Get your Chrisisms, right here!

Step on up!

I’m checking the Facebook before bed.  Yes, I’m going to bed before 8 pm on a Monday night.  Shut up.

I see a post from a guy I went on a few dates with about a decade or so ago.

A Lost Boy, for sure.

Former Porn Star turned Hair Burner…i.e. he never made it.  Luckily.

Former substance abuser, turned crutch drinker.

Y’know, one of those broken types I like so much.  But, I appreciated that the was pulling himself out of the grave he’d dug himself.  That’s something-ish.

We had fun; good talks, fun flirtations, a decent connection.

But, as things progressed over the course of several dates, he…couldn’t.

Eventually, he just faded out.

So much for a decent atypical haircut on CapHill.  

Atypical, meaning that I didn’t look like every other homo on the Hill.  That’s a worthy point.  I bet you can’t throw a pomade in Shittatle without it bouncing off a half dozen hard part haircuts before it hits the ground.

What’s the word for a gay douchebag?

Nevermind.

The point is, we never really untethered, socially.

My friends knew him.

We’d show up at the same place a couple times a year.

Then he moved away.

Eventually, he friended me on the dreaded Facebook.

I just rolled with it all.  Never rolling out the welcome mat, but also never calling out his shitty behavior.

Y’know, like sending me a friend request when he’s living with some older dude in my adopted hometown – those who know it, know it – and essentially putting on display what he deprived me of experiencing with him.

Cuz, that’s not a low grade psychotic behavior.

But, still…I roll.

Whatever he has with Not Me Older Guy implodes.  He moves back to his natural habitat – Shittatle – gets sober, finds god, becomes…tedious.  But only because I don’t tune into Facebook for a bunch of god-talk, especially in the form of AA, which I think verges on being a cult.

Good things happen.

He opens his own salon.

Reconnects with his problematic family.

Decides to become a trucker.

Because, once a Lost Boy, I suppose…

So, tonight…climbing into bed, I read that he’s been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

The Big C.

And I feel bad.  It’s a reflexive reaction to news like this.  Empathy.

It occurs faster than I can read and as I finish the post, awash in my empathy, I read the statement that punctuates his disclosure: I just want prayers.

My eyes rolled just typing that.  Every time I read “thoughts and prayers”, I have to de-cultify it before I can look directly at the words.

It all boils down to compassion.  For whatever reason, we can’t own our own, we have to assign it to some sort of alleged and unproven higher power, because: faith.

Whatever.

My thoughts went all sarcastic Xtopher after that.

Into the realm of, “The ghoster becomes the ghost”…because I’m a grumpy old bastard and I don’t have a lot of pity for people.  There’s some wisdom behind the phrase, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it”.  It’s certainly something I consider often in regards to my own mortality…after all, who is going to take care of me when I’m old?  

Fine.  Older.

It’s an impending grim reality of my existence…but at least I think I’ve returned all the phone calls I was socially expected to.

And, on that warm, fuzzy thought…I’m off to the land of Nod.