Sunday Drive: Without You

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 mid-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 years ago or more; he looks hearty, healthy, and prosperous there.  The obit says he was much loved by his family and friends, and I suppose had a pretty happy life.  I'm glad to know that.

Dashing Pat in the prime of life, years 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 six-pack 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.

We were both known for being snappy dressers; in those days, men young and old wore suits to church every week, so we both had a nice collection of suits, ties, and shirts in all colors and stripes.  And some expensive colognes.  We liked the same movies and music - I remember rolling along the interstates thought the night as we sang along to the radio:

Bye, bye, Miss American Pie,

Drove my Chevy to the levee,

but the levee was dry . . . 

Pat liked to lip-synch to records, holding a Coke bottle or a curtain rod like a microphone and doing a rock-star performance.  The Nilsson song at the top of this article was one of our favorites, and he "sang" it to me many times.  A sweet memory.

After high school when I got my own place, Pat moved in with me, and life was good, out from under the parental roofs.  I worked some part-time jobs and had my mom's gas card.  Pat was making big money as a construction worker - $2.50 an hour!  He gave me 20 bucks a week for groceries (=$120 today), so we ate a lot of steak dinners.

Pat had to get up at 4 a.m. to be on the job site by 6.  On some impulse I didn't want to analyze, I started getting up at 4 a.m. too, just to make his lunch the way he liked it - sandwiches, chips, cookies, etc.  And when he would come home with the seams of his work pants busted out - he had big, muscular thighs - I would sew up the rips by hand with needle and thread.  

It all seems so obvious now what roles we were acting out.  But we were blind to the Ozzie and Harriet routine - or at least I was.  It just seemed to me I was doing nice things for my best friend - wouldn't anyone?  Isn't that Christian love in action?

Though we both felt the attraction, we never acted on it and couldn't talk about it, couldn't admit to ourselves what the feeling was between us.  It could not be otherwise in our little fundamentalist sect - the wrath of God and all that, you know - but somehow, without trying or meaning to, we had sussed each other out.  

I think most of my close friends in those days were other closet cases like me, drawn together by a subtle instinct, the magnetism that dare not speak its name

Your subtle motion, babe, 

brings out a need in me that no one can hear . . . 

It was a placid, happy life we had together, full of fun and laughter, without the shenanigans that get straight boys into trouble.  But still waters run deep.  What was left unspoken between us was swirling around beneath the surface, and there was no way to share our deepest, truest feelings with each other.  We never talked about love or sex - just pretended we were ordinary straight boys, regular guys.  Which was fine until the day the music died.  And it was I who blew up the record player.

To be very brief about very personal things, one day I perceived a change, a withdrawal; something was different, for no apparent reason.  I confronted him about it; he gave a lame excuse; I felt rejected.  It was my first time out of the chute; I didn't understand the ways of love.  Probably he was just trying to keep us both from mortal sin.  But my hurt turned into fury, and I threw him out of my house.  We never spoke or saw each other again.

There is a very fine line between love and hate.  It was not until years later, after I came out, that I realized I had been an asshole.  But I never got to say I'm sorry.  Now that I have seen his face for the first time in fifty years, I think perhaps, wherever he is, he understands and forgives.

Friends and lovers have come and gone, but I've never forgotten you, Pat.  There's a corner of my heart that belongs to you still.  Thank you for loving me and being my true friend.  God rest your soul in His eternal love.  Amen.

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