Friend of a Friend

One of my friends had a housewarming party in a city where I've only ever bought gas. It's a fine city. There's this busted up brick church for sale a few houses down from my friend's new place. Josh and I want to live in that church. You could say something about our childhoods and how we grew up in churches and how maybe that means something specific about us as adults, but I don't know. The last time we were visiting my hometown, we drove around and looked at the historic houses for sale. They all had great porches. We have an OK porch, but we don't have porch furniture. The thing about an old church is maybe it doesn't have a porch, but it does have huge front steps and high ceilings and a bell tower and a lot of skinny windows and ghosts, jeez, so many ghosts.

The housewarming party happened the one day of the summer it tried to rain. We sat outside anyway, and this guy who lives in the basement next door kept coming out in his pajamas and walking around. He'd look up at the sky and then go back in his basement a while and come back out wearing a different pair of pajamas. And that doesn't mean a thing. It was a Saturday, and this is a free country.

Speaking of a free country, I'm reading for SmokeLong Quarterly this week, and you're free to send me a story. I get to choose one for publication. I'm reading blind, which means I won't know who sent which story. If you have it in you, please send me something amazing.

My best internet friend, xTx, has been running a series on her blog called Supermodel Summer. She's had some great contributions from artists and writers, and my story, Thin and Then, ran a couple days ago. There's a horse in it, and that's all some of you need.

After the housewarming party, we all walked a couple blocks to do karaoke in the only bar downtown. Everyone in the bar was wearing boots. The only empty tables were by the restrooms. A couple of cowboys were playing pool back there, and they were stern and curious about our group of mostly gay guys and women. They kept looking at us, and they were both attractive in a really scary, country way, so I kept looking at them. They had two spectators, sisters I guess, who were older and wearing denim jackets. This was a bar where you could still smoke, so the sisters were smoking, and I swear to God, chewing gum at the same time. I wanted to see the cowboys naked, but I wanted the life story on those sisters.

The drunkest guy in our party came over and wanted to have a serious talk about dating in Kansas City. He wanted our advice. Josh and I met over eight years ago in a tea shop, and we haven't stopped being together since. There isn't much advice there. There's no math. My friends say I'm very lucky, and I say it's not luck; it's a choice. We choose to love each other and be together. It's not romantic or magical, but it's the best choice I've ever made. I tried to tell the drunk guy that, but he said, "I don't know. It feels like there's more to you guys than that." And of course he was right.

I like this song.