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Jon was a "Queen"
As a junior in college I had never seen anything like it. Growing up in Spokane I was seduced in high school by an activist friend I had met who surprisingly had moved there to be the President of a conservative Presbyterian college. "Those liberal colleges don't need another liberal, you can have greater impact here".
Growing up in a waspy suburban home we never talked about "queens" "gays" or even sex of any kind.
It was a surrealistic world of asexual reproduction. When the mechanics of sex were explained to me during the obligatory 7th grade father son talk my (very kind) father responded to my "eeewww" with a "good, its good you don't like it too much.""Why?""Guys who like it too much force themselves on women, its called rape".
My mother's only indication that she was aware of anything sexual is that one time in high school when walking down town we were passed with a women who was not wearing a bra, and my mother whistled "Getting to know you" from the King and I. It was literally the only time in my life that I ever experienced my mom whistling, making a sexual reference or being that funny.
So no I didn't know what a "Queen" was, but that is what he called himself.
In a bizarre experiment of eccumenical zeitgeist the Hollywood Presbyterian Church decided to send 4 very intelligent young adults who were estranged from their families and had no chance for higher education to the very well academically respected but culturally arachaic Presbyterian College that they had sent many of their own children to.
The resulting slow motion car wreck of watching 3 African Americans and 1 Gay Man to be frustrated and overwhelmed by this alternate reality was something that I could observe closely. They moved the AA into a dorm with mostly AA and Jon in the room next to me. All became my good friends.
I had never seen anyone like him. He kept dying his hair different shades of red and orange. He wore bright shirts with flowers. He wore light make up and terrific clothes that were always well ironed.
He also possessed a sharp mind, a great wit and an acid tongue.
His limp was wrist, his gait sashayed and he called himself a "queen".
Of course I asked stupid questions. Of course you could ask Jon what time it is and he would make you look stupid.
But he never did that. His acid tongue was always in recounting some terrific late night encounter at the gay bar where he commanded a quick following.
He patiently answered questions. I think I reminded him of somebody in his background because he also originally came from a conservative area. Most of the time they just tickled him. I can still here the laughter at "How do you feel about being the only gay here". I thought he was going to laugh up a lung.
I still recall asking it. I hate telling you about it. It still makes my eyes tear up.
"Why don't you try to change?"
He was in my room and he just seemed to deflate as he told me of his repeated suicide attempts and he just wept at the pain of it all. "Do you think that anyone would choose this?" I would like to think that the suicide attempts were fiction and that he was just weeping because a person whom he now loved had asked him such a stupid question. I would hate it if both were true, the latter is hard enough.
After the pretense of him actually going to classes had ended and he was just waiting to the end of the term to return to the world of hair dressing I would bundle up some food from lunch and knock on his door and he would eventually come over for his breakfast and he would recount the battles at the club he went to last night. It would slip out that now that he was in his 30's he was getting edged out of being the youngest brightest light and he faced an uncertain future. He would talk about finding the right guy, maybe a big truck driver.
"There are truck drivers that are gay?"
I learned alot from Jon.
The most important thing is that I learned how to ask basic questions in unfamiliar situations without making them stupid questions. "Why are you so flamboyant?" would become "What do you feel and what do you say to someone who wonders why you are so flamboyant?".
Oddly that skill would become valuable when after leaving college I spent 20 years escaping the suffocation I had growing up with living in Asia going from hill tribes to meeting North Vietnmaese Communist leaders shortly after their victory. Jon ended up being a useful mental companion when I lived in Islamic countries or talked with long time residents of illegal immigrant jails.
And so yesterday I was reminded of my own stupid questions and the gentle sweet friend who was so patient. Even in the begining I recognized the flamboyance as a defense mechanism of a very sweet guy. I like to think that's why he liked me.
I lost track of everyone I went to school with, most of us obviously don't share a lot in common. Even most of the "liberals" at college folded intellectually after Seminary and sell a very cheap grace from the pulpits they now command. (I admire Cizik for standing up and when it really counted being as honest as he could - he was the token liberal I replaced.)
I don't remember Jon's last name. I am not sure I ever even knew it. So I can't trace or google him.
But the calculus is there late 70's, proud attractive gay man, promiscuity.
So last night as I was drifting to sleep and still giggling about all the funny threads I would keep thinking of my friend who helped me so much.
All I could think of was that quilt.
Do I miss him? Can I barely see this screen now that I think about him?
Now that is a stupid fucking question.
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