They say men don’t change, they reveal themselves.   I suppose that’s possibly true of the man to himself.   There are things within us we will never get over.   For some of us, it’s a set of prejudices.   For others, it’s matters of the heart.   I am (I realize this) a sentimentalist.   Once upon a time I thought it was just a little thing about me.   But no…it’s not just a little thing.   I have to be careful.

I’m going through photos of friends from back in the day for posting in a Facebook album.     And I am looking at one of a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time.   In it, he is smiling at something just off camera.   It is a perfectly happy, carefree smile.   The smile I used to see more of, once upon a time.   It puts me into a dangerous state.   I am remembering how much I liked him.   I am remembering how well we got along together.   Left shoe-right shoe.   Peas in a pod.   One starts the sentence, the other completes it.   Just about as close as two guys can be and not be lovers.

I stopped talking to him when he took that detour into Rush Limbaugh land.   I was being more open about my sexual orientation, getting damn tired of always having to tread lightly around the prejudices of the people around me, the prejudices we’d all had drilled into us ever since we were kids.     I was in my 40s, and beginning to realize I wasn’t going to have a life completely free of the closet, if I didn’t start living one now.   My friends had enough time by then to get over it.   But the more open I was, the more static I got from this particular one.

So one day, I just gave up and stopped speaking to him.   He would call from time to time, and I would not answer.   Just leave me alone…

He is in very poor health these days.   His situation is not good.   He lives on disability, and his knack for trading.   Cigarettes are slowly killing him.   The last time I saw him, he was practically a skeleton of his former self.     And I’m looking at this photograph, and his smile, and I’m wondering now what kind of asshole I’ve been all this time.

He’s your friend…he’s down on his luck…he may be dying…and you’re being a jerk Bruce Garrett…

So I call and hear his voice for the first time in a long while, and with that image of him from back in the 70s in mind I am almost in tears.   Hey guy…how are you these days…everything okay…? And we chat for a while,   and…

…and it doesn’t take long for him to remind me why I stopped speaking to him.

He: (talking about the lady he’s been seeing…his on again off again girlfriend.   He’s complaining about her sudden mood swings.   One moment its all good, the next its Stressville…)

Me: I know the feeling.   I was down in Florida a couple weeks ago, and got a chance to see my high school crush for a while.   He’s got a really nice place down there and he invited me…

He: (changing the subject) Did I tell you about the Smith & Wesson Airweight I got…

Ah yes…   I get to hear about your love life but don’t I dare tell you about mine.   And it gets better…

Me: So you have a computer again?   You doing anything besides the eBay thing?   Facebook?

He: Yeah I’m on Facebook…

Me: (remembering) Oh…right…

He: Yeah, and I defriended you because I didn’t want all that gay stuff showing up on my page.   I didn’t want my other friends seeing it.   You can be offended now for a couple minutes and then get over it…

Me: Ah…right.   You’re still a little fuzzy about how all this stuff works aren’t you?   Your friends see your wall, not your news page.   The news page shows you stuff your friends are doing.   Their notes and links and status messages don’t all show up on your wall unless you choose to share them.   The news page you see when you sign in isn’t your wall.

He: (changing the subject) I don’t do eBay anymore.   I am on Gun Traders now…

…and so on.   Of course the problem wasn’t your friends might see All That Gay Stuff on your page, but that you kept seeing it.   That was always the problem.   If I have to get over anything I suppose it’s you guy.   You will never get over my being gay will you?   Never.   Won’t happen.

Right.   I have to keep that old photograph of you in its context whenever I look at it.   That was a different time.   A different universe practically.   We were so close back then.   Best friends practically.   But you took a detour into Rush Limbaugh land and we can’t talk anymore.   I suppose we’re not the only friends who have been separated by the culture war.   But…really…it wasn’t Rush who got between us, it was your cheapshit prejudices.   You want to think you like me as a friend, but you don’t like Me.   It was that name on the closet door you made a friend of.   There is nothing behind that door anymore.