9/9/96 - I Heard A Rumor

9/9/96 - 1810 Chapala

I didn't think I had anything to write about tonight, but it turns out that James Wicklow is probably living at the Virginia Hotel (one of Santa Barbara's two flophouses), which means he's probably back on hard drugs.

[Not sure how I made this leap. James did tell me he found recovery very difficult, and that he knew he was capable of falling back into using. S.B.'s "two flophouses," as I so judgmentally put it, have a reputation for being glorified crackhouses. This is from the point of view of the majority of quite comfortable Santa Barbarans. I've learned to take such things with a chunk of salt.]

Last time I saw him, he said he had until the end of the month (which would've been July) to move out of Heath House, and he didn't know where he was going to go, maybe L.A. where he has some friends. This weekend, Greg Jarvis' lover Jerry told me the Virginia Hotel rumor. [I never saw James again, never even heard another rumor.]

It's sad, if true, and I'm sad about it, but I have to admit there's some selfish...what? Self-pity? I have monumentally bad taste in men. The only guys I can say were not a waste of time since Ben and I broke up (and let's not even get into Ben), are Bill Kern and Robbie Hamilton. And both of them fell off the face of the Earth. As have all other men, except Jody (in whom I have no interest) and Matt (who has no interest in me, and who would be a bad choice any way.)

[Jody was this guy who was a regular on the S.B. gay scene forever. I slept with him a couple of times this summer, fitting him in between all the others. It was so uninspiring that I didn't feel the need to write about it.]

I might as well record my theory about Jody and Matt and me. It reminds me of the analogies on the English Advanced Placement test: I am to Matt what Jody is to me. It's demeaning to Jody, and elevated Matt unduly, and it makes me look bad from all angles, and looking at it on paper makes it seem not all that accurate.

OK, forget the analogies. Let this be the final chapter in Bill's Not-So-Excellent Adventure in Dating in Santa Barbara. Time to move on. [If only I had...]

I hope James is OK.

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