You Be Me for a While

I just never get sick of listening to that (arrow pointing upward) song...


B moved in to my apartment on Pinegrove on Halloween, 1988.
There is something depressing about the telling of tragic love affairs that precludes my ability to write out a full name, even in an ancient tragic love affair, like this one. You know who B is. I wrote about him before.
But what makes a tragedy? Let's find out...

It was odd that B moved in with me on Halloween that year, for on a Halloween, ten years prior, is when I fell in love with him.
It's seems a little silly saying that I 'fell in love' when I was 13, but I knew. You know when you know. The way you see the world is altered forever, because of the way you feel for someone. It doesn't seem to matter how old you are.
I had a slight understanding as to what it meant to be gay, in 1979, but I hadn't an ability to put a label on how I felt for B. I loved him. Period. I loved the soul that occupied that person that was B.
I ask myself now (because I have a long standing bad habit of over-analyzing the sea of minutia in my life) what, exactly, did I fall in love with? Was it the way he looked, and how he perfectly fit the part, of a 50's greaser, in his slicked-back, black hair, and the black leather motorcycle jacket, blue jeans and white t-shirt he wore for our Junior High's costume day? Or was I in love with him for the fact he refused to 'hide' from our classmates any more, classmates who, for the most part, labeled us 'fags' and ostracized us. I would never have dared to dress up that day, for when you already get way too much negative attention for how you look, you tend to try to not look any weirder.

hmm.
and, hmm.

I've found living in a material world, while wishing to be immaterial, can create problems. Even though I had found a way to embrace what made me different from my peers, it didn't change how they perceived me. Growing up in that intense of an environment can create an addiction to an intense life. You just get used to it. So used to it, it becomes the norm. B and I found anything and everything to fit that bill.
I can honestly say that now I don't care how I'm perceived by the people around me, because I refuse to ever judge people by how they look. Through my experiences with people from all over the world, my perceptions have been proven wrong too many times.

I'm not sure what I was expecting to happen when B moved in with me. The first couple weeks were great, but I soon found out he didn't move in to be my boyfriend. I guess I thought that would happen? Maybe it would have helped had I mentioned that. But all I ever wanted to do was to possess him completely every minute I was ever with him, and that scared me. And I didn't want to scare him off. I saw him as deer in the woods sometimes: any little thing could send him flying away. I thought if I inched out my true feelings a little at a time, over a couple months, we could both handle it. It doesn't work that way.

hmm.
and, hmm, again.

I was to also learn when B moved in, he brought his H habit with him. I knew this because his friend Bob was back in the picture, and H was the only reason he would be around. B embraced his craving for a life of intensity, and let it rule him back then. He acted on the immediacy of his emotions, and fed them whatever they wanted. I hated Bob and what his presence meant, but he did save B and I a few times by shoplifting food for us at the White Hen, because we constantly spent every cent on drugs. No one could shoplift like him. Give him 3 minutes in a store, and you could eat for a week.
After a few days, B found a job for a while tending bar, at Windy City, where DSW on Halsted is now. It was a crummy old building that had a long staircase leading up to it's den of blow, and I climbed it every weekend. By this time B and I had had a talk about our future together, and while he loved me, we couldn't be boyfriends, but we could still sleep together sometimes. Friends with benefits, as the kids call it nowadays.
I drowned my sorrows in Billie Holiday, the future promises of Viva Hate, and scotch. For hours at a time. I can't imagine behaving like that today, so that's a good thing, I guess. I still can't bear to listen to her though, and tonight, while writing this, is the first time in 20 years I've deliberately played any of Billie's music. Which is too bad. It's good.

mmm.
mmm.
and, mmm.

As November drew to a close, I was spending more nights with Bob at B's bar, where B was getting dangerously close to losing his job. Little did I know one of us wouldn't live to see 1989...


Links, in order of appearance: Replacements, Kate Bush, Radiohead, Joni Mitchell, Morrissey, Billie Holiday