Category: Recollections

Loving Men-Mail

~ Harlan Didrickson

Why don’t we just forgive everything.

I have been running from the destruction my 32 year relationship. Running so hard that I’m out of breath.

We didn’t break-up, we divorced. And as anyone that’s been divorced knows, it’s not a pleasant experience. Attorneys strip your entire marriage of anything valuable. Like looters they check every closet, every room, every ornament, every gift, every personal treasure, searching for anything that could hold value. They search for this bounty relentlessly, telling their clients that there’ll be more booty that you’ll get. Getting divorced is like being autopsied while still alive.

While my life was being dissected, I was also losing my mind.

I tried to murder my ex-spouse in an emergency room in Chicago. I allegedly verbally threatened a doctor at an office or in the ER or a hospital room. I stopped paying my bills, but spent money like I was J.P. Getty. I fell into arrears.

Part of my settlement was a large parcel of five months of mail. There was one Christmas card from a hospital; months of past due notices; two letters from debt collector’s, one from an attorney; old magazines; Government notices; and a letter from a physician’s group alleging that I verbally assaulted a doctor.

Facing your past under such a beam of light is blinding. Not only did I lose everything I thought I had, now I had to face everything else I ran from. My life’s been pillaged by this divorce: I lost him, home, and character.

All this will fade to memory as I keep my eyes on the present.

It’s all behind me: in the trash.

 

Loving Men-Inspiration

~ Harlan Didrickson

People ask, “Do places inspire you?”

I answer, “No. Everything inspires me.”

cardinalThe snow which fell in Charlotte inspired me. Children of the south celebrating a snow day and running sleds down the lowest of hills inspire me. Cardinals and wrens landing on pine boughs covered with light snow causing a puff beneath their feet.

These are the things which inspire me.

The bright sunshine which irradiates the freshly fallen snow, then warms the trees and bushes and sidewalks and streets thus melting the snow from the inside out, making it disappear like magicians.

These are the things which inspire me.

It’s usually things I don’t see or haven’t heard or failed to taste that inspire me, especially when I’ve gotten around to seeing or hearing or tasting them.

Yesterday’s snow and today’s thaw has inspired me. snowfall

Beauty inspires me. Simple, quiet beauty inspires me.

Loving Men-Snow

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes you don’t realize you miss something until you see it again.

snowfall1It’s snowing in Charlotte this morning. While not a blizzard, Charlotte’s citizens treat it as one. For me it signifies the start of winter. Winter is the one season that I don’t miss. What I do miss is that first snowfall. Which fell this morning in Charlotte.

I think too many see snow as an encumbrance, an obstacle, something to avoid or get rid of or dislike.

Snow makes me remember: That one Thanksgiving day when I was ten and walking snowyardacross the schoolyard on my way to Weinlien’s to buy a gallon of milk, and it was snowing lightly, flurries is what we called them, and I ran freely catching these molted angel feathers on my tongue.

Snow makes me remember: Sledding in the schoolyard where a dusting of fluffy snow snow1landed atop frozen rain causing gross miscalculations of body weight plus snow gear plus sled divided by depth of ice and pitch of schoolyard, resulting in my one out-of-control run sending me speeding into a fence which opened at the bottom and out I flew like a nylon torpedo onto the sidewalk three feet below.

Snow makes me remember: My Wheatie puppy, Jenni, running and barreling into snow, then standing up, her face covered with that ivory white icing.

Snow makes me remember with tremendous fondness times long past. Rain or sun or fog or thunderstorms or humidity does not make me remember.

Perhaps on a snow day when you didn’t have to go in to work like Rodrigo, or when you were dismissed early like Calhoun and Vincent, you could stop regretting the snow, or hating it’s mischieviousness, and remember those times when this white miracle made you smile.

Loving Men-Rodgrigo (Kisses)

~ Harlan Didrickson

kisingThe insides of your lips are are as velveteen as rose petals.

Rodrigo and I are now kissing. There are several forms of kissing:

  1. Hello/Good-bye: slightly open mouth; can be single or multiple; dispassionate is common
  2. Good night/Good morning: slightly open mouth; can be single or multiple; depending on the randiness of individuals, passion is possible
  3. All else: A potpourri of passion; tongues which dart like fish at dusk; like the lurekissing2 and the bass: teasing, leading, and caught; nipped and gnawed; throaty growls and surprising moans; sweaty and panting; and my favorite . . .
  4. All of the above.

Loving Men-Isaiah

~ Harlan Didrickson

One never knows where one may meet another.

Isaiah and I met amidst stacks of books at Barnes and Noble. A beautiful man, light walnut in color, an abbreviated 5’5″ tall, and a chassis which expresses the demands of a contemporary dancer. His smile stretches, like a freshly napped cat, across his delighted face. Even his eyes glint with joy.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” I replied.

“How’re things,” he asked.

“They’re great,” I answered.

Sheepishly he added, “You seem to be aware of life’s favor for you.”

“You’re not from Charlotte, are you,” he asked leaning against the bookcase.

“Is anyone from Charlotte,” I asked.

“I am,” Isaiah replied quietly.

“Well, I’m not,” I admitted.

And so it started, a repartee which carried itself out of the book stacks, and into the coffee shop; over a butter croissant and a slice of carrot cake; beyond the check-out line and into his car.

“You’re exquisitely handsome,” Isaiah said while turned in his seat.

“Exquisite,” I asked.

“Desirable. Satisfying. A treat,” he added while smiling.

“We should be lovers,” I said.

“Hm, really?” he asked.

“Why not be lovers? It’s very continental,” I stated.

“We’d shadow each other handsomely,” he said reaching out and waffling my hand.

Then there was more conversation and we ended up at my apartment. While sitting on the couch, his back nestled tightly against my chest, my arms encircling him, I said, “Isaiah, you have the kind of body that I could wrap myself around; like a Venus fly trap swallowing a bee.”

Our skin melted that night, melted like icycles which caused gooseflesh and small after shocks of shivers. We spoke bedspeak, that affectionate lingo that two men engulfed in complete adoration speak to each other.

Once again it happened, happenstance, in the stacks of Barnes and Noble, Isaiah and I meeting, both of us lovers and lovers of books. Find yourself amidst those things you love, and you just might find a title or magazine or man that you hadn’t thought of reading, but that caught your eye and begged you to take it from the shelf and take it home.