Fifty years ago, on this date, I was in Houston, Texas, attending a Houston Grand Opera performance of Carlisle Floyd's OF MICE AND MEN with my friends the Humeniuk sisters - Ann(e) and Helen - and Larry Knickerbocker.
Helen, Larry, and I had moved down to Texas in January 1973 where Ann(e) was attending the University of Houston and working as a waitress. Helen started taking courses, and Larry got a job as an auto mechanic; they had fallen in love and they would eventually marry.
I was working in a drugstore at the Astroworld Hotel. We went to basketball games and to the roller derby, but we were poor so we spent most evenings at the apartment, singing folk songs while passing a joint and a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill. At night, we'd fall asleep with Jackson Browne's first album, Saturate Before Using, playing on endless repeat:
"Well, I looked into a house I once lived in
Around the time I first went on my own
When the roads were as many as the places I had dreamed of,
And my friends and I were one..."
It was a peaceful, laid-back life I was leading, and it could have gone on indefinitely. But I often found myself thinking of New York City, of The Met and New York City Opera, and of my opera-loving friends. And there was also this restlessness: a feeling that time was passing me by and that a different life was meant for me.
I was very attracted to one of Ann(e)'s male friends, but he was married to a woman and they had a daughter. A couple of times I got a vibe that the feeling was mutual, but I simply didn't know how to go about making something happen.
By March, I was getting weary of the situation. A falling out with my boss at the drugstore prompted me to quit my job. For a couple of days I looked at some job ads, but nothing appealed to me. Then one day I got up, feeling that something had to give; Ann(e) and Larry were at work, and Helen was studying. I began packing my stuff into my car. Helen asked, "Are you leaving us?" but she didn't try to persuade me to stay. I left a note for Ann(e) and took off.
On the 1,600-mile journey, I spent two nights in motels and finally arrived back in the little town. I hadn't let my parents know I was returning; I walked into the kitchen where my mom was puttering around, and asked: "What's for supper?"
After a few days, I got a job in a pharmaceutical supply warehouse in Syracuse and took a tiny apartment nearby. But there were some crazies in the building, and after a few weeks, I moved back home and made the hour-long drive to work every morning.
Meanwhile, New York City was calling me. It wasn't until June that I got back to the City, for an AIDA with my beloved diva, Gilda Cruz-Romo. I loved seeing all my old friends again; during the intermission, we were standing about, gossiping. Z, a boy I was attracted to, was standing next to me. He was wearing a maroon sweater-vest and on his chest a stray bit of white thread caught my eye. I reached out and picked the thread off; he gave me a big smile. For the first time, everything felt right. But it wasn't until October that anything actually happened between us.
I often think back to the interlude in Houston, and what might have happened had I stayed on there. But in time, Ann{e), Helen, and Larry moved back to Syracuse and our friendship picked up where it had left off. Helen and Larry married and raised a family; Ann{e) also got married.
Meanwhile, in the City, after my hopeless love for Z sputtered out, I took up with TJ: my first domesticated gay relationship. After I moved to join TJ at Sarah Lawrence College, I began to lose touch with my Syracuse friends. After TJ finished school, we moved to Hartford and, after spending 22 years there, I finally moved to my dream City in 1998, just shy of my 50th birthday.
One sad story that came out of the weeks I spent in Houston was that D, the married boy I had a crush on, did eventually leave his wife and enter into a gay relationship. But it was terribly difficult being gay in those years, especially deep in the heart of Texas. I eventually heard that D had committed suicide, and I found myself regretting that I had not responded to his shy flirting; like so many of life's possibilities, it remains a troubling enigma. When the Facebook era arrived, I became friends with his wife and daughter.
In 2017, I received news that Helen had passed away; although I had not seen or heard from her for many years, her death upset me deeply. I found Helen and Larry's two eldest daughters, Katherine and Rebecca, on Facebook where I see them often and keep tabs on their kids, being constantly reminded of those close friendships from so long ago.