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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

My Boyfriend Is Strange

So, my grandmother died this weekend (I called her Mamaw, no condolences necessary, I haven't seen her for years and years, she was a nice lady but we weren't close or anything) and Eric and I were having brunch at Clairemont Cafe and talk turned naturally enough to deaths in the family. And, out of the blue, Eric tells me that while his female relatives all live forever his male relatives have tended to die young. Asked for details, I was told that one died from exploding Japanese depth charges in a submarine, one died from bullet wounds in an attempted jailbreak, another was a prospector eaten by mountain lions, and another was a reporter on deadline who tried and failed to jump a chasm on his motorbike and plummeted to his death. I'm pretty sure that all of my male relatives die in late middle age from congestive heart failure. Here's my point, though. Can you imagine that Eric and I have been together for over eight years, in more or less constant contact and more or less continuous conversation the whole time and he has never managed to tell me any of those stories before? He cracks me up, he truly does. We were together for three years before he happened to mention dancing with Madonna in a gay bar when he was a teenager and being told by her that he and his boyfriend at the time were cute. For a typical guy, that would be first date anecdote material.

1 comment:

jimf said...

> Asked for details, I was told that one died from exploding
> Japanese depth charges in a submarine, one died from bullet wounds
> in an attempted jailbreak, another was a prospector eaten by
> mountain lions, and another was a reporter on deadline who tried
> and failed to jump a chasm on his motorbike and plummeted to
> his death.

"I am a descendant, do not forget, of Willie Brodie.
He was a man of substance, a cabinetmaker
and a designer of gibbets, a member of the town council
of Edinburgh, the keeper of two mistresses
who bore him five children between them.
Blood tells. He played much dice and fighting cocks.
Eventually, he was a wanted man
for having robbed the excise office.
Not that he needed the money; he was a burglar
for the sake of the danger.

He died cheerfully on a gibbet of his own devising in 1788.

That is the stuff I am made of."

-- _The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie_

> We were together for three years before he happened to mention
> dancing with Madonna. . . For a typical guy, that would be first
> date anecdote material.

You were drawn to his Spockian reticence.