Bobby

Every June I think about Bobby. (He comes to mind at other times during the year, of course, but during June especially because it was on a sunny L.A. day in June when I last saw him.)

Bobby and I were polar opposites in a lot of ways...and not just because I was black and he was white. Bobby short and waif-like; I was tall and bear-like. Bobby was effusive and gregarious (due to a bubbly nature that he chose not to try to restrain); I was reticent and aloof (due to shyness more than arrogance.) Bobby loved rhythm and blues to exclusion of any other kind of music; I liked r&b but I was also an unabashed rock and roll guy. Polar opposites...and, for too brief a season, the best of friends.

Bobby and I attended Louis Pasteur Junior High and during our 9th grade year...1970-1971...we came together. Honestly I really don't remember exactly how or when...it just seems like he was always there during that year. We laughed at things that other people didn't get at all...we shared things (dreams and the like) with each other that teenaged boys didn't often easily share with others...sometimes we fought like brothers (and made up without anyone saying "I'm sorry" out loud.)

Bobby and I were indeed best friends.

The last day we spent together was sunny day in June...the day we "graduated" Junior High. The school auditorium was too small to allow the class to graduate altogether while accommodating friends and family who wanted to be there so the class was split...half attending a ceremony in the morning, the rest having their "graduation" in the early afternoon. My ceremony was in the morning; Bobby's, almost as a matter of course, was in the afternoon.

I went through my ceremony, then got congratulated by family and friends and then I waited alone outside the auditorium while Bobby went through his. I waited for him to be congratulated by his family and then we, still resplendent in our new suits, went off to celebrate the day together. We went to McDonald's for lunch, chatting up some girls we knew from school who happened to be there too. We walked the neighborhood, talking about what we were going to do during the summer, ending up at an amusement arcade (playing pinball and miniature golf.) We went to a local department store to buy 45's...r&b for him...rock for me.

We lingered on the corner where our paths home diverged for the longest time, talking about everything and nothing. And then we went our separate ways.

The next day I was on a plane heading for a summer in Pennsylvania (where my grandmother and the rest of my father's side of the family lived.) When I got back, Bobby had moved (his mother moved them a lot...I was never sure why) and I never knew where he had gone.

I've always wondered what happened to Bobby (I've searched online occasionally but have found nothing...maybe it's for the best, maybe the fondest memories are intended to be just that...memories.)

I've imagined that he found a great love, someone who embraced his wonderfully weird sense of humor and his open heart and his r&b soul, and has lived happily ever after being who he wanted to be and doing what he wanted to do. Yeah, that would be cool...and I pray that it is just so (after all, that's what best friends do for each other, right? :-)

One Last Drink Before Good Night

“You were a bit of a bastard to me near the end.” She said it with unshakeable belief in the truth of her pronouncement.

He nodded, vaguely and thoughtfully, and stared back at her. “You had your moments, too.”

She winced. And then she smiled…a bit guiltily, a bit shyly, a bit angrily, a bit coquettishly…and nodded. “We were quite the pair,” she agreed.

“Breaking up will do that to you,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too cavalier.

She smiled again, more ruefully this time. “I try to remember all of the lies, all of the cruel things you said the last time we spoke…I try to keep hating you…but mostly I remember the times we were happy. Isn’t that funny?”

It wasn’t funny…despite the acrimonious way we parted ways, he mostly remembered the times when they were happy, too. “I never lied to you,” he said, trying not to sound overly defensive. “At least I don’t think I did.”

Her smile slid away. “You let me believe things between us were going someplace they never were going to go,” she said, just a bit testily. “Isn’t that a lie?”

He curbed a tart retort. He took a shallow breath and said, “I said what I said…you heard what you wanted to hear…maybe we were both guilty of lying…to ourselves and to each other…”

She started to say something but thought better of it. “Maybe…” she replied warily, as if the implications of that were something she’d rather not deal with just then.

His mind wandered, remembering the way she sighed ever so sweetly when they used to kiss…the way she softly arched her body when he ran his finger down the small of her back…the way soft electricity surged through his body every time she tasted that one spot on the nape of his neck…and then he drew himself back. It was nostalgia…sweet nostalgia to be sure…but mere nostalgia just the same.

“Think we could ever be friends again? She asked, quite unsure of the true answer herself.

“I dunno,” he said, though he had a sobering inkling that they probably could not.

“Me either,” she said, just a tad wistfully.

They tabled that discussion. They smiled at each other…full of things that would not, could not, probably should not be spoken…and then they ordered one last drink before “good night”.

(not) a whole lotta shakin' goin' on

So I'm sitting on my couch in my pajamas this morning...sipping tea, enjoying an interesting reports about Toulouse Lautrec, Mark Twain's house, and the celebrity/paparazzi wars on Sunday Morning, basically just easing into a cool, grey, quiet weekend morning...when the Earth moves. Just a bit. Just a distinct rolling motion. Just for a scant few seconds. (It radiated, according to news reports, out of the desert...5.5 on the Richter Scale there, considerably less potent by the time it reached us here on the coast.)

I've lived in Southern California for most of my life so earthquakes have to be of relatively substantial strength for me to really notice them (we get itty-bitty quakes all the time...the vast majority of them meriting neither notice nor comment from jaded Californians.)

The dog, sleeping on the floor next to the couch, didn't stir. The cats, claiming slumber space in various parts of the house, shrugged it off. I waited for a minute or two to see if there would be an aftershock (more out of curiosity than concern) and then shrugged myself and slipped back into my lazy morning...hey, Sunday Morning was doing a story about wiener dog races in Texas by then, now that was interesting! :-)

My Love is with You

The twilight is cold and still…and so too is Richard Fairbanks, Sr. In the next room, the others talk amongst themselves reverently…sorrowfully…bravely. In his sitting room, Richard Fairbanks, Sr. stares into the darkness, the half bottle of 20-year-old scotch he’d drunk during the past couple of hours not making the slightest dent in his anger and his pain. A small envelope, distended out of shape by the cassette tape inside, sits accusingly on the small table next to his plush chair. Richard Fairbanks, Sr. gives that no thought either. It doesn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Earlier in the day, he had buried his only son.

Richard Fairbanks, Jr. had grown up as the proverbial apple of his father’s eye…a reflection and a tribute, one man’s life echoed and amplified in the flowering of another. They were the best of friends with a bond so intimate and strong that Marilyn Boyd-Fairbanks, doting wife and mother, had always felt vaguely excluded in the house in which she was the emotional foundation that made it a home.

And so it was for 19 years until the blackest day (before this one) in the life of Richard Fairbanks, Sr. On a day that Richard Fairbanks, Sr. remembers as being gray and stormy (though in fact it was quite balmy and blue), his only child…the son of his soul…broke his father’s unsuspecting heart with a simple declarative statement: “Dad, I’m gay.”

The air had rushed out of the room with a thunderous howl and Richard Fairbanks, Sr. had found himself tumbling through a chaotic haze (he doesn’t remember the acid tears and cruel invective…but they were there just the same) and when the air returned, the front door was slamming in the wake of his only son and his wife’s eyes were regarding him with the daunting mixture of volcanic rage and icy accusation.

Six years passed. Letters and Father’s Day cards were returned unopened. Marilyn Boyd-Fairbanks hovered in more distant orbits around her husband’s increasingly bitter and unforgiving life. Richard Fairbanks, Sr. thought of his only son constantly but spoke of him to no one. In whispers and echoes and eavesdropping on his wife’s end of phone conversations he gathered information about his son’s life…tales of love won and lost, activism proudly indulged, a bright, blossoming path that Richard Fairbanks, Sr. could barely comprehend.

And then, three prior to his blackest day, an unusually late evening phone call…tears and anguish from behind Marilyn Boyd-Fairbanks’ locked bedroom door…the words of vapid newscaster blandly telling the tale after the second commercial break: “gay activist…Rich Fairbanks…arriving home after talk show appearance…bullet from speeding pickup…died en route to hospital…”

And now, Richard Fairbanks, Sr. reaches for the scotch only to accidentally brush the envelope onto the floor. A tall young man with liquid, sad and unforgiving, eyes…Scott something or other…had pressed into Richard Fairbanks, Sr.’s hands…”Rich wanted you to have this.”

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. puts aside his glass and retrieves the envelope and opens it. The cassette tumbles out along with a folded sheet of paper. He unfolds the paper, instantly recognizing his son’s handwriting, and he reads it barely comprehending the words. He takes the tape and crosses the room. He places the tape into the stereo and plays it.

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. gives a start as propulsive music begins to play. He crosses back to his chair and takes up the letter again. He listens as the singer…identified at the top of the letter as Stevie Wonder…begins to sing:

…I was just walking down the street,
looking forward to seeing the friends
I was to meet…

Richard Fairbanks, Sr., a dyed-in-the-wool Sinatra fan, wonders why his son chose this song. He reads the letter: “Dear Dad, If you are reading this then I am gone…probably murdered. I’ve tried to get in touch with you for years but you rebuffed me every time. I hope that we can finally make our peace…”

Stevie sings:
….I started to turn to go back
and they up and blew me away…

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. murmurs inaudibly. …listen to the song, Dad. Listen and remember me always…

…though my life they’ve taken,
they can’t take what we’ve shared.
spread the love I’ve given and I’ll be there…
my love is with you, wherever you are,
my love is with you…

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. glances up into the gathering darkness as his foolish heart sheds some of the ice he had willfully placed around it for years. He barely notices the tears falling like winter rain on the paper making blue-black pools in the words written there.

….when you’re joyful, when you’re lonely,
when you’re happy, when tears are streamin’
right down your face….
my love is with you, my father,
I’m with you…

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. looks at the letter, his tired, shattered heart full of love, regret, aching sadness, and boundless loss…Despite it all, I always loved you, Dad. Never forget that. My love is with you. As always, Richie…he rises from the chair as the song ends and walks towards the door, towards the company of the other people who loved Richard Fairbanks, Jr….towards the company of the other people who loved his only son.

“My Love is With You”
words and music by Stevie Wonder
©1995 Stevland Morris Music (ASCAP)

a sublimely obvious truth

We built castles out of sawdust and imagination on a gray June day (it’s often gray in San Diego in early June; the weathercasters gave it a name…”June gloom”…and we have long since made our peace with it.)

We marveled at hummingbirds and brown doves that came to dance in the fountain in the garden or partake of some of the seeds set out to fill their avian bellies.

We took the time to literally stop and smell the roses (the yellow ones, the red ones, the white ones, and, especially, the pink ones…my companion loves pink.)

We walked “far, far away” and back again in almost less time than it took to tell the tale.

And on a train and a swing and an expressway between the land of snakes and the castles of princesses…all of which being embodied in the form of a rope secured between two trees in the front yard…my companion dangled from on high with the gleeful abandon and almost unlimited energy that is part and parcel of the experience of almost all four-year-olds.

“Whoa,” said I holding my companion securely as she reached for the ground with a soft symphony of giggles echoing through her small frame, “that’s a long way down! Aren’t you afraid?”

My companion frowned for an instant and then shook her head. “I’m not going to fall,” she said with calm assurance, “not while you’re holding me, Papa.”

Yeah. How silly of me to even raise such a foolish question.

Blogs of Note: Waking Ambrose

Undaunted by the passage of time and the shifting of social norms, Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary remains a wondrous treasure trove for word lovers and for observers of the human condition. Its acerbic wit, biting social commentary, and sly whimsy are...sometimes lost or arcane words and phrases notwithstanding...as potent, provocative, and illuminating today as they were in Bierce's day (he was born in 1842.)

I hadn't read much of Bierce's work after leaving college (so very many years ago) but, much to my delight, this site re-introduced me to the Dictionary (as the work is in public domain, it is available online but, ever the book lover, I preferred to get a copy from my friendly neighborhood bookseller.)

With Waking Ambrose, Doug Pascover deftly updates entries from the Dictionary (juxtaposing the original Bierce entries alongside clever new offerings on various words) with appealing wit and thought-provoking aplomb. It's a delightful, compelling site that, agree or disagree with individual entries, is consistently worthy of time and attention. I invite you to go there and be amused...to be challenged...to be given food for thought...to be outraged (if you must)...to be enthralled (I know I am.)

The Dance

Part of me was sure that she wouldn’t come.

She and I had tried to become “us” at the wrong time…in the wrong place. That almost never works.

We danced and shadowboxed, flirting and kissing and then running back to our respective corners, knowing it would never be want we thought we wanted it to be. But we were lonely…we were young…we were just foolish enough to believe that nothing could stop us if we put our minds to it and put our naïve hearts together.

Yeah…that almost never works either.

We drifted, looking for a graceful way to embrace the inevitable, wanting absolution once we accepted that what we thought we wanted was never to be. It’s not about your daddy, said I. It’s not about your mother, said she. It’s not about the gulfs of race and experiences and lives mapped out before we had a chance to figure out who we were, said we…as if lying to ourselves…as if lying to each other…would somehow make it all better. That almost…

We moved on, flowing with time and heartache to different, distant shores. I ignored the invitation to her wedding; she (and her husband) accepted the invitation to mine. We laughed about “old times”…now colored in bittersweet shades of amber and rust…and vowed to keep in touch. That…

We met in the place we used to go to…a small bar several put upon years beyond charming…on the anniversary of the first night our hearts quickened almost beyond comprehension because my dark hand was resting on her pale breast. I sat alone for a few moments and just as I was on the verge on cursing myself for a fool, she appeared.

We smiled…slowly, awkwardly, guiltily, shyly, lovingly…and shared a drink. She went over to the jukebox and played the song…she held out her hand and I drew her close…my arm slipping easily, comfortably around her slender waist. I delighted in her familiar aroma…honeysuckle and cigarette smoke…that had long ago seared itself sweetly into my consciousness. We closed our eyes and danced…slowly, awkwardly, guiltily, shyly, lovingly…until the music stopped.

She touched my face…I kissed her forehead….we giggled like children and walked out of that place gingerly holding hands. In the street we made no promises…told no lies…embracing the moment for what it was we nodded knowingly and then, fighting the urge to look back just one more time, we went home to our different, distant shores.

And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss the dance...

“The Dance” words and music by Tony Arata

- for LDC -