People be unraveling in anticlimatic

I have this…friend. “Had” this friend might be a better way to put it.

We were extremely close for decades. Met in high school. He reminded me of my Grandpa- very warm, very generous, and we lived and worked well together. He was the great cook that would make us all breakfast at the cafe on sunday mornings when we would listen to johnny cash and smoke a joint in the walk in cooler at 6:00 am way before any “managers” would even flirt with arriving (though they mostly stayed away on sundays).

I lived with him for many years in my early 30s- first in a cute little apartment down on Grove Street in town, as room mates. A place whose constant smell of ‘recently cooked pasta’ will never leave my memory. Those were the years I would walk two blocks to Leos on my nights off and enjoy a PBR at the Diviest bar in town, the only one my Dad felt comfortable going in when we were kids on our yearly holiday shopping day trip with just him to all pick something out for our Mom for christmas. He wasn’t at that bar any other day of the year, though he was still alive at that time, as was his mom my grandma, in that little corner of the world that used to be my house and my grandma’s house on the same block in my little neighborhood world, no different or more dangerous than Mr Roger’s Neighborhood, just a hop skip and a jump away. At Leos I would spend my time chatting with my good friend Brian the bartender, or Christy also my good friend, also a bartender there. Brian looked like Chief Brody from Jaws, but more redneck, and used to be a welder. Smoked Marlboro reds and had a real soft spot for young redheads. He’d go on to die of a heart attack a few years later, despite just being in his 50s. Christy was 6 foot 5 and not skinny with a massive natural blonde afro. She had an outdoor hot tub that she would invite me out to on condition I didn’t try to fuck her or any of the girlfriend’s she’d have over, and even then in the peak of my single years I was far more of a whore for hot tubs than I was for women, so I gladly consented to that bargain and enjoyed many a winter night gazing up through the mists at the stars above…

Where the christ was I?

My friend. My good friend on Grove Street that I lived with. He would go on to buy a house in the country, and I’d move out there with him and live in one of the two spare bedrooms. For a while we had this girl living in the 3rd bedroom, but she was “hard on things” as he put it, and after she got engaged and split we did not extend that room to anyone else. For years it was just the two of us, and it was great.

Though he started unraveling a bit. Control issues. Eventually culminating in asking me to move out because it was just too annoying to have someone living with him anymore. I understood, but was a bit hurt regardless, and got my own little apartment over on Jackson. We kept up. I’d go visit him often, hang out, catch up. But it’s been a couple years now, and I don’t know what’s left of our friendship.

He’s invited me to a few bbqs that I’ve ignored. I’ve shared a few things with him that he’s ignored. Sometimes we run into each other- or he has an emergency that he needs me help with on a work level, but I get the cordial pleasantries now, when before there was a much more familiar exchange.

“Always a pleasure, have a good one” just doesn’t sit right with me.
“Later Queer” or gtfo