Mama and My One Drunk Friend

(Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Please do not let my mother ever stumble upon this blog - especially this posting - now or at the hour of my death, Amen.)

I have done the big city thing. I started small. I grew up in a suburb of Kansas City, graduated to Omaha, stepped up to Des Moines (hey, it's a capital), spent 4 years in Chicago - including 2 in Boystown - and did my year in San Francisco. It was on the coast where The Disease finally progressed enough that working productively was no longer a possibility. Too many sick days, the sicknesses were getting bigger and weirder, stress started doing horrible things to my body...and nobody needs to tell any of us who are the beneficiaries of the "Miracle Drugs" what happens to your digestive system when you swallow them. I had the money to stay in San Francisco and live out whatever I had left embraced and surrounded by a culture that gets me. But I came home. I always thought I might. It seemed like the right thing to do. The Bad Boy I was seeing in San Francisco told me - very nicely, bless his heart - "I Just Don't Do The Sick Thing". Seeing someone with AIDS was fine by him...as long as it was only a theory. So I came home.

I took an apartment in the suburbs of Kansas City while I pondered where I really wanted to settle. My family picked it out for me to save me a search trip before I made The Final Journey home. It was nice. I adopted a dog when I got back to Kansas to keep me company - and keep me walking. He's a Yorkie. Yes, I am THAT gay.

For the first time in 39 years, the urge hit me to own a home, mostly out of fear that one or more of my disability resources might some day vanish. An in-law of a sibling had one down the street from my family, the mortgage on which would be less than half of the rent I was paying in suburbia. The catch -- this place was in The Boonies. No, I mean it. The Boo-Knees. Buh -ooh -ooh -ooh neeeeeees.

There is no Taco Bell where I live. I had thought this to be the first line of demarcation for civilized and uncivilized societies. There is no McDonald's where I live. This, in itself, could have us declared a Third World Country, I believe. We have one grocery store, two liquor stores (!), Sonic, Pizza Hut, and Dairy Queen. We also have Subway - not the kind you ride - the kind that we're asked to believe can help you lose hundreds of pounds if you just keep spending money there several times a day. I have a diet plan like that. Come on by and give me $6 a pop and I'll make sure you lose a pound or two. The closest Wal-Mart is a half hour away - which is fine, since I no longer shop at Wal-Mart. (Power to the People!) The sign outside of town claims that our population is around 3,000. I think they're counting any animal over 50 lbs.

I love it here. I have never lived anywhere that I liked better. I can't hear the delusional roar of Wrigley Field from here. I can't walk to the train and be in the Castro in a matter of minutes. But I can sit on my porch - I have one - on my swing (because I have one) and watch what life looks like when you slow it down to a viewable pace. Garrison Keillor would like this place. The chances of it ever freezing enough to go ice fishing, though, are slim to none. We have our characters - Bicycle Jim, for example. Bicycle Jim walks about town and might grunt at you. I think he must have been clocked on the head at a young age. But he has never been known to do anything meaner than grunt. And most of the time he sits in front of a store on Maple St. with a collection of mostly-fixed bicycles. I think people who approach Jim to buy one of those bikes may be the bravest people I've ever seen. And I once accidentally walked through Cabrini Green.

I have a group of friends in The City (which is what we call any town with a population of more than 5,000, but usually means Kansas City) who I try to see once a week, body and weather permitting. And one of those friends alerted me to the fact that back in my little town of Mayberry was ANOTHER one of "us". So I looked him up and we have become good friends. The kind of friend who stops by just to have a smoke on the front porch and will offer you the last beer in the cooler. I don't drink - much. Certainly not daily. But my friend does. I wouldn't blink if I learned that my friend pours beer over Cheerios for breakfast. He's also the only gay person with whom I will socialize in Mayberry. (I know 5 others, mind you, but they are just not the kind of folks one makes it a point to visit.) And he makes me laugh.

One night - just before Christmas - My One Drunk Friend stopped by and played on my piano "What a Friend We Have In Jesus" several times in a row. It was touching and ludicrous and hysterical and the kind of spectacle I heartily applaud. Now, I do not endorse alcoholism, but if you can manage, in the midst of your disease, to provide some small moment of pleasure for someone else, your karma is a little less fucked-up than it might otherwise be, I figure. He'll probably be a lot less entertaining and I'll have less a friend in Jesus, too, if he ever dries out. I wish for him whatever he wants for himself. He also does hair. My mother needed a haircut. My mother is not a pleasant person. (Have I mentioned that before?) Let me elaborate.

My mother would tell a stranger's child in the aisle of a grocery store, "Get your goddam hands off that!" Picking up a dish that is shockingly hot without using gloves means you are a "stupid fuck". (This from someone who stuck her hand in a whirring garbage disposal to retrieve a dish cloth and mangled herself. Karma, indeed.) I have a cousin who is "a goddam whore" and my mother works with countless "goddam dumb sons o' bitches", though she will someday quit because "I hate that fucking place." My mother is not fit for public consumption. Knowing this, I mentioned that my One Drunk Friend does hair. I don't know what I could have been thinking.

Mama went to My One Drunk Friend and L-O-V-E-S her hair. She also L-O-V-E-S my One Drunk Friend. And he L-O-V-E-S her. "HE'S GAY?!?!" she blurted to me at Bingo last night. (OK, I go to Bingo and the first one of you queens that snickers, I will snatch your wig off and burn it like the Bastille's flag.) "But he's so GOOD LOOKING!" she said, as if the two should have been mutually exclusive. (And as if I wouldn't take the underhanded jab she meant it to be.) And he is. Really. He has a cleft in his chin that you could store office products in. He has that 1970's Please-God-Let-The-Wind-Blow hair and a body that defies his years. He's tall and he's polite and he takes good care of his mama - who lives just a block over from here. (Note: In a town of 3,000 people, everybody lives "just down the street".) And he drinks. A lot. All the time. And my mother L-O-V-E-S him. This can't be good.

I dated a drunk once...briefly. Actually, I dated a bottle of scotch that was conveniently attached to a man with an occasionally functioning penis and an Insurance Agency. That was fun. He gave me a diamond earring and took me to Arizona for my 30th birthday. My friend Joyce (there, I mentioned you. Happy now?) in Omaha, I believe, still wishes that I was dating Scotchy McDroolsalot. So I am pretty gunshy when it comes to dating the bottle. Besides, there aren't any indications that he likes me even half as much as Mama likes him. The real rub here is that My One Drunk Friend will now be Mama's pet Hook-Up Project. My mother, the foul-mouthed Yente. That's not a profession she needs to take up after the age of 60.

And we're not even Jewish.