There’s a well known line in Brokeback Mountain, where Jack Twist tells Ennis Del Mar I wish I knew how to quit you!   It’s kinda sad actually that this one line is all most folks know because that entire scene is a good read, if painful for some of us gay guys of a certain age. But poor Jack just needed to use a little imagination on the problem. Quitting someone is easy. You just find the right button and you push it and then he quits you. Problem solved.

This came across my Facebook news feed yesterday…

Heck…I did it in five:  Did you really get jealous?

Yeah he did. Or something like it. It was a pattern with him by then. I’d come visit and he’d get all cranky if I was paying more attention to the other guests than to him.   Once I told him I would leave him alone that visit because he’d said previously that he was too busy to chat anyway. So I left him alone that visit, but decided at the last minute to at least go say a quick goodbye. We would always say goodbye. He’d tell me to have a safe trip home. But that time when he saw me standing in the doorway he gave me a cold stare…twice. When I asked later what he was angry about he claimed he never saw me standing there. But someone else was reading those emails by then and that was the other problem that had developed. So who knows who he was actually talking to. It was becoming suffocating. But I am no Jack Twist.

That day it was a co-worker who was going to take the big American road trip when his tour of duty was over, so I spent a bunch of time showing him my road trip photos and giving him tips on places to visit. Next thing I know a certain someone is getting all irritated and angry faced and finally he ducks out without even saying goodbye like he always does and even his co-worker is mystified by his behavior.

And I had enough.

Lessee…which button…there are So Many to choose from…ah…that’s the one…   So I spoke of things I wasn’t allowed to, but here on my blog which he always said he never reads, and he read it right away like I figured he would and he got even more cranky like I knew he would and we finally had the break up fight we should have had back in high school because it just wasn’t a good fit. I won’t be controlled like that and he still wants to have his cake and eat it too.

In a manner of speaking.

But no. Get yourself out of your own fixes. Nobody rides for free.

Nobody rides for free.

Nobody rides for free.

Auf Wiedersomething…

Sorry if this spoils A Coming Out Story for some of you folks still hanging in there waiting for updates. But I am still determined to carry it through to the end, because there’s something there that needs to be told about how us gay kids were treated back then, and how for some of us it will always be a time before Stonewall. And I promise to keep the sense of humor and perspective that I started it with. I began that cartoon story years before I found him again, and it was basically a story I was telling myself to help me make sense of what had happened back then and how it became a part of me and made me what I am now. Nothing about any of that really has changed other than I know how it ends now and I didn’t when I started it.   So stay tuned, there is a new episode and mini story arc coming soon.