Happy Birthday Dad! I miss you!
Category Archives: Personal Bits
Out and Out Again
Sandtrooper Update: It’s been just under 5 months since getting my Trooper armor.
I’ve only worn it twice, and very fleetingly. Just to test the straps and get a sense of how long it takes to try to figure everything out (and discover that I usually fuck up the leg pieces). When I wear it I sort of have to angle my torso when I walk down our hallway: the shoulder poulson hits the artwork displayed in our hall. I’ve not rushed to work on the re-fitting because I’m savoring each upgrade, each modification that makes it mine.
Yet because Halloween is so far away I’ve been scheming up ideas and reasons to wear it out in public, other than joining the Canadian 501st, of course. I’ve thought of creating a short film that incorporates the uniform, or “Sandy” as I’ve come to call him, as a way to give the suit a test run and to wear it out in public.
At the gym yesterday, I had been working out the details for this movie in my head when I came across the cover of Thursday’s Metro News, showing 6’7″ Argo football player Joe Eppele in a Sasquatch costume. Beyond his obvious scruffy hotness there was something else that made me keep the rag and stuff it into my gymbag.
For the rest of the day I was fixated. During my break I started to notice small details in the picture: like how the seam in the crotch could have been sewn better or the fur combed out from between the stitching to hide the seam, that his fingers are actually extended rubber gloves, or that the chest plate was nicely done but didn’t really match the overall look of the suit, and were the upper thighs real or were they padded…?
…Holy shit.
I was waaay too into this.
And then it hit me: What if this was “a thing” for me? What if I really was a Furry? A bonafied “yiff in hell” cosplaying CSI-fodder costume wearing freak that got off on dressing up?
Like a Fight Club changeover the last couple years came flooding back to me one outfit at a time: Mumu trailer park momma, The Luchadore, the Liza Minnelli Jedi, getting into our company’s mascot for a day and really enjoying it, The Gay Werewolf, stealing SharkBoy’s Max from Where the Wild Things Are jumpsuit and now this, the Trooper.
I think this is coming to light because SharkBoy and I have been watching marathon runs of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season 2 and catching up on Season 3. Now let’s be clear… I have no desire to do drag, but… I have nothing but utter respect for these ladymens. What they do is a fabulously bizarre mix of technical prowess, gender fucking, comedy and drama, personal or otherwise. The worst drag queen brings something of quality to the table, even if it’s just tragedy. Each episode I’ve marvelled at every outfit and how it could have been created. However, honestly, I have no desire to go that route. Dressing in drag seems too obvious for me, being gay and all. The work to get it right seems to me too labor intensive for the payoff.
I type this as I glance over to my Trooper armor and think about how to stop the feedback inside the helmet microphone and the HOVI TIPS speakers. Too each his own, I shrug.
I do know I’m not a Furry in the sexual sense of the word. I’m not sexually attracted to dressing up. I don’t find anything sexual about it at all and the thought of dry humping someone wearing a plastic cup of a Trooper outfit bores me. However, I do find it intriguing to be someone else. The masquerade. And then I wonder if I have low self esteem because of my desire to mask who I am or am I just having fun? Then I decide I’m being maudlin and figure I think it’s just me, not growing up. If I have one regret in my life it’s that I didn’t get into movie special effect kind of costuming.
There’s a racist joke in the gay community about getting old: When you hit fifty, you’re either into leather or Asians. I think I’m into fake fur.
Living With The Dead
Okay, more like Living With the Plastic.
On Monday you might have seen my video of my trooper assemblage. A bit of a pre-story as to how I got the mannequins:
I email postbear about where I would start to look for mannequins, knowing that he trolls craigslist and kijiji like the Eye of Sauron. Not that I could have looked myself but wading into these sites makes me nervous. postbear sends off a couple links and I find my guy. Two male mannequins with no dings or dents, all their fingers and going for cheap. I call and make arrangements to pick them up.
Sunday, I enlist Josh and Sean to drive us out to some homestead out in Scarborough. As we pull up, a squat, thick, swarthy Latino fellow is sitting by his truck staring off into the middle distance. He doesn’t look over as I approach. “Raul?” I say, walking up his driveway.
His head snaps towards me, whipping his waist-length braided pigtail like a serpent’s. Like I suddenly appeared.
After that initial awkward moment of personal introductions, Raul takes me to his back yard to a large shed. “Dexter style kill room?” pops into my head. I look back to the car to three faces looking at me possibly for the last time.
In the shed, it’s a riot of shop fixtures. Torsos in glass cases. Arms sticking straight up in the air. Jewelry cases holding garbage bags of… things? My mannequins are deep in the back, inside a rack designed to hold tuxedo rentals.
“This is great! We just got ourselves Stormtrooper uniforms and we need a mannequin to display them so that they’re not stuck …in… a … duffel… ba…” I trail off. He’s not listening. Doesn’t care. I get serious: “All the fingers are intact, right?”
“Si. Yes.” and he hands me a green garbage bag with a torso in it. With breasts.
“Male?” I say, economizing my words for some reason.
“Yes.” And he digs further. We extract two male mannequins from the riot. I notice his arm tattoo: Evita and I decide not to comment, and if I did, then maybe mentioning Madonna would not be appropriate. SharkBoy comes and helps with the back and forth of plastic human parts from shed to car.
At home, we amuse ourselves by dressing up SharkBoy’s mannequin in our Panty Game underwear and finally his old luchadores singlet with a smart belt around the waist. Very 80s. After all that, I made the video. When I’m done we had to find places to put the mannequins: mine in the office, SharkBoy’s in the hall alcove by the bikes, awaiting further accoutrements.
Within the last 48 hours we’ve both managed to scare the shit out of ourselves just by spotting the damn things out of the corner of our eyes. Who would have thought that having a mannequin in your home would make you think that someone was standing there (albeit headless) in some dark corner of your house?
I figure this is the closest I’m going to get to living on the set of Blade Runner.
My Top 5 Influential Cult Films
Before I start, I have to delineate the difference between B-List and Cult – this is my own interpretation, so take it as you will. B-List is a movie that has been utterly shunned by the general populace as being bad. I’d pay no more than $5 to see a B-List movie at a repertory theatre but there’s a 50/50 chance said movie is not in my collection at home. Meanwhile, a Cult movie would be a B-List movie that more than 75% of the populace has seen and hate, yet somehow lives on in the hearts of the socially inept.
5. Akira. I struggled with this one. Akira is as popular in Japan as Goin’ Down The Road is in Canada. My animation history class was shown a 20 min clip of this movie as an example of how Japan dominates the world in cartoons. If you’ve any appreciation for hand drawn cartoons, there’s a good chance you’ve seen it and the sequence (Hand drawn! No computers!) of the psychic bubble blast racing through Neo-Tokyo is iconic*. You may know that there’s a remake being made right now in the US which is getting fanboys up in a tizzy. With Geekcred so high and steering the almighty Hollywood dollar nowadays, I’m pretty sure it is destined to fall upon it’s sword.
4. Blue Velvet. As Stock, Aitken and Waterman were telling me that they were never going to give me up, I wandered into a theatre in London to witness this David Lynch movie. Britons went mental for Blue Velvet, purely because of it’s campy undertones of US society rotting from the inside. To everyone else it was just a melodramatic freakshow that was signature Lynch – three times a charm! I wanted to include Dune in with this entry (Dino De sets! Costumes!) as that they both seem to be so obviously riling against the Hollywood studio machine yet still have uber-symbolic moments of “uh…what the fuck?” See: Dean Stockwell singing like a half mounted drag queen into a light. Blue Velvet has the distinction of having a scene so uncomfortable for me, that I nearly… nearly… left the theater: Where Jeffery is slowly taken around the underbelly of his hometown and eventually beaten to a pulp. We know Frank is going to pummel him but not before taking him for a joy ride in his world. Yes. It freaked me out.
3. Flash Gordon. Yet another Dino De Laurentiis boilerplate, trying to compete with Star Wars and Buck Rogers (??) bandwagons. Like Barbarella, but a hell of a lot less sexy/campy, we’re treated to a plethora of characters in various states of undress. Max Von Sydow’s over the top Ming will always be burned into my memory as being the prime example of my “British Make the Best Villains Theory”. Why do I find this movie “influential”? I think I’ve written about this before. It has more hairy men per frame than a lot of movies out there. Plus it has one of my top 5 favorite lines: “Dispatch War Rocket AJAX, to bring back his body!”
2. Blade Runner. “But Dead Robot,” I hear you whine, “This movie made millions! It was pivotal in it’s design and story! It ushered us into a new wave of Science Fiction that was taken seriously and even respected!” Oh shut it. No, I include this in the cult list purely because like when Lucas started to hack and cut his masterpieces, Ridley did the same to his one really good film… SEVEN TIMES. But unlike Star Wars, the cuts/re-edits are seamless and in every iteration of the movie, create something better, if not equal to each other. These many versions don’t sit well with many for whatever reason – “Dekker was a Replicant, his dream proved it! I hated the Unicorn, it was ass fake! The Voiceover was the only thing that made sense! Raspberries!” – yet there is a small group of fans who like them all! So I say “Cult” and here it sits! Now. Let me tell you about my mother…
1. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. I’ve never seen a more polarizing movie. Those who don’t get it, can’t watch more than 20 minutes before their brains fry. Those who get it, swallow up every detail and revel in discovering something new with every viewing. The IMDB trivia page is of average content, but to me, each item there is a little starburst of fun. You have to love a sci fi movie that rifts on Thomas Pynchon novels in a fun way. I love how the whole movie was set up as if a franchise had been in place for years, much like Cloverfield had all those external clues to augment it’s story. If you pay attention to ABBA8D, you get much more appreciation for the movie.
*yes I used that word. Sorry.
My Top 5 Influential B-List Movies
5. Barbarella. At the influential age of 15 I pleaded with my mom to let me and an older friend to attend MapleCon, one of Canada’s first comic/fandom conventions. Parents certainly gave their kids longer leashes back then. One of the first midnight screenings I ever attended was of this sexy romp. Which I didn’t “get”. Seriously I didn’t find one moment of this movie funny at all but oddly enough I didn’t get angry at not getting the jokes. I was mesmerized by the chompy scary dolls on the ice planet and the full on hairy chest that Ugo Tognazzi (from the 1978 version of La Cage Aux Folles) sported half way through the movie. He was my first Wookiee crush. This was also one of my first Dino De Laurentiis movies where sets and costumes won out over story, script and sense – but more on that in my “Cult” list, coming soon.
4. Dark Star. I had heard that this movie was created by the same team that brought us Alien (as well as plucky John Carpenter) so I lost another night of sleep at the same ‘Con. It was the first independent film I ever saw and introduced me to the concept of “following the creative back to the source”, to get a better insight into the thought process of things. Both Dark Star and Alien dealt with isolation, claustrophobia and dread either humorously or disturbingly depending which theatre you were in. The best moment from Dark Star was the existential bomb’s logical rendering of killing itself.
3. Saturn 3. Know that I cringed along with the rest of the world when we saw Kirk Douglas’ floppy maboobs florp wildly in probably his last on-screen action shot. We do get to see a little more acting chops of Farrah Fawcet Majors Lee as she screams her way through this bizarre script, but its no Burning Bed. Really, there’s not much to this movie other than I really enjoyed the robot design, based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings. Sure it had all the dystopian “we eat dogs in the future” vibe, and some excellent matte painting shots, but really it’s all about the scary robot design.
2. Battle Beyond The Stars. Johnboy Walton gets into his flying testicles and saves the universe. That’s all I remember about this one. I’m waiting for it to become available on instant access, here on Netflix Canada.
1. Millennium. Cheryl Ladd plays a time travelling, body snatching Sheena Easton look alike who gets romantically entangled with Kris Kristofferson. I liked this movie only because it was so awful while the book was a good fun read. John Varley is one of my favorite post-Heinlein authors and when I saw this movie come from out of nowhere, I had to see it. Come on, the star robot has a ton of lines and yet they didn’t bother to try to hide his human mouth. Though they did slather on silver makeup to make him look roboty.
My Top Five Influential A-List Movies
5. Black Hole. This movie was pivotal for me because it represents Disney’s struggle to break free from the niceties and politeness the studio had created as reputation for itself over the years. TBH came out just as I was crossing over from kid to teen and at the time, I did see it as yet another “We Want A Star Wars Hit, Too!” movie, but as I got older, its dramatic art direction overshadowed the painted-on robot eyes. TBH was the first Disney movie that used curses in its dialogue and I think it was a justified move for the studio. Okay, the characters say “Damn” and “Hell” but they had to start somewhere, right? Though I couldn’t imagine V.I.N.CENT blurting out “Shoot the fucker!” when Maximillian appears (but that would totally rock). Coupled with the release of TRON, it’s obvious that Disney was struggling to move past their Mary Poppins image to cultivate a more mature entity, much like I was at the time. Ha. Me. Mature. Fart.
4. Alien/Aliens. Alien showed me that I could scream like a girl at a movie and Aliens showed me that I could squeal like a Frat boy in a Liquor store wielding a parent’s unlimited credit card. These two flicks also showed me that it was ok to “fuck with the brand” in some circumstances – where you can flip off the beaten path and create something new, not by following the established genre too closely. I also learned that “more is better”, space marines are hot, and Paul Riser was a goof. Alien was my first “horror” movie I ever saw when I was 13, thanks to my Dad dropping me off at a theatre in Montreal and running off to hang out in some Montreal gay bars.
3. 20,000 Leagues. I’ll be honest, until recently re-viewing this movie, I don’t recall the ending of it at all. It ends abruptly as if they ran out of paper at the script printing factory. All I do remember is how manic James Mason looks while he plays the seashell encrusted organ. I forgot entirely that Kirk Douglas and Peter Lore were in it, chewing the scenery like it was Oscar Jerky. But the star of the movie was the sub, which was wicked cool. The sub design is probably why I got all curious about this whole Steam Punk thing from a couple years back. I thank SharkBoy for reminding me of it’s awesomeness.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey. I got fascinated with this movie because my oldest brother was fascinated with it. When I was a fledgling teen back in Brockvegas, and we had no such thing as “cable” (nor did we have TV remotes, kids. Shock and horror!), we had to tune our TVs manually to the nearest, clearest station, which would lead to some missed shows. Let me expand on that: fat-ish, near-friendless kid, home on a Friday night, fresh from the store after spending half his allowance on chips and pop, sitting in front of a TV, eyes unblinking at a broadcast of 2001: A Space Odyssey, lips lined with that unmistakably Doritos orange, suddenly goes apeshit mental when the transmission from across the river suddenly dies. And I mean mental. If it was video-ed having my melt down, I’d be a YouTube sensation. I missed the rest of the movie, but not before my middle brother found me near-collapsed in front of the TV in tears.
1. Star Wars. What can I say that millions of nerds and geeks have already said about this movie? I do remember seeing a teaser picture in StarLog magazine of the Millennium Falcon surrounded by Troopers while impounded by the Death Star. I thought to myself “Holy crap they spent some big money on that one shot…” and continued to feed into the soul of the Hollywood Blockbuster by religiously buying up all the teaster content I could, before the movie was released. Back then, kids, we had to buy magazines if we wanted movie news. Trailers were caught by chance on TV, and if you were lucky to have your top loading VCR recording at the time, you could “re-watch” the said trailer. To this day, Star Wars remains the most theatre-watched movie in my life at about 20 sittings. Alien is second to that at 10.
Off The Wall
In the fall of 1994, my brother The Professor was moving back to England for good. I don’t recall why I wasn’t around when he dropped off boxes of things at my father’s house for storage, but I do know as soon as I could, I was in the basement rooting through them.
Know that since I came out of the womb, I’ve been obsessed with my brother’s stuff on an almost genetic level. I think it’s because I revered him like a god.
I remember he had a model of the shuttle from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey that I would risk life and limb by entering into his room to play with. He had other models too, like a Saturn rocket that nearly stood as tall as me at the time. I was scared to touch it because I knew that there was an extremely fragile lunar lander on the inside and if he discovered that I had accidentally snapped off one of the aerials or radar dishes, I would be going down three flights of stairs wrapped in a sleeping bag.
I remember rummaging around in his stuff and finding a set of blue dishes (incomplete) dated from 1912. I snagged those. I also found a couple tea sets and various other fun dishes that followed me around during my 30s. He had (still has!) incredible tastes.
As I type this, I suddenly realize I have no clue how I came into possession of his swan painting. Did my other brother, The Writer, hand it over to me because he was moving and could no longer keep it for The Professor? Did I find the painting in the back of the Professor’s belongings in Dad’s basement?
Somehow, it came to me. And I loved it.
Flash forward to the almost now, 6 years ago. We’re in the midst of the Great Merge when I moved in with SharkBoy. It’s like Christmas for both of us as we gleefully find spots for all my stuff. Graciously SharkBoy allows all my robots to occupy the TV room. Something to this day I’m still grateful for. When it came to unpacking my paintings, I revealed the Swan Painting (by an artists whose name escapes me…Gould somebody or other… Dan…?).
With excitement, I say, “I love the colours of this one! Can we put it up in the bedroom?”
It’s then that I notice how far SharkBoy’s face has fallen. It’s like I’ve unwrapped a comic book fake dog poo and revered it as art.
We “argued” off and on about that painting for over 6 years. Until last week when The Professor came back onto possession of the painting, donating it to his best friends who actually know the artist. People who obviously deserve it more than us.
I will always remember it. But I will remember more how SharkBoy and I use to tease each other about it.
Don’t cry for us. When Dad left us, SharkBoy picked up a painting that Dad imported from Mexico that the family dubbed “Meaty Ass Boy”.
I’ll let him describe that one to you all.
Know that today we’re both writing about this painting. Why not go visit his blog to see what he says?
Coming Out: To my Dad
Coming out to my friends here.
When I came out to my Dad it had been a year and a bit since he came out to the family and a few months before I decided to return to Brockvegas to tell my friends that I was gay. I was living in Brantvegas, finishing up my last year at high school and for some reason I had fallen into the Theatre Fag group at that school pretty darned fast. Go figure. I was bringing home all manner of queer teens for my father to meet, as well as a couple “beards” and “Fag Hags” for good measure.
Really I wasn’t fooling anyone. Hence my decision to come out a tad bit earlier than I expected. My original plan was to come out when I left Brockvegas, because I hated (still hate) that town. It was empowering to me to be able to control the rumour mill that would eventually fire up when I told everyone who cared or mattered that I was gay. But Dad threw a spanner into that plan and left Brockvegas a few months past my completion of grade 10. I pleaded to be taken with him. I dreaded a year living with my Mom and her soon-to-be new husband – not that I disliked them, but purely because they were in that new, fresh, in-love stage and I’d just be under heel. It was decided that I would move with Dad to Brantvegas and finish my high schoolin’ there.
When I moved I became entrenched in Dad’s new gay life. I met Francois, Dad’s new boyfriend. I know… I was going from one parental “new, fresh, in-love” relationship to another, but this one seemed more vibrant, more alive. Francois was a gregarious Quebecois who put the “flambé” in Fabulous! Francois was an event planner/flaming homo by trade. His apartment was covered floor to ceiling with art, plaster tchotchkes and deep rich wall papers, which gave the place an aura of someone preparing a shrine to bawdy houses. To this day I’ve never met his creative and energetic equal. Of course Dad was his polar opposite.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Dad, by this time, was changing. He went from an invisible parent who was always away on business trips to a “fun” guy to be around. He became playful, humourous and witty. He became himself. And while he was turning into a Good Time Charlie, he never forgot to be a parent.
I was legal to drive and on the occasional Friday night I would ask Dad for the car. Being the honest kid I was, when he asked where we were going with it (there were always 4-5 kids in the back) I would reply with an innocent shrug: “Buddies.”
The thing about living with a gay dad while you’re still in the closet is that if you choose a life of honesty, you’ll not be in the closet for long.
Buddies was a gay club in Hamilton, 30 mins over in the next town. Dad knew this. He raised an eyebrow to my response.
“Oh come on, Dad. You know gay bars have better music,” I responded as if he was mentally challenged.
This went on for a couple weeks.
One weekend Francois came and when he got wind that I was running a shuttle bus to the local gay bar, was into me like a falcon into a mouse. “You’re going to a gay bar? That makes you gay, you know!” and on and on. But this mouse knew all the burrows to hide in. “Mark is coming too, he’s bringing his girlfriend… what does that make them? Gay by proxy?” The banter was child like but strong.
After a month or two of this, Dad told me he was going to be late getting home from the office, so dinner would be my responsibility. We often switched up chores like this – we were good roommates, I like to think. I came home to school to a quiet kitchen. On the counter was a note, lying across a book.
“Dead Robot,” It read, in my father’s 1940s public school scrawl, “I really think you should read this.”
Underneath was the hard cover edition of The Joy of Gay Sex.
I bet you straight people reading didn’t know we had our own version, did you? It even had the arty farty pencil sketches of man on man instructional action, just like yours, but a lot more penis-centric. And anal-centric… You get the drift.
I didn’t make dinner that night. I made sure I was sitting at the kitchen table reading lazily through the book when he came in.
“So…?”
“You got me,” I said. I was out.
Non. Event.
Epilogue: Francois came to our house the following weekend and Dad had already told him the news. As Francois exited his Datsun 280Z, I ran across the parking lot and threw my arms open, shouting: “MOTHER!!”
I have never seen a man more repulsed in my life.
Trapped With Neil Diamond
While rummaging around Funky Junky in Kensington Market, I came across a thing that immediately shot me back to being 11 years old. A time when all I had to worry about were leeches and just how much longer I could stay in the water before the sun went down. A time filled with wind in the trees, a-frame tents made out of musty wool blankets strung up between two trees, of chasing frogs and raspberry picking at 8am in the morning. Yes, I’m talking about our summer cottage.
The thing that transported me back? My father’s coveted 8 track player. Space aged white in a pill shape. Plenty of buttons to mess with, it looked like something that fell out of the ass of the set dresser for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tucked in the back of the shop was the exact model that Dad had sitting in his bedroom. The unit came with oblong pill-shaped speakers that Dad had placed up on the tops of the divider walls so the entire cottage could hear his music. Our cottage was very short on audible privacy since the walls didn’t go all the way up. 5 silent kids “sleeping” would be shattered by one of us farting. Hilarity ensued.
I guess at one point I was so enamoured with the buttons and sliders that I can clearly remember being admonished for touching them at one point. Dad set down the law: YOU DO NOT TOUCH THIS RADIO AT ALL. An edict that I obeyed to the letter.
One summer day, Dad took the 2-seater sailboat out onto the lake, leaving me behind in the cottage to fend for myself. But he left with Neil Diamond playing in the 8 track. And for you younglings, 8 track players are a continuous audio system. Once started, the only way to shut off the music is to eject the cartridge. Or an atomic blast to melt the various plastic parts. Regardless, I was caught in a logic loop: unable to touch the player, unable to stray far from the cottage. After the third playing of Forever In Blue Jeans I was ready to slice off my ears for relief.
I decided to take matters into my own hands. I strolled into the bedroom and slid the volume controls to zero. I had only slightly disobeyed his orders. I felt smart!
I don’t recall if I caught hell for that. But I do remember that radio/player. Seeing it last weekend was like seeing an old acquaintance across a crowded room.
Coming Out: To my Friends
Coming out to my Mom is here. I’m continuing on my carpet bombing trip of telling friends and family that I’m gay…
I’m sitting in Joan’s back yard. She’s got her signature can of Coke in hand and she’s fretting about some grade 13 essay that is due later that week but she’s not making any effort to actually work on it. Typical Joan. She could knock a solid 90% out of the park 10 minutes before the 1200 word essay was due. I drop the bomb.
She takes a long pull off her Coke and looks at me. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”
Non. Event.
Dave sits on the swing where we once waited out the effects of a stupid LSD experiment. We shared a common love of gorey horror movies overflowing into practical jokes – when we met he threw a bag of ketchup at me trying to make me look “bloodied”. He was the first person who I could relate to on a nerdy level; that it was ok to like science fiction.
“That’s cool. I guess. What’s it like?” He was always curious. Not “gay-curious” but curious in general – hence I thought it appropriate to tell him on the “LSD swings”. If I had said I tried recreating the Jack the Ripper killings, he’d probably ask the same thing.
Non. Event.
My best friend Rick and I were walking towards the school when I told him. In high school hierarchy Rick was an anomaly – the football jock who liked to hang around the “Theatre fags”, just like Fynn off of Glee. I am sure he caught hell from the rest of the football team over it, but he never let on. Rick was highly intelligent but reveled in pretending to be stupid – it was his schtick that made our circle of friends love him more. After dropping the bomb, he didn’t said anything for 20 or so paces, then muttered: “What do you say when your best friend tells you he’s gay?” It was the last thing he ever said to me. We walked the rest of the way back in silence and at the school he waved his hand dismissively when he yanked the door open. Brockvegas Collegiate Institute swallowed him whole and I never heard from him again.
I suspect he was struggling with his feelings for me. That or he could sense that I loved him a tad bit more than “a friend” and I had dragged our relationship across the border into “inappropriate”. Either way, I’ll never know. Rick became a cop in some remote Northern Territory and last I heard was married off.
So… Sort of not “non event”.