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10:05 p.m. - 2005-06-24
Rick Rant
I would return home from my 'date' with some color on my cheeks, pleasantly spent. Sometimes I would cook my famous spaghetti for nobody but me. I loved watching the windows steam up and knowing that I had created a home for myself. All alone in the world, I felt somehow cozy. Self contained. Life went on this way for some time, one day spilling into the next. I swam in the pool and read in the deck chairs. Tan and languid. And then one day I met Rick. He was visiting another tenant for a barbeque. He offered me a hot dog and we talked until everyone else had long gone. Until the yellow moon lit the courtyard and the scent of Night Blooming Jasmine filled the air. Until Anna Mae turned out her porch light after shooting us a really dirty look. Until I realized that what I was feeling could not be contained within my four walls and so I lingered outside in that plastic chair long after even Rick had gone home. In the humid summer night, June bugs clicking like castanets, I memorized his eyes, which were the color of that slice of lime that had floated all night on the surface of his Tangueray. His teeth were just crooked enough to break my heart. His hair was boyishly chopped and the color of seaweed. He couldn't have been more than 5' 7" in his shabby generic brand running shoes. His hands were small and delicate. He had a bit of a belly and the t-shirt that strained to conceal it read "Party By The River". He was smart and funny. He had a way of looking into my eyes way too long. When we hugged goodbye, he smoothed my hair so lightly that maybe I imagined it. His voice, to quote Madonna, was like a prayer. I felt that I had never not known him. Never. No explanation was necessary. We were instantly an intrinsic part of one another's lives. The first time he came to pick me up, I watched him walk nervously up the steps holding a single red rose from his garden. He had pulled out all the thorns. It was smooth as his chin. Rick was protective like that. If I was to feel pain, it was to be intentionally at his own hand and not some random act of God like a thistle. He could be cruel. But when I would catch him gazing into his dog's eyes, there was a gentleness that made me feel almost embarrassed. As though I had stumbled upon something sacred and didn't know where to look so as not to dishonor the moment. He loved me right away, from that very first night. Not one for using the "L" word, still there was no time that I did not already know. And I loved him unreservedly, outside of time. I was giddy in his presence. Recklessly elated. Instinctively, he knew how to nurture. Our very first date, he took me to see "Die Hard". Tugging my sweater about my shoulders, he whispered in the dark, "Are you cold, honey?" Rick was a strange mix of daredevil and saint. He was afraid of nothing and yet treated every kind of life with profound respect. He cared for his strange menagerie like they were children. There was a dwarf bunny, a tarantula, two parakeets, numerous guinea pigs that reproduced daily and were impossible to keep track of, a family of white mice, a cat and two enormous dogs, Punky and Samantha (named for Bewitched). He lived in a flat roofed shack behind a house in Van Nuys. It had no insulation and was routinely over a hundred in the summer, freezing in the winter. His roommate, Joe, was a full blooded Native American, in his sixties and with a yen for vodka. He had the widest heart of anyone I had met since Matthew. When Rick would get moody, which was pretty often, Joe would try his best to soften him up with humor. He was my secret ally. I would get my feelings hurt and then Joe would say something impossibly sweet and absurd. Rick would end up inviting me to stay for dinner. I loved that I was given chores. It made me feel a part of the family. "Chop chop," Rick would admonish me if I slowed down while trimming the asparagus and brocolli. Somehow he could throw his voice as if the words were coming straaight out of the rainbow trout we were about to eat. Cooking with Rick and Joe was one of the warmest experiences of my life. After dinner, the three of us would play Pictionary. Joe just couldn't draw. Rick and I would laugh unmercilessly at his attempts to communicate with the pencil. Rick would probably have been my hands down choice for life if he had not been gay. As it was, we both believed in our secret hearts that it would still work out some way, somehow. The waitress at our favorite Thai restaurant was always teasing us about when we were going to have children. Rick would grin at me and say under his breath, "We'll have to break a few laws of nature". We were not your ordinary couple. But everyone could easily see and there was no denying that we were in love.

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