Sunday, August 12, 2007
 | Me and J.E. He and I met when I was fifteen: I was standing in line with my parents at Papa Haydn's and he was waiting in front of us in full clown make-up. A few months later we performed together on my splintering Catholic high school stage. I was the silly sophomore who thought I sang and danced a lot better than I actually did; he was an 8th grader in a conservative homeschool who prayed for the gay people who were going to hell. Tonight he treated me to cosmos at the Vault. He told me his coming-out story - about the e-mail train that spread like wildfire through his church and his parents who still pretend it's a non-issue. He told me about Victoria and Paris and trapeze school. I told him about SMART, Argentina, and the Douchebag. I actually saw the Douchebag this morning, with his shirt untucked and his jaw moving rapidly as he chewed gum through the entire service. I thought about where I was emotionally just barely a year ago. I relayed only a slight bit of this tragedy to my "date", my special friend who has danced in and out of my life serendipitously for the last decade. Over the past few years he has shown up unexpectedly at get-togethers and outings because he happened to be at the right place at the right time. Then this fall after a long tedious day of my soul-draining temping, he found me charging up NW Everett and swept me into a gigantic hug. He's good like that. I told him tonight that he drinks too much. He told me that he's had a hard year. And he has - I certainly can't argue with that - but I still wish he would slow down with the martinis. I guess I shouldn't have encouraged the cosmos tonight - I just hadn't been ready to go home after our successful cocktail party/cabaret for Staged! (An evening in which my mother shouted to Steven Nash - "I do what I want!") I felt pretty tonight - the opposite of what I felt last night -and welcomed the positive cap to my weekend. I drove him to his building, kissed him goodnight, and then came home for some eggs. |
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