My first week in Columbus I contacted a friend from college – Chris Hughes. He’s one of those people who requires two names. In school Chris Hughes was quiet but not shy, wore button-down shirts, and smiled with half his mouth and forehead. Today he works at the Columbus AIDS Task Force and has developed the catalog of morbid humor needed to get through a day. He invited me to a cookout one recent Saturday. I said yes, took some beer, and went. I met his partner Jeremy and their two shelter rescued dogs – Lucy and Susie. “Why not Lucy and Ethel?” I asked. “We didn’t want to confuse them,” they replied. I’m a cat person, so it didn’t make much sense to me either.
The cookout was at the home of their friends David and Daniel, so we packed up the beer and some more beer, and headed over. There I met a dozen or so interesting people, including Tim and Lyndsey, who Chris met in 2004 while waiting 2-3 hours in line to vote. Their voting precinct, and its majority Democrat voter registry, only had one Diebold voting machine. Long lines lasted all day. So they made the best of a Slavic situation and chatted each other up, discussed home ownerÂ’s insurance, exchanged phone numbers, and became friends.
As the night wore on and the beer flowed, I grew hungry. I panned the back yard for a grill. I saw one, but it wasn’t heating. There wasn’t a tank of propane, no bag of charcoal, no bowl of marinating chicken breasts, no bag of hot dog buns. What the hell kind of cookout was this? As soon as the question entered my mind someone said “lets order pizza!” I love drinking beer outdoors and I love pizza. It was a great night.
A week later I contacted another friend from college, Sweet Melissa. Sweet Melissa was three years behind me at Western, when we both had long curly hair. She wore heavy wool Himalayan sweaters then. Maybe she still does, but in the current heat wave she was sticking with short sleeved cotton. We met up for coffee, discussed brick buildings, relationships, and trash talked old friends.
That night I discovered that Sweet Melissa and sister Tanya play on the same softball team. Small world. Apparently my sister and I have the same propensity for meeting everyone. And our mother’s propensity for being memorable.
Tickled by the connection, Melissa invited us to a barbeque at her friend Tex’s home. We arrived to find trays of olives and cheeses and roasted peppers waiting for us. Tex poured a bag of charcoal in the grill, doused it with kerosene, and singed the branches on a maple tree. We ate salmon and Vietnamese salad and drank white wine. Tex told us about khat and growing up in Corpus Christi.
Besides reconnecting with old friends, staying with my sister and brother-in-law this summer has been a truly amazing thing. It's great to witness the warmth and health in their home. Being far away, it's easy to forget and worry about family members. But seeing the supporting network of friends that Tanya and Chad have created makes it easy to know that everything outside the reaches of my possibility to control go well. It's a gift.
With half the summer gone, I can already say that it's been the best of times. With more to come.
What is khat ?
Columbus AIDS Task Force
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