Stories of a life

Dean shows up two hours early, not unexpected since he hinted on the phone he had more than dinner on his mind. I greet him at the door in my boxers, towel across my shoulder, on my way to the shower when he rings the bell and sends Joey into a rare paroxysm of barking and tail chasing.

He's not much older than I, but Dean has packed what seems like a lifetime of stories into the seven or eight years that separate us. We come from the same place, more or less. We bonded years ago over drinks and tales of rural childhoods, his in Shelby County, mine in Ralls. He hitched west when he was 17, spent four summers in San Francisco before winding up back in St. Louis, my cross-town neighbor. I left home but cut out the middle bit, settling here prematurely, vicariously wondering if I should have made the 80s my 70s.

The story tonight is about a humid afternoon at the Liberty Baths, among his last days in The City. In a few months, the White Night riots would sour his affection for the place, he'd pack the same rucksack he hauled out there in the first place, and head for home.

He's telling me this while we fool around. More than fool around, really. We're just a funk guitar pedal-bowed soundtrack away from an action-adventure-comedy here, my Starsky in his Hutch, you know. His brow relaxes and his eyes close and he enthuses about the slim Latino with chestnut eyes and soft skin, the touch of a stranger, the warmth of a friend and brother. Dean talks and we move together and story spins around in a sort of spiritual mystery until finally I'm imagining that we are there or, at least, through the haze of this humid day, that we are characters in a documentary about a very specific place and time and feeling.

The story etcetera ended, Dean rolls over and lights a healthy one, inhales deeply and passes it to me. Not for the first time, we look into each other's faces and share the unspoken assertion that by all rights, we should be dead by now. That we are not has, over the course of our friendship, gone from a topic of astonishment to guilt to simply relief.

"I'm glad we make room for joy, now and then," Dean says, and places his head on my chest. Just then, I feel unaccountably old, but Dean pulls my arm across him and the feeling passes. I wonder if I have the reverse of Rose's dilemma, if I was born too late and started too soon. I wonder if I would have been able to leave Polk Street once I found it, riots and plague and uncertainty be damned. I wonder if Dean is stronger than I, or weaker, or if we are ably matched in our collisions and collusions.

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