ON A MORE CHEERFUL NOTE...

I was shopping for cheap avocados in one of the mega-supermarkets last week, when someone called my name. That's unusual enough, as I don't know that many people in this burg, and very few of those I do know come hang out on my edge of the outskirts. But even more unlikely, it was someone I never thought would have given me the time of day... It was the hockey player with the @#$%-ing EARS and his girlfriend. He had had a buzz cut so close it was almost a shave, and looking at his head took my breath away. But I managed to say hello to him, and his irlfriend, who seemed cautiously friendly -- perhaps too observant to be more than cautiously friendly? who knows? -- and carry on some pretty pointless conversation for a while before scuttling away toward the check-out.

I frankly find all the hockey players incredibly hot, but the guy with the ears drives me crazy. I hope that didn't register on his girlfriend's radar; I have been on pretty good behavior since I started working in that office...

One of the other hockey players who haunt my mid-week evenings sent out a round-robin e-mail to everyone who washes up on the office beach on Wednesdays, telling the gang to show up at a downtown bar for dollar drafts and free chicken wings. I arrived half an hour late, and found him drinking alone; we then drank alone together for an hour. He was gently inquisitive about my new status as a Mighty Faggot, and how it all made sense to me, which is not, as you know, a subject on which I am terribly articulate, aside from laying out the contradictions with which, in which, I live.

My chicken-wing companion is about five years older than most of the other students -- six years in the military does that for you -- so he has an edge of perspective that makes him a good conversation partner. I have a feeling that if I spent an hour in a bar with the Ear Guy, I would wind up drooling on my shoes, or worse, his shoes.

It was a great hour, and I had four beers, which is more than I usually manage without lying down and going to sleep. He was tucking it away -- he had been doing beer and shots of Jameson for half an hour when I arrived -- but insisted on paying for my beer. The chicken wings [and drumsticks] had more bone and less meat than any bird part I have ever met before, but, hey! they were free, and weren't the world's worst supper. Greasy, though... I did enjoy my Happy Hour, and not because of the wings: it's delightful to feel human.

And to be made to feel human is even better.

To bitch is human; to rejoice, divine.
Rejoice, I say, rejoice.
Bless all the kids who have taken me out to, and under their, wings.
Bless them all.
.