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Thursday, March 1, 2007

Yep

My mother seems to think I’m one second away from drinking a bottle of wine and jumping off the Foshay Tower.

“If you need some helping get through this, you just go to a doctor and they’ll prescribe you something,” she said. “That’s what I would do.”

She’ll deny it, but I swear she said it.

Really, it’s not quite to that extreme. If I learned anything from growing up gay in a secluded farm town and putting myself through Christian ex-gay ministries, it’s how to find renewal and keep going.

This past weekend in D.C., when I just wanted to be here in Minneapolis, I called my best friend from college, Jim, who lives in the District. We watched the Oscars together, I met his friends, we ate chicken wings and cupcakes. It was like old times, plus a pound or two around my belly and minus some perk in my ass.

The next night I called an old roommate from college, Jeremy, a man’s man construction worker. We were an unlikely pair to share a room, what with his smelly feet and questionable showering habits and my flaming friends. But I’ve missed him ever since I graduated and moved out of our huge, dirty co-op house.

When he arrived at my hotel, we went to dinner, along with Jim and my co-worker, Jenelle. Afterward we walked to Jim’s favorite bar for showtunes night, where another old roommate of mine joined us. And then there it was – my community in an unlikely place: One old friend, two roommates (one gay and one straight), one co-worker and one old friend’s current friends, all making fun of a terrible medley of Rosie O’Donnell in Broadway shows. Jim bought drinks. A young man passing by told me I have beautiful eyes. Jeremy wondered what in the hell he was doing there. It wasn’t so bad.

Posted by Aaron on March 1, 2007 12:47 PM