A New Buddy

Seventy percent of the body’s sense receptors cluster in the eyes, and it is mainly through seeing the world that we appraise and understand it. Lovers close their eyes when they kiss because, if they didn’t, there would be too many visual distractions to notice and analyze—the sudden close-up of the loved one’s eyelashes and hair, the wallpaper, the clock face, the dust notes suspended in a shaft of sunlight. Lovers want to do serious touching, and not be disturbed.

-Diane Ackerman
A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES

Twenty-five years ago today:

May 29, 1987
Friday

It’s BOB HOPE’s Birthday today.  He’s a GEMINI, like me.

Work was all right. Carla returned to work. We had lunch together at the deli on Third Street. It was nice. She’s very irresponsible though. I just learned today that her license was taken away; yet she drove to work anyway! She’s too much.

After work I napped and then hit the gym.

Scott Lauer was at the gym again.
“When are you leaving?”

I knew he wanted a ride back to the Alameda Naval Air Station, so I said, “About ten minutes.”

During the drive he was having hungry pangs, so we stopped at KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN on Encinal Avenue. He treated me.

“So, where in OHIO are you from?” I asked after I bit an Original recipe thigh, “I once met a really nice girl from Akron in Hawaii.”
Scott answered, “Oh, it’s a really small town called Stone Creek. It’s near Canon or New Philadelphia.”
It was all foreign area to me and he could tell from my facial expression that I had no clue about Canon or New Philadelphia.  I wondered what it would be like to live in such a small town. He’s a nice chap though. He is only twenty years old.
Scott said, “I thought you were…like twenty-two!”

I laughed and said, “I thought you were about twenty-two!”

“You did?”
“Yeah, I might have even believed twenty-eight.”
He smiled. I think he wanted to look older.

Scott didn’t feel like going straight to the Naval Air Base, so I suggested a movie. We went to WHEREHOUSE RECORDS. I selected the movie. I wonder if I had hidden notions considering the title I selected: THE SURE THING.

We watched the movie at my place. THE SURE THING was a 1985 film starring John Cusack who played a college student planning a cross country trip to get laid. He ends up traveling with a young woman and they hate each other until they begin to 'grow and tolerate one another'.  It was one of those love-hate things that reminded me of Rachelle Davies.  The movie also made me think of Eileen and I.

I silently thought, “Yes, to Scott. He’s QBL,” and asked myself, “…but how can I be sure?”
I drove him to the Naval Air Station Base. It was my first time driving in there and I’ve lived in Alameda for most of my life. It was a fun evening. I fell like a made a new buddy. And now I was home alone.

There was a faint air of sadness about him now. He enjoyed the change. He imagined that he looked like a young man who had had an unhappy love affair or some kind of emotional disaster, and was trying to recuperate in a civilized way, by visiting some of the more beautiful places on the earth.
-Patricia Highsmith
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY