I drove in to work today specifically to attend one of my longest-time friend’s 25-Year Anniversary with IBM. He invited 7 or 8 colleagues to have lunch with him (on IBM) at Manchester Grill in Morrisville.
His name is Kevan, and he also invited another guy named John who we hung around with in the “early” days of IBM. The rest of the people there were people he currently works with.
It was weird being “the old guys,” as of course, when we three hung out everyone else was the “old guy.” One of the other guys asked us what was different about IBM “back then” (we’re talking the early 80s here).
John answered, “Well, we had 3270 terminals for one thing, and for another, there was only one per office, so we shared them. You were timed, so if you had a lot to do, well, you did as much as you could until you timed out. That’s how we all learned to drink coffee… while we waited for our turn to get back on the computer.”
It was great to see my friend Kevan again. I’m glad we’re still friends. I spent five years of my life—way back in those early years while I was still married of course—hopelessly in love with him. Hopelessly for me, as he was hopelessly straight—still is.
My coming out to him was one of the most memorable of “those kinds of chats,” which I had with a lot of people as I went from being totally in the closet for 35 years to being totally out virtually overnight. His response was the quintessentially empathic response you could ever hope for, especially from a straight guy.
After telling him that Donna and I were separating, because I was gay, I added, “And for five years I was totally in love with you,” to which he replied, “That must have been very difficult for you.”
Not, “Gross.”
Not, “That’s sick.”
Not, “Get away from me you faggot.”
Just, “That must have been very difficult for you.”
What a gift!
This afternoon Brendan helped me create a PDF file from some DITA files that I’ve been unable to successfully process for a while now.
At home, my next door neighbor, Kathryn, knocked on my door at around 7:00 to ask me if someone had killed a giant bird.
Seeing the confusion on my face, she pointed to the road that goes down the middle of our townhouses’ parking lot, which was covered in feathers. “They go all the way down,” she said pointing to the right, “And all the way up and out on the main street,” indicating uphill and around the corner.
Lots of feathers, you know what that means. Large pillows. [Badump-bump! I’m here ’til the end of this blog entry, folks.]
For some weird reason that reminds me of Bette Midler’s Sophie Tucker jokes, my favorite being:
Ernie: Soph, you got no tits and a tight box.
Sophie: Ernie, get off my back!
An affirmation e-mail today:
| You probably get tired of this, but once again I just have to thank you for making me laugh. I just took a minute out of a fragmented day to catch up on your blog. I think I’ve told you before that I save reading it until I need something to make me laugh, smile, or think. I swear it’s like some kind of secret “pick-me-up” indulgence. Better than potato chips any day, and you know that’s saying a lot for me.
I can’t stop laughing about your description of the cell phone gal and the conversation with the unmarried woman outside the bathroom. My real reason for writing this is to agree. YES, you simply MUST do something about your writing. Whatever you do, I’d buy it – copies for my friends too. Then I’d hound you to autograph mine because you’re going to make it BIG one day, my friend. Carry on… |
I’m meeting Joe out tonight at 10 for some scareyoke. I’m ending today’s entry now, though, which feels like cheating, but in the grand scheme of things… who cares???