I went to a workshop this weekend that kinda blew my head open. This entry isn’t going to be about that.

(Yeah, it was a New Warrior event. Marketed quite blandly as ‘Integrating Personal Leadership Training,’ the experience was a brain-busting blend of psychology, poetry, rich lecture, male archetypes, and the deepest kind of wonderings. Like most New Warrior events, we bypassed roughly four levels of social norms, and went for the gooiest heart stuff: love, blessings, sadnesses and the prickliest fears handled equally in lovingly and fierce care. Definitely worthy of some blogging, but not tonight. Tonight is about the anniversary.)

Sunday night, after three days mentally orgasming on the brain’s tilt-a-whirl-weekend, I was in altered space. I kept trying to do normal things but I’d stop and then grin for a while. Read for a while and grin, then I’d eat something and compose half an email before walking away. I watched The Spiderwick Chronicles and nodded seriously throughout. ‘This could happen.’ I would think. ‘Yeah, this is totally, like, I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened.’

Altered state.

So I didn’t make a phone call I had intended to make - an anniversary phone call.

I moved to Minneapolis 13 years ago this past weekend. Thirteen years ago, my family and Ann drove me and the U-Haul full of disgruntled houseplants to Minne-soota. We unpacked my belongings in this amazingly beautiful one-bedroom place in Uptown with wooden floors.

That chilly June evening, Ann kept huffing into the air, these short soundless barks. “Look.” she’s say to me pointing at the smoke cloud. “It’s so cold tonight there you can see my breath. HUFF. See that? It’s June, Manning. It’s fucking June.”

The whole night we giggled with each other, my family, Ann, and I as we unpacked my kitchen and my heart pounded in fear. We went out for ice cream after we unpacked, and while we sat outside and ate in Crema’s patio garden, Ann would take a eat a bite of ice cream, swallow, and then huff her cold breath into the night air where frozen crystals formed. “June.” she would say, eyes blazing.

I drove back to Illinois with them for two more weeks of in-office work. And when I came back two weeks later, it was Gay Pride weekend in Minneapolis. I was going alone.
No, no…that was cool.

I wasn’t a, you know, not a TOTAL loser. I could make new friends. Right?

I could do this.

So I went to the Big Gay Pride Stuff and wandered around Loring Park, looking at the booths. It was charming, a quality I found lacking in Chicago’s Gay Pride. Oh, Chicago was fierce, proud, and like, on steroids. Awesome. But then after the parade, the hard drinking began and if you weren’t wasted by 5pm, then what was the point of even going at all?

Minneapolis Pride, much like the entire city itself, has a very different vibe from other places I’ve lived. I personally think the Minneapolis state bird should be a comfortable flannel shirt. Minneapolis definitely has a few glamorous spots, probably only 100 or so. Totally glamorous, actually. But most of Minneapolis feels like I city that should have been named, “Bud.”

“Hey, Bud.”

Bud nods.

Whenever I approach Minneapolis from I-35W, headed north, there’s this great hill. Coming over the hill, you see the downtown skyline on the horizon, close enough to know whether the downtown lights are on at night, but far enough away that the buildings still seem huddled together, maybe for warmth. (It’s cold in June, sometimes, ya know.)

In the summer, an ocean of green trees surround the skyscrapers in every direction. From this view, mile after mile of turbulent, green waves protect the castle keep. Coming upon Minneapolis this way makes me happy and misty-eyed because I feel like I’m part of the secret kingdom that everyone erroneously thinks is in Antarctica.

The citizens of this kingdom ride bikes like fiends all summer long, which would make you think they were afraid of Winter and had to make every day count. And I suppose that’s true for some. But the rest of the city says, ‘Oh no, it’s just too damn warm to snowmobile, so we figured ‘why not bike?’ We love the summer. We love the autumn. We hate the winter (But not really. Not like that.) and we love the Spring. It’s a crazy city.

And it’s my 13th anniversary of living here!

I moved here after a heart-vision of seeing future, loving friends over for dinner in my future, adorable home.

I have the bungalow. Loving Friends. A Richness of Life that boggles me. Stain of a dead person on my kitchen floor. Okay, THAT one I did not actually dream of, that was just a tough real estate market when I bought this lil’ home. I suppose that’s part of Bud’s charm.

“Hey, Bud,” you might say when you are a first-time home-buyer and find out you bought a house with a corpse stain on the kitchen floor, “Bud, there’s a corpse stain on my kitchen floor. How about that? What the fuck is up with this city, Bud?”

Bud raises his eyebrows, shakes his head and then goes back to whatever he was previously doing.

Anyway. That first Pride weekend I wondered if I would meet someone new. New lover? New friend? Would I ever have a friendship as rich as Ann’s and mine? What the fuck was I doing anyway? I wondered about these things and the life opening before me, and wondered if it were wise to listen to my heart pounding 10 months ago when I visited this castle-kingdom for the first time ever.

“Hi.” said a handsome man, stepping out in front of me. I was wandering around the Pride Festival, the merry-carnival: 800 colored booths of rainbow merchants and happy volunteers.

This guy and I almost walked into each other.

“Hi, I’m Brian.” he said, shaking my hand. “I just moved here this weekend.”

Brian had been in Minneapolis for roughly 48 hours and managed to capture an entourage by his own personal magnetism.

This handsome guy at the party was suddenly shaking my hand.

Maybe I’ll wax prolific some night about our tawdry affair, our few weeks of dating, our years of friendship, our Big Fallout, and how Brian’s big-heartedness paved the way for us to be friends again. Short version: he’s just in that deep in my heart. And our Anniversary is the Pride weekend, when we both moved to Minneapolis.

There were a few years when Brian, Chris, and I would hang out so frequently that on those random nights I would go out on my own, just about all the gay Minnesotans would say, “So. Where are the other two tonight?” The three of us were single and dating, so every other week Chris would perk up and say, “Oooh. Tangled web story. I had a first date with someone you had two dates with, Ted.”

Brian might reply with, “I go next.”

“Damn.” I would say. “Because my ‘tangled web’ is a good one.”

We’ve fallen away in recent years. Not like, angrily…more like attrition. They both fell in love with great guys, the Big Kinda Love, and roughly months apart and a new chapter of their lives began. Plus, I bought a home owner with a corpse stain in your kitchen, and you know how it goes. Yard to mow, things to fix, can’t see you Saturday - all booked up…how about Tuesday, no? You guys have plans on that next Friday? Okay. No, no, you gotta go to that. Huh. Well, the next weekend for sure.

We have missed some dating escapades with each other or only heard about them as opposed to lived through them together. Some big ups, some big downs. It hurts a little because Brian was the only one who ever got how overly-precious the word ‘Yesh‘ was to me. To this day, the in-synchness is always wonderfully present when we’re together, for five minutes or an occasional weekend breakfast. But the occasions just doesn’t happen often enough.

There’s always going to be a chunk of my friendship-heart that has Brian’s handsome smile throating out, “Hellllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooo” in the creepy-old-lady-voice he would use to answer the phone whenever I called. He would often insinuate that he (sorry…”she”) was in the middle of elderly masterbating and would I care to join in for some hot phone sex?

Ugh.

In the game of ‘raunch chicken’ with Brian, I always lose.

I love him. He’s just in there - embedded deep in my heart.

Yesterday was our anniversary. I should have called him.
(In my defense, I would like to point out that I almost thought the Spiderwick Chronicles was a documentary last night.)

I had recalled Brian throughout the weekend. Multiple times every day. During the retreat, the tough question was asked, ‘What have you let slip away in your life by not being the king? By not assuming the role of king in your kingdom, what has suffered?’ Ow. Ow. Double-ow for Brian.

Tonight I drove home from a massage and decided to take the scenic side around Lake Calhoun, because Bud is quite gorgeous in the summer when he stretches out his arms and yawns. The sky was that color of blue that is almost purple and the clouds were the color you often see in religious greeting cards. From the car, I happened upon a vista - break in the tree line and the right angle where I could see the downtown skyline, its sleepy Monday nightlife gradually awakening.

At that exact moment, I was listening to the song Ever After by Carrie Underwood from the Disney movie, Enchanted. What can I say? The sun was setting, I just had an incredible massage, and I am loved.

I was so stunned and flooded with joy that I LIVE HERE! I HAVE A LIFE HERE! I had to pull over and stare at the skyline, staring at the colors in the sky, the lights of the city, and my heart was singing. Birds were twittering.

Any hesitation I may have had about calling this old friend after missing our anniversary vanished, because I had just had my I-LOVE-MINNEAPOLIS! anniversary moment, a goofy grin from my old friend, Bud.

Brian did not answer with Creepy-Old-Lady voice, which I was half-expecting.

“HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!” I yelled into the phone. “IT’S OUR ANNIVERSARY!”

Brian laughed and said softly, “Yesh.”

We talked for a few moments but he was eating dinner so we promised to talk soon, a promise I am sure now I will keep. I learned a few things about myself this past weekend and how I can let important people slip away. I know we have lots to catch-up on and hope more yet to experience together. We both love 30Rock with a freaky passion and while the-falling-in-love-with-30Rock happened at different times and not-quite-together, it means there’s a part of us that still really ‘gets’ each other.

“You were on my mind this weekend, Brian.” I told him.

“I think you mean your MIND-grapes.” he corrected me in a Tracy Jordan imitation.

And THEN it was the perfect Minneapolis moment.

Happy Anniversary, Bud, and thanks for Brian.

Bud nods.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Warrior. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.