So he said.

So, I'm writing a novel, well it's more like a collection of short stories about characters I have known. Mingled in with each of these stories, will be other stories, kind of like a story within a story. Not a frame story and a story, but different. Anyway, I am writing about my first gay friend, or first openly gay friend. When he came out of the closet, it wasn't a good time, it was during the early eighties and most gay men were targets for all kinds of shit because of aides. Even in California, tolerance was at an all time low, and so, when he came out of the closet to me, I asked him to keep it quiet but he just couldn't do it. One day, I'm sitting in the cafeteria drinking nasty hospital coffee and I hear him long before I see him. I sipped the bad coffee and watched the door and here he came all 6'6" prissing past the tables of shocked visitors and hopsital staff. "Girl," he yelled. I looked at him and just shook my head. It was the first time that I ever saw a man wearing makeup and so much makeup and his nails were so lee press on pink and he had freshly pierced ears with little butterflies pressed into his swollen lobes and lipstick so bright it made his teeth look whitter than snow and he had bangles and rings and necklaces and his hair, yes, it was teased and puffed up. "Well, here I am," he said. "I see," I said. "You like?" he asked. "I'm at a loss for words," I said. He sat down and daintily sipped his coffee. And after the shock of seeing a man with so much make up and with so much flamboyancy, I found my friend, and we started talking and then I liked his eyeliner and his blush and his lipstick and his hair product and all his gold and silver and rhinestones and even his new walk, it was catching, made me more aware of how my hips moved. That was the beginning of my friend allowing me to see him, really see him and not that person he had tried to be. His favorite line, "Girrrrrrrl, let's go gettem." And we did, some nights all night long and other nights we chose to sit in the parking lot and smoke our liquor and watch the show from the parking lot. When my friend and I moved from San Diego to El Paso and he abandoned me for a cute little hispanic with a gold tooth and left Texas to wonder aimlessly around Mexico, he had tested positive. I asked him to stay, get the best treatment but he said that he was going where booze and living were cheap. So, he and I parted company and until he died, we semi kept in touch. The last time we talked he said, "You know, every man I ever took from you, I did to keep him from hurting you." That was what we did, we fought over straight or supposedly straight men. I thanked him and told him, "Well, if you must know, all the men you took from me, well, they were men I didn't want." He laughed, "Bitch," he said. I laughed and then we said our goodbyes and a few months later, his little number with the gold tooth called and said, "K.C. wanted me to call you and let you know he was gone." I thanked him and cried. This collection of short stories about K.C. will be hard, harder than writing about Betsy. K. C. was just so fucking funny. He gave my children salamandar eggs from a river and we put them in a tank and watched as they developed and one day, I came home and my little swimming things were now land things and were running around my apartment. We liked to never have caught all six of them and then we took them back to the river and turned them loose by the bank and he said, "I wish life were that easy. You know, if you don't fit somewhere, you could be gathered up with others and taken to the place where you do fit, like here and that new place was perfect right from the beginning, no surprises, just perfect. That's all I want a place where I fit."