This song recalls for me another springtime and the bittersweet memory of my first love, more than half a century ago. I've written about Pat before, if you care to read the story - that chaste and secret love we shared came to a sad ending, but I've never forgotten the sunshine days of fun and friendship - that special cameraderie of boys becoming men together.
Other loves and other disappointments followed; but at this late age, living contentedly with M.P., I realize how blessed I was to have those friendships and passing joys. How true the saying is - better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Yesterday, I happened to come across this recording by the Mike Faraci Band, a local NYC group, which is an amzingly good cover of the 1972 Badfinger original. Huh. How do those young'uns even know about such antique music, I wonder.
By the way, Mike is a man of parts: lead singer, guitarist, composer, artist, interior designer, and is highly skilled at carpentry and other DIY projects. Rather studly, too. Check out this tour of his New York City apartment - his aesthetic is not mine, but I can appreciate what he's done with colors, textures, and light:
Once in a great while, I go searching through the internet for old friends and lovers. More often than not, the search leads nowhere; too much time and distance have covered all tracks. But a couple of days ago, just on a sudden whim, I tried one more time. And I found Pat, my best friend in high school and church, more than half a century ago. Or rather, I found his obituary.
Pat was my first love, though we were not lovers in the physical sense, I'm sad to say. It would have been a glad and joyful thing - but damnation and denial got in the way.
He died in 2020, leaving four children and eleven grandchildren. I had wondered over the years if he was still alive, where he was, and how he was doing. The last I heard of him, in the late 70s, he was working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico - a high-paying but highly dangerous job.
The picture below, from his obituary site, was probably taken 20 or 30 years ago; he looks hearty, healthy, and prosperous there. The obit says he was much loved by his family and friends, and I suppose he had a pretty happy life. I'm very glad to know that.
Dapper, dashing Pat in the prime of life, long after I knew him. I've never had a picture of him until now, only memories.
We became friends in church when I was 16 and he was 17. It so happened that we both had parents in the same distant city, so it was only logical that on school holidays and other times, we would drive up together. I had a brand-new Chevy Malibu 350 V8, cherry red with a black vinyl top. Pat had no car; didn't want the responsibility, he said. So we had many long rides together and got to know each other very well.
We were an odd couple. Pat dropped out of school to work in construction; I finished high school and started junior college. We were about the same height, six foot in boots, but Pat had a sculpted, muscular body with washboard abs and a permanent tan from working outdoors year-round. I was a bookworm. He was blond, I was brunet. He was the life of the party, I was the quiet type. But opposites attract, don't they?
Early on, he asked me, "How did you get to be so smart?" I answered, "I don't know, it just happened. How did you get to be so strong?" He replied, "I don't know, it just happened." Despite the differences, we somehow gravitated together, and enjoyed each other's company greatly. Pat was the big brother I never had: a role model, someone to be a guy with. He filled a great need.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
