Learning My Way Around

Shortly after my first night at Jekyll's, Ric and I started dating. I don't remember exactly how it began, but I have many fond memories of sleeping either at his place in front of the fire or in my dorm room—having pushed the two twin beds together after David moved out to make a single king bed. While I intellectually understood the mechanics of sex with another man, Ric was the guy who put all that theoretical knowledge into practice and showed me in no uncertain terms that what John and I had been trying to do that first time was definitely not how it was done.

Ric was a tender, passionate lover, and possessed all of the physical attributes I found so attractive in a man. He was also a lot of fun to be around. I have no recollection of what his major was or what he did when not at school because the only surviving memories I have of him are of spending time together at the gay table in Louie's Lower Level (hereafter simply referred to as "The Table") or of being in some state of undress. Ric gave me many tokens of his affection, but the one item that stands out was the second-hand army jacket that he always wore.

This fairy tale first romance came to an abrupt end when I came down with mono. A late bloomer, I guess this was something I should've contracted in high school, but since I wasn't busy kissing anyone in high school (as much as I had crushes on guys all the way back to my freshman year), I had never been exposed to it. Needless to say, it hit me hard and knocked me on my ass for several weeks. Ric stayed away—not wanting to catch it himself even though he was the one who gave it to me in the first place—and I missed all my classes during this period, thus beginning the inexorable downward slide that was to mar the rest of my short-lived academic career.

When I finally recovered, Ric had become distant, not returning phone calls and appearing at Louie's only infrequently. I soon learned he had started seeing someone else and I was understandably heartbroken. He never asked me to return any of the things he'd given me, and I kept that damn jacket for years afterward.

It was shortly after I'd returned to full health that I received a strange clipping in the mail from my dad. It was an article obviously clipped from one of the Phoenix gay rags about the epidemic of oral gonorrhea that was then sweeping the gay community. At the bottom he'd written, "Don't give him anything but love."

I hadn't yet come out to the family, but after passing this clipping around The Table and receiving a unanimous, "Your dad knows," it was obvious my that at least my dad knew what was going on and this was his roundabout way of saying he was cool with it. Why he was so cool with it only, pardon the expression—came out—later that summer.

By this time, the folks who gathered at The Table at Louie's had become like an adopted second family. James Uhrig was a bookish geek with whom I shared a common love of writing and later became a librarian. There was also Jesse, on whom I developed an intense crush, and "Big John" Marion, a bearish black guy with an unabashed fondness for campus tea rooms and expertly deep-throating chocolate covered frozen bananas in the most public venues possible. There was also Brian Lea, with whom I shared a newfound love of disco and who just happened to live in the same dorm on the same floor I did. There was also Chas Dooley, a flamboyant black boy who was friends with Andy at Navajo Hall and who, along with Don Hines, became one of my dearest friends over the next few years.  Abe Marquez was one of the older (with older being late 20s) students at the table, who became a mentor of sorts and was the voice of reason among our rowdy little band.

One amusing memory is from about a month after Ric and I stopped seeing each other. I arrived at The Table one afternoon and it was abuzz with news that Ric had come down with hepatitis (I may be wrong, but I don't think hepatitis had an alphabet soup trailing at that time) and was currently in a room over at Student Health. He had been told that anyone who had been in intimate contact with him—even as minor as sharing a plate of food or drink—needed to go right over and get a shot of gamma globulin. Since pretty much everyone at The Table had at one time shared something with Ric (cough, cough), we dutifully lined up and marched over to Student Health en masse and patiently waited as each of went in for our injection.

Where are they now? Ric was claimed by the plague in the early 90s. (I found his panel in the AIDS Quilt.) I lost contact with James after his trip to San Francisco in 1989 although an internet search a few years back showed he was still alive and well. I don't remember Jesse's last name, so his whereabouts are unknown. I also have no idea what happened to John Marion, but I hope he's still among the living. Brian was taken by the plague in the early 1990s. I ran into Chas in San Francisco in 1990 or thereabouts, with both of us promising to get back in touch. It never happened, and with such a common name, internet searches have been inconclusive. Thankfully there are no Charles Dooleys showing up on the Social Security Death Index with his birthdate or panels in the AIDS quilt with his name on them, so I take some solace in that. Abe is also among us, still in Tucson and doing well. We reconnected over dinner a few years back and even though thirty years had passed, it was like being right back at The Table in Louie's Lower Level…