Meanwhile, Back at the Cabinetry Workshop

Nightingale and I continue to bond. He told me about how he had cancer when he was 22 years old and how his father died when he was in the fourth grade. I told him about my sister and my own pre-adolescence parental mortality situation. He's a great guy. What a great father he is, he's like a best friend to his thirteen year old son, and he and his stepson enjoy surprising each other with wine and cigars.

In high school, we were on different planets. Not just because he was two years ahead of me. He was pretty much a burnout. I was a geeky kid with glasses. If we ever exchanged words back then, it was probably so he could draw attention to my high-water pants and get big laughs. Interesting how life works, huh?

He invited me out to a Thanksgiving Eve get together at a local tavern. And I think he's trying to get me into the Finishing Room. That would be cool. Of the Guys Whose Names Begin With J at the sanding table, conversation revolves around interesting combinations of alcohol (Jaegermeister and Peach Schnapps!) with which they got fucked up over the past weekend. The guy whose name that begins with J that I thought I liked who I thought I liked even though everyone else disliked has turned out to be a total and absolute pill. We're talking Pill Of The First Order. Mega-Pill. Super-Pill. Pilliest Pill of All Pills.

So when I disclose that I'm a homo, how's that gonna go down?

Hmmm.

I guess I shouldn't let the mystery endure for too long. When I first came out all those years ago, one of my friends felt that I had lied to them by not telling them sooner. I could see where that could be an understandable reaction.

So how's that gonna go down?

"I was dating this guy..."

Something like that. I was talking to Nightingale about some of my fun and crazy experiences living in New York and almost added, "I once had my name in the New York Times for disrupting a speech by then Vice President Dan Quayle." I held back. After the response (something along the lines of "Yeah? Cool!") there would have been some explanation called for about what my beef was.

"When are you gonna talk about AIDS, Dan? You can't dodge AIDS!" I yelled as the Secret Service dragged me out.

That would have spoke volumes, I suppose.

I guess this is never easy. Although living in NYC, it was honestly something I never ever had to think about or deal with. In general, it was just assumed that I was gay. And no one ever once had a problem with that.

So why do I assume that things will be different here? I mean, Will and Grace is on the television six nights a week here, too.

How to do it?

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