This poor guy that I used to be. I feel so afraid for him. He is so happy now, but does not know what’s coming…

September 22nd, 2007

Message In A Bottle

It’s been almost a year now since we talked. It was amazing that last time, to hear your voice after so long: you sounded just like you did way back when. It took me back…almost like that first time I called, and heard your telephone voice. Well…actually it was better, because that first time, I think I might have gotten you into some kind of trouble. You remember. You gave me your phone number that Friday before school was over, and we agreed that I’d call you Saturday and maybe we could both take our cameras for a hike somewhere…like maybe Great Falls. By the way…I still have that roll of film of yours you had me develop. I think I gave you the contacts I made, and some prints, but somehow I ended up with the negatives. I can mail them to you if you like. Anyway…I called and asked whoever it was who answered if you were home, and then you got on the line and you were all like…uh…sorry…I didn’t think you’d call…why did you call…I can’t go anywhere…I didn’t think you’d call…like I wasn’t supposed to call, which really confused me because we’d agreed I would call and you gave me your phone number which isn’t the sort of thing you do when you Don’t want someone to call you. Next Monday morning I met you at school it was like nothing had happened. There were times while we were seeing each other, when I wasn’t sure when you were teasing and when you were serious. And you always kept me at arms length from your family. For years afterward I wondered if I’d gotten you in some kind of trouble with your parents for giving me your number. Maybe we should have agreed you would call me.

Say…maybe you should call me now. It’s been almost a year. It would be nice to hear from you again. We’re too far away from each other to go for that camera hike like we were going to back then. But we can chat now, can’t we…without it getting you in trouble…right?

Wave back sometime. Please. It would be the best birthday gift ever.

I still vividly remember how I knew it was him even before my brain was parsing the words on that answering machine recording, just by the sound of his voice. After all those years. It was 1972 all over again…and I was that kid all over again…and that should have been the warning sign, because it didn’t end well back then either.

I was flipping through some old blog posts, and came across this one from December 2007…

Message In A Bottle

See…This is why I wish you’d let me email you…I could just bop these little questions back to you and maybe get a quick answer, instead of putting them into the Christmas card I’m sending.

My friends up here are just a tad too disorganized this year to count on them doing anything all together this New Years, alas. I’ve pinged them and pinged them and it looks like it’s just going to be catch as catch can and I tend to slip right between the cracks when it’s like that. I have a week off between Christmas and New Year and I don’t want to spend it moping around the house alone. Be nice to take a drive in my new car somewhere…particularly somewhere it’s warm. Somewhere I’ve never seen before.

So…basically…will Disneyworld be open during the week between Christmas and New Year…?

And…

What part of the complex, in your experienced opinion, would most appeal to a single adult? I’m not interested in the kiddy stuff, or the thrill rides so much (Unless I had a companion to thrill along with). I’ll probably just be wandering around all by myself. So maybe something to engage my mind and my curiosity? If such as that even exists at Disney? Epcot Center maybe? Or is there something else you think would be better?

And where would you suggest I get a room for a few days. Something basic, and not horribly expensive.

And…

Photo? Please?

Followed shortly by this one…

Now Where The Hell Did I Put Plan ‘B’…?

Well I reckon Disney World’s out. Thanks for the warning about the crowds during Christmas week guy. And here I was wondering if they were even open then…

This takes me back to a time Before. Before what you ask? Before everything changed. That poor guy writing those words. I feel so…not sorry…afraid…for him.

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind postulated a technology that allows you to erase unpleasant memories, but what if you can go back to the moment before you stepped on the path that brought you to the place where you were even considering it? What if?

A choice. To have lived the life you did…not to be able to revisit that past or change any part of it. Just…not to go there. Knowing only that I don’t reconnect. That’s all. Chose. Accept what came of doing the thing, or don’t do the thing.

Would I? Would I chose the path not travelled? That question is going to haunt me now for days.

Well…for one thing…Pretty sure I wouldn’t have spent so much money on Disney parks and stuff. I mean…I told him I wasn’t interested in theme parks. He had to talk me into going. Not very hard I admit…he did want to see me again after all. And after thirty-four years of searching for him, I sure wanted to see him again.

Maybe instead I spend that money on travel to other countries and places. Maybe I do more road trips. There’s still a lot of North America I haven’t walked on, and now probably never will.

What if I could decide not to do the thing that brought me back to him? What if I could decide to stop looking for him? Just…stop. End it. Ache forever not to see his face and his smile again, and hear his voice, because that’s what it would be. I was aching all those years I searched for him. And afraid. Never to know if he was even still alive, and did he survive the HIV epidemic.  Stop.  Stop asking. Stop needing to know. Stop needing. Chose differently.

Could I even do that? Would have even been in my power to do that? I’d begun drawing A Coming Out Story to make sense of what happened to me back in high school. I figured I’d never see him again and I just had to get it out of me, and also hopefully make some sort of peace with it. By the time I started on it so many years had passed I had to figure if I ever did find him again he’d be set with an all around better guy than I could ever be, much more good looking, not a geeky little artistic weirdo like me, and I’d just have to accept it. He was a catch, and I was an unhandsome oddball. But at least I’d know he was still alive.

And then I did the thing, and I found him again. And that set me on the path to now. And…Knowing.

I know exactly the moment I could chose not to do the thing. It’s right there. That one moment. What if I could stand in that exact moment, knowing how it turned out when I did the thing, and decide not to do it, and lose that thread of my life. Forever. Never to happen. Never to Know.

Could I really chose not to do the thing?  I don’t know. This is going to haunt me.

Reposted and updated for my 70th (yesterday)…

This is a script I had for a one-off cartoon was going to do when I turned 60. I did a little pencil sketching on it then dropped it. I’m 70 now and still haven’t finished this one, or dozens of others let alone A Coming Out Story…

It riffs off a running gag in Tim Barela’s wonderful gay comic strip Leonard and Larry, which he described once as a kind of gay Our Miss Brooks. Every tenth year Larry had a birthday all his anxieties about getting old surfaced in a dream that he was having his birthday party while laying in a coffin with a birthday cake on it and his friends making catty jokes about his getting old. Picasso said a mediocre artist copies and a great artist steals. So I stole the idea (with proper acknowledgement). But the only thing I managed to finish was the script. Probably for the best…

Here it is, updated to the 70th birthday. As Joe Friday and my own Sergeant Stoneface would say, The names have been changed to protect the innocent. And especially the not so innocent!

The Big Seven-O!
(Slightly Anonymized)

SCENE: My birthday party. a’La Leonard & Larry, I’m in a casket with the lid open and a birthday cake on the bottom half lid that reads Happy 70th. Surrounding me are my three loves. We shall call them CRUSH1, CRUSH2 and CRUSH3.

PANEL 1: (Most of the following panels are as above.)

ME: I really appreciate the party you guys, and this coffin’s a swell gag, but I have to admit the margarita embalming fluid bottles was a brilliant touch.

CRUSH2: I liked the aspirin bottles labeled “For Headaches Due To Lovestruck Bruce”.

CRUSH3: That was 1’s idea.

PANEL 2:

ME: (off panel) Ha, ha… Yes, very funny…

CRUSH1: (to the others) Drove me crazy back in high school watching him try to work up the nerve to tell me he had a crush on me.

CRUSH2: (rolling his eyes) I had to deal with Overly Attached Gayfriend.

CRUSH3: Tell me about it. He actually thought we were boyfriends just because I let him sleep with me a few times.

PANEL 3: Closeup on Crush2 and Crush3

CRUSH2: Sparks didn’t fly eh?

CRUSH3: (Looking morosely down at his drink) Let’s just say I went Ex-Gay for six years.

PANEL 4: Closeup on me and Crush1

CRUSH1: (Smiling, gesturing to me while looking at the others off panel) Quick, tell NARTH! We’ve found the cure for homosexuality!

ME: (Frowning) Ha, Ha. Very Funny.

PANEL 5:

ME: Can I get out now?

CRUSH1: Not on your life. We’re selling you off as a collector’s item.

CRUSH2: (gesturing to the ages) The gay man that never had a boyfriend. Too young to be liberated in 1971, too old to marry anyone in 2023.

CRUSH3: You’re a museum piece.

PANEL 6:

ME: You sold me to a museum?

CRUSH2: Museum? Are you kidding? We sold you to Disney World.

CRUSH3: You’re going to be a prop in the Haunted Mansion queue.

CRUSH1: I’ll stop by every now and then before my shift to dust you off.

PANEL 7:

ME: I’m dreaming all this aren’t I? This is all about my anxieties over getting old isn’t it…and you guys are here representing the three chances for love Vonnegut spoke of…

CRUSH1: We prefer to think of ourselves as your three strikes.

PANEL 8:

ME: This is going to turn into a nightmare now isn’t it?

CRUSH1: You’re not asleep dear, you’re hallucinating.

CRUSH2: You drank half that bottle of tequila all by yourself and when you sober up again you’re going to feel like you’re 170.