have learned something new.  It seems likely that the  depression may never fully subside, though I pray with every fiber of my being that it will.  What I’ve learned is that “happiness” is sometimes a conscious decision, one that I’m sometimes not strong enough to make.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not talking about being artificial or dishonest.  I’m not talking about pretending to be, and to feel, something that I’m not.  I know people like that – I work with people like that – and I hate them.  No, I’m talking about making conscious choices about how I’m going to allow what I feel to affect me.

I wish, with all my being that the darkness would turn to light, that the beast would take his last breath.  I wish that I had the strength to take that plunge  into the “molten thoughts” below my narrow path.  There’s a lot there.  I know there is.  I suspect if I could just find a way to tread those waters, I’d  find a lot of healing.

 

I stared at that last sentence for a long time trying to figure out exactly what I was trying to say, how to phrase it.  And the thing that kept coming to mind  was, “If I could just find a way to safely tread those waters…”  I think that’s  really the point, though.  There is no safe way.  The only real answer is to dive in head first, to take the risk.  It will hurt.  I will get burned.  But hopefully, when it’s all over, I’ll be whole.

This process of healing is work.  It’s hard work!  I don’t mean to imply that I  have all the answers or that I know what to do, because I don’t.  I’m still too scared to take the leap.  And there’s a lot that gets in the way of it, but I suppose knowing what’s needed is a big step in the process.

 

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I’m OK.  Things are moving along.  Some days are worse then others and I have some big decisions to make and steps  to take, but I’ll survive.

 

I will live to post another day!

It is, of course, never a good thing, when a family member gets sick and needs to be cared for.  But sometimes something good can come from such a situation.  We’ve probably all seen a movie or two about a character returning home to care for a sickly parent and finally finding a way to heal a relationship or themselves.  I admit that perhaps watching some of these movies may have influenced my assumptions or expectations about what would happen when I went to Tulsa to care for my mother.  It’s true that I had an idea in my head about being there and having her being terribly ill and in need of care and therefore being completely dependent on me.  And it’s true that I imagined having a storied experience of healing with her.  And I got my healing, in a way very different from what I expected but no less valuable.

Other good resulted from this trip as well.  Due to the relationship with my mother, I hadn’t been back to Tulsa in five and a half years which means that the only chance I ever had to spend time with Heather, my dearest friend was when she came to California on her annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage out west to visit her Grandparents.  Since I was in Tulsa, to take care of my mother, I was afforded the opportunity to visit with Heather as well.

The first night we got together Heather, her fiancée, Joe, and I went to a local Tulsa eatery called Zio’s.  It’s the quaint little Italian restaurant on one of the main strips in town.  Zio’s has been in Tulsa for close to fifteen years and I used to eat their frequently before I moved away.  It was at Zio’s that I was introduced to a dish called Spaghetti Half & Half.  It’s incredibly simple being nothing more than a bowl of spaghetti pasta with both Marinara and Alfredo sauces poured side by side over the top.

This was always my favorite dish at Zio’s and I have craved it many times in the ensuing years.  (I’ve made it myself at home a couple times but it’s never the same.)  Imagine my horror, then, when we sat down at the restaurant and I opened the menu, only to find that it no longer includes “Spaghetti Half & Half.”  Fortunately, they have a “create your own” option now; select your pasta, select your sauce and if you want it, select your meat.  Let me just tell you, adding chicken to this dish does not improve it one bit.  Oh well.

After dinner, we went back to Heather’s house and watched a movie.  Joe had mentioned Borat and Heather mentioned that she’d only seen a little of it.  I had never seen it at all, and now that I have I wish I could still say that I haven’t.  That’s the problem with bad movies, you don’t know they’re bad until you’ve already seen them and try as you might, some things can not be unseen.

The next time I got to hang out with Heather, it was just the two of us.  Joe went camping, claiming he wanted a little “alone time” and then proceeded to text and e-mail Heather every half hour or so.  Heather showed me around her studio (She’s a massage therapist – something from which I’ve never benefited) and then we went to dinner at another restaurant in Tulsa called Cosmo.  It’s a cool little joint that reminded me quite a bit of some of the coffee shops and such that I hung out in when I was in college.  The menu was unique and the food was tasty.  After that we went back to Heather’s house and watched “Yes Man” (where I got my inspiration for my other blog).  Afterward we sat and talked for a couple hours.  It was so nice to sit and have a mature, rational conversation with someone who doesn’t always see things exactly the same way I do, but is interested in hearing my perspective anyway.

I really treasure these times with Heather.  They don’t happen nearly often enough.  I’m afraid now that she’s getting married they may happen even less frequently.

And then there’s this.  I wrote this post, also on my previous blog in January of this year.  When I think about it, my heart breaks just a little bit…

————————————————————————————————————–

It was my plan to write today about happiness.  How sometimes, happiness is a choice and one that can be very hard to make and how frustrating it is to have to make that choice over and over again.  That was my plan.

I just got some news that upset that plan and, of course, me.

I’ve written in the past about my dear friend, Heather.  I met Heather when I worked in retail 12 years ago.  I liked her and enjoyed our friendship but some things happened along the way that for a time we weren’t as close as we once had been.  When I moved to California, I assumed I’d never see her again, indeed, I never thought I’d speak to her gain.  I don’t think I realized then, that her grandparents live in the bay area and she has a long-standing tradition to come to the bay area to visit her grandparents the week of Thanksgiving and when the time came for her to come visit the first year I was here, she contacted me and invited me to come hang out.

I was really glad she did, and with the trappings of our previous work relationship, and with all the rumor and hushed conversations of others out of the way we had the opportunity to really grow in our friendship and our love for each other.

Earlier today, I logged on to Facebook (evil site that it is) and found that I had been “tagged” in a note by Heather.  I looked at it to find that it was one of those “25 random things about me” lists.  (Random thing about me #1:  I’ve been dreading being asked to complete one of those!)  As I read her list, I noticed that number 15 said this, “My mother and I have an amazing relationship, I die a little inside knowing I have less than 12 months to spend with her before she moves to the west coast.“

“Awesome” I thought, “Now maybe she’ll make more trips out here and I’ll get to spend more time with her.”

Heather told me years ago that her mother was planning to retire to the Bay Area so she could be close to her parents.  I always secretly hoped that Heather would move with them, or shortly after them, and we could be close again.  A few years ago Heather’s mother took a huge hit when the stock market faltered and she lost a significant amount of money.  Apparently, that’s when they decided to move west, but some place a little less expensive.  So today, I asked Heather about this:

Self:  So I didn’t realize your parents were going to move here so soon. Where are they going to live?

Heather:  In Portland, OR or Vancouver, WA.

Self:  Oh. I thought they were moving here.

Heather:  No.  And, my Grandparents are even moving up to Portland or Vancouver, too.  So this Thanksgiving will be the last time I head out that way

Self: Oh, no.

Heather: Yup.  So I’ll get to see you in Feb and in Nov and that’s that for awhile.

Self: Well, you’ve just totally bummed my day!

This is tragic!  My heart is absolutely breaking!  I don’t know what my life would have been like without her in it.  I don’t know if she had any real impact on my existence, other than to have been the one person I knew I could come out to and know there’d be no negative repercussions.  But I know that these brief, and few and far between, visits that we’ve shared over the last 11 years have meant the world to me, and they’ve been the life’s blood of our friendship.

I feel like our relationship is ending.  Is that silly?  I mean, in this day and age with Instant Messengers, and Facebook and iPhones with text messaging, is that silly?  The problem is, I’m doing what I always do.  I’m thinking about this a few steps ahead.  Yes, I’ll see her, however briefly, when she comes out to visit next month, and I’ll see her again very briefly in November.  The visits will be fun, but they’ll go much too fast, and there will be a cloud over them.  And in November, when she walks me to my car (if she walks me to my car) and hugs me and says good-bye.  It will be for the last time.

I haven’t been to Tulsa in five years.  My sister and her family have moved to New York.  I’ve lost touch with all of my other friends besides Heather.  I love my Mother, but I can’t stand to be around her for long.  Going back to Tulsa, really isn’t in the cards.

Ultimately, I’m only a very small part of Heather’s life and I don’t fit into the rest of it.  I’ve met her boyfriend twice, but I don’t know him, I’m not completely comfortable with him and I don’t think he’s completely comfortable with me.  I’ve never met his two children but I know they’re troublesome and I don’t really feel like I should be involved in that.  And despite the way I speak of Heather, we don’t really have the kind of connection where I would be welcome and convenient as a part of her every day life, however briefly.  Therefore, going to Tulsa, with the purpose of visiting her doesn’t seem likely.  And even if I did, I couldn’t get away with being there and not seeing/visiting/staying with my mother.

So, I’m doing what I always do.  I’m thinking about this a few steps ahead and what I see happening is, our interaction will dwindle.  Heather is never on Instant Messenger any more.  Occasionally, I talk to her via the chat function of Facebook, but it’s not very convenient and it’s very infrequent.  We exchange one line comments and topics on Facebook but it’s all very superficial.  We don’t spend much time on the telephone.  And text messaging is no way to carry on a conversation.  Soon it’ll be nothing but comments on each other’s Facebook activity.  I don’t imagine I’ll ever see her again.

It is at a moment like this, when I’m faced with difficulties and sad things that are not within my control, which really aren’t about me, that I remember just how much of an effort it is, how much hard work it takes to be happy and at this moment, I can’t put forth the effort it requires.

In the middle of writing a post about my recent trip, I realized I hadn’t properly introduced my readers to my dearest friend, Heather.  The post is about Heather so, I thought, rather than completely side tracking myself with an explanation of who Heather is to me, I’d pull this from the Archives of my old blog.

This post was originally written in November, 2008.  Check it out and come back around for the next installment of my Month Of Travel.

——————————————————————————————————————–

My retarded clever gene has struck again.

I’ve tried three times to start this post in a clever way and nothing seems quite right, so I’m just going to be straight… eh’hem.   So to speak.

The love of my life is coming to town.  I’m totally stoked!  She’s bringing her boyfriend.  I could do without that.  Not that there’s anything wrong with him, he’s actually a really nice guy, but her having a boyfriend means she’s not pining away for me and I’m not loving that.  Her name is “Eve” (as in “All About… “).  OK, it’s not really, but she will be the first person to tell you that “it’s all about me”, and she won’t be kidding.   It would be annoying and a real turn-off except that part of what is all about her, is her genuine interest and care for the people in her life.  Her real name is Heather.  She has an amazing ability to turn that “it’s all about me” selfishness right on upside down into a selflessness that is completely unparalleled.

Now, if you’re a regular reader (and if you’re not, you should be!), I’m sure I can imagine what you’re probably saying to yourself right now.  “This dude is gay.  Why is he talking about a woman as the love of his life?”  And you’re probably right.  It’s a little bit odd.  But I guess you’d have to know us.

Heather has a far clearer picture of the real me, than anyone else in the world, I think.  I shudder at the thought that maybe she doesn’t know it all, and if she did, I’d finally succeed in driving her away.  Lord knows I’ve worked pretty damn hard at it over the years.  But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I met Heather around the middle of 1995, I think (may have been 96, I’m bad with this stuff.  But she’s not.)  I was working as an Assistant Manager at the Men’s Clothing Store that happened to carry a moniker deceptively similar to but has no affiliation with that of a former NFL Running Back but which has since gone out of business, when Heather transferred in from the Salt Lake City store.  She was a year younger than I which is to say, she moved to Tulsa, because she still lived with her mother and her mother moved to Tulsa for work so therefore Heather moved to Tulsa as well.  Heather was essentially placed in our store by the District Manager who didn’t ask the Store Manager for her opinion or an interview and therefor Heather was starting out on the losing end.

The fact is Heather had everything you want in a “sales girl” in a men’s clothing store you want to be viewed as “young and hip.”  She was young (19), beautiful and very flirtatious.  Before her mother’s job brought them to Tulsa, Heather was the strongest seller in her store.  This is the reason there was no question whether she’d be brought onto our staff when the call came in.

Heather was instantly disliked by the Store Manager, Jodi because Heather was “forced” upon us, and by the First Assistant Manager, Paul because of no reason that I can identify.  It’s possible that Paul was just loyal to Jodi and that was all it took.  I don’t know.

Heather has an amazing memory.  Stunning even.  She remembers specific events, and specific things that were said that I have no recollection of whatsoever.  She consistently blows me away with the things she pulls out.  I on the other hand, can’t seem to remember jack shit!  I don’t really remember how I came to be friends with her.  In fact, I thought things were somewhat tense between us.  I remember more than one occasion when Heather drove me to my car at the end of our shifts.  It was the holidays and the lowly mall employees were relegated to parking in the middle of BFE so that the precious patrons wouldn’t have to walk very far.  On more than one occasion we had conversations about why she was having trouble with Jodi, and what Heather could do differently to win her over.  Heather tells me, however, that there was rumor and speculation about me having had feelings for her.  Looking back, I realize that’s probably true.

Jodi quit soon after Heather joined us and we got a new Manager named Becky (Oh. My. God.)  I remember that Becky and Heather usually worked the day shift together which did not make Heather very happy because there was far less business in the day time than there was any other time, but that’s how the schedule usually came together.  I remember walking into the store one late November afternoon and finding Heather standing in the front window, waste deep in a gold leme faux gift box.  Becky felt that Heather would be fairly artistic and that she should do the holiday window display.  I have two specific memories from this day and no idea what order they come in.

Memory #1:  I’m somewhere in the store, doing something store-like, and I hear a yelp.  I look toward the front of the store as Heather slowly turns around to face me, biting her bottom lip and a glisten of fought back tears in her eyes.  When she could speak again, after the bleeding had stopped she revealed to me that she had been holding a piece of our semi-industrial strength packing tape in between her lovely lips while arranging the tissue paper she was about to tape in place and when she literally yanked the tape out of her mouth, some of the flesh from her lip came with it.  It was one of those things that we knew we’d laugh at some day, but you should have seen her face in the moment.

Memory #2:  (I’m guessing this one comes first.)  Heather is in the window up to her eyeballs in paper and gift wrap and clothes and mannequins and I hear her say, “Oh sure!  Make the Jewish girl do the Christmas display!”

That year we decided to have a “Secret Santa” gift exchange in our store.  The rule was that we would not spend more than $10.00 and there was a sheet behind the register where we were supposed to put down ideas about what our Secret Santa could get us.  I remember very little about how the whole exchange went down but I remember that I had picked Heather’s name.  Most of the staff went into the thing with limited (read: negative amounts of) gusto and most of the gifts amounted to $10.00 gift certificates (yes! Certificates, not cards!) to Blockbuster, or a music store, or McDonald’s (actually some of those college kids really appreciated the McD’s certs) or a $10.00 bill stuck into an envelope.

By this time Heather and I had become friends and there was no tension that I can recall, so I really wanted to give her a good gift.  I didn’t care about the Secret Santa.  I didn’t care about the $10.00 limit.  I wanted to give my friend a good Christmas gift.  You see, gift giving is a major weak point of mine and I’m always disappointed by my own poor gift giving acumen.  But Heather had let something slip.  “James and the Giant Peach” was coming out in the movie theaters and she wanted to see it.  She mentioned one day that “James and the Giant Peach” had been her favorite book growing up.

It was one of my good days and I was paying attention.  I made a mental note and when I got the chance I went and found a pristine, hard cover copy of “James and the Giant Peach.”  Now, as I’m writing this I’m realizing, I may even have special ordered it.  You know, it’s funny!  To me, giving a book as a Christmas gift isn’t a big deal.  That has a lot to do with the fact that my paternal Grandparents used to send us books from foreign countries, travel guides I think they were, all the time.  Every Birthday and every Christmas we could count on getting a book from the grand peeps.  And to tell the truth, it sucked!  So big deal, I thought, so I got you a book.  It’s only special ’cause it’s your favorite and I thought it’d be nice for you to have a pristine copy. But to hear Heather tell it, it was a big deal.  It seems like she’s told me it had to have been expensive.  Whatever was so special about it, it was certainly grist for the rumor mill.  I didn’t care.  I’d done something nice for my friend and she was grateful.

And then tragedy struck.  Heather decided to take up her Dead Beat Dad on an offer to come to Idaho where he lived and work in his office.  Two years earlier I had taken up my own Dead Beat Dad on a similar offer for many reasons.  I couldn’t blame her for going.  I had already done the same thing.  But as I recall it (which is admittedly probably faulty) this is the moment that it hit me.  This woman matters to me. And I was about to lose her.  I was terribly sad she was going and didn’t really know how to tell her.  I wanted to ask her not to go, but I had nothing to offer her to make her stay.  So I said nothing.  And she went.  And we lost touch.  I was never very good at long distance relationships.  Even my relationships with my various family members have suffered from distance and with one notable exception, I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing.  But I digress.

Heather left me and I was devastated.  But two years in Idaho was enough for her and she moved back to be with her mother, and Heather and I were back on…  So to speak.  There was no aspect of our relationship that pointed at romance.  Heather never expressed that kind of interest in me and I certainly didn’t have the cajones to try and make something happen, so there we were, smack dab in the middle of friend central.  A few years ago I asked her in an instant message conversation if there was any chance we would have ended up  together if I had not moved to California.  She told me “I don’t know.  It’s possible.  But I’ll tell you this much.  You wouldn’t have stayed a virgin for so long.”  (You should have seen the looks on my co-workers faces when the realized that boom they heard was me falling out of my chair.)

Something unusual happens when Heather drinks alcohol.  She gets very drunk, very fast, on very little.  And then a half hour or so later she’s perfectly sober.  No doubt a breathalyzer would disagree, but for all intents and purposes she’s good.  After she moved back to Oklahoma Heather met a guy and despite his name, he did not live in a giant peach, and despite his not living in a giant peach, I’m still going to call him “the Pitts”.  (Hey my clever gene is waking up.)  The Pitts was an ex-husband and a father of two children, and a carrier of a nasty little venereal disease, none of which did he bother to mention to Heather.  So on one particular evening when they were together and Heather’s odd metabolism had done its worst, she convinced him they should have sex.  The Pitts, apparently resisted (only a little I’m sure) but she told him, “C’mon.  You know we’re gonna do it eventually, why wait?”

So they did.  Under protected.  If ya know what I mean.

The Pitts left her with two “gifts” that night.  Not long after that, he just left her.  When Heather knew she was pregnant, she told me about it.  I was a terrible friend, for I was still under the influence of my Mother and had not yet learned to form my own ideals and principles (yes, even in my early 20s).  Heather told me, “I don’t know if I can do this.  I’m not sure I can keep it.  I’m thinking of having an abortion.”  I don’t know what I said, or how I reacted, but I know something in me changed that night, at least for a time.   Abortion, I thought, how can she consider an abortion?  Abortion is wrong.  If she does that, she’ll be wrong.  I can’t be friends with someone who has an abortion! Far be it from me to just support my friend through whatever she may be going through without judging her actions.

We drifted again.  At the time that she told me this I was contemplating a change of my own.  I soon made my move to California, and while we talked some after that, we lost touch again.  The few times that we did talk after that I never asked, and she never said, what she’d decided about the baby.  It wasn’t until the following October that she made contact with me again and told me that she and her parents… and her son were coming to California the week of Thanksgiving to visit her grandparents and that if I wanted to we could get together while she was here.  It was at that moment that I realized just how much I missed her, how much she had meant to me and how I had just walked away from it. I’d like to think that I’d have felt this way regardless, but I admit that when I heard her say “my son” and I knew she had not had the abortion, my heart skipped with joy and relief.  I guess somehow that made her acceptable again.  I’m a terrible friend.

There is more to this story I haven’t the time to tell now, but suffice it to say, Heather is my dearest friend!  She means the world to me, and we have a relationship that defies explanation.  We hardly ever talk to each other, probably more my fault than hers, but when we do see each other, every year, the day after Thanksgiving, like clockwork, set your watch by it, for ten years running?  It’s like we never missed a day.  It’s awesome and I wouldn’t give it up for the world!  My Mother asked me to come “home” for Thanksgiving, the other day.  I told her, “No.  I have a prior engagement.”

The love of my life is coming to town, in 16 days.  I’m totally stoked.