Last July when we thought Senator Obama was not going to win the election, my pal Hal and I were mulling over the future while bolting down more sushi than normal people should eat, talking about where to move to get away from the Republicans. Canada hadn't worked out and talk turned to Buenos Aires. I suggested one of us should do a recon trip to see if BA lived up to the New York Times article about the joys of the city. Later that night Hal called to say he had a ten a.m. flight to Argentina. The old trick of flying on the actual day of a holiday seemed to work, even on the 4th of July. Who knew? But off he went for 10 days to check everything out. Three days later, Hal called and said he might not come back at all. Seems he found his true love and there was no way he was coming home alone. I chalked it up to momentary heat, but as the months passed, I was convinced. Every day he unrolled another glamorous tale of life inside Buenos Aires. But finally, seven months later, they both came to Los Angeles and I'm about to go have six or seven pounds of sushi because I have truly missed Hal.
Let me tell you why. He and I are road buddies. We travel together on long and short trips, out of the state and out of the country and sometimes into the heart of darkness. When I got my cancer diagnosis, one of my celebrity friends sent me to a church where he felt he'd been cured of something or other. So Hal and a friend of his went with me to an evening service. They didn't know all that much about Southern churchs, they are gay and it was warm, so they wore very fashionable flowered Hawaiian shirts. The preacher was in the midst of Praise and Worship and kept glancing at us. First he spoke about what a whoremonger he had been, taking drugs and getting really filthy. The Preacher said he had meant to talk about that this night but instead decided he'd talk about how homosexuals were going to Hell, there to burn forever and ever!!!
Well, I sat there and looked at Hal who had been with me to all the scary consultations, to the pre-procedures and doctors' blah blah blah, telling them all he was my brother and he was staying in the room, dammit. He kept making me laugh hilariously all the time. I looked around and thought 'How the f*&k do I get out of here without making a scene?' As the preacher continued his vitroil, I decided I didn't care what kind of scene I made and stood up, told Hal we were leaving and headed for the door. Two days later, Hal was driving me home from the 'drive-thru mastectomy' and maybe it was the anesthesia making me goofy, but I'd swear he had tears in his eyes but he wore a Hawaiian shirt just to make me laugh....One of these days I'll write about our insane trip to Seattle where I jumped out of the car on the highway and tried to yank a guy out of his car, got pulled off by the cops while yelling "I'm sorry about the size of your dick!!!!" But that's later. - Ruth Adkins Robinson
No comments:
Post a Comment