Rafe

[Thinking a lot today about the only friend I'm not speaking to on purpose. Rafe and I "broke up" in August 1999, and though we live only a block and a half apart, I haven't even seen him on the street in almost a year. (There were a few rare sightings before that.) It's possible that he and his boyfriend, Antonio, have moved away, but John and I saw A. on the bus we both used to take only a little over a month ago.]

[Rafe and I met on the Fourth of July, 1992, at a party given by one of one of leading lights of Santa Barbara's gay social scene. "Auntie Rhonda" was one of those people who knows everyone, but can't be said, I don't think, to have too many close friends, and never a lover. He gave good parties, but cleaned up alone afterwards.]

[In the summer of '92, I was taking summer classes at UCSB, trying to get back into the studying habit after dropping out for the first time the previous year. I was working weekends only at the health agency where I would later work full-time after dropping out the second time in '94. I was doing well, I think, but my self-esteem wasn't at its highest: I think Pete and I were still occasionally fooling around, but almost two years out of the closet, I wasn't getting laid much, to say nothing of finding a boyfriend. I was lonely, though I had many friends.]

[Tom, a budding version of Auntie Rhonda (i.e., lots of acquaintances, few friends), took me to Auntie's party that Independence Day. We were the first there, except for skinny punk with stringy, badly bleached hair, combat boots and a sneer. This was Rafe. With no one else to talk to, we sat around and batted a balloon back and forth, chatting.]

[The party warmed up, and was in fact the first time I met and kissed Gary Grosse, whom I would date briefly over four years later just before leaving Santa Barbara for good. I must've kissed a couple of other guys at that party, but ended up somehow dancing with Rafe to a seemingly endless remix of Madonna's "Express Yourself," (you know the soulless version on The Immaculate Collection? There's a remix of that which lasts like a year), and we kissed and kissed. I offered him a ride home.]

[In my car were two cassettes (remember them?), the aforementioned Immaculate Collection, and Youthquake by Dead or Alive. Now Rafe happens to be the biggest fan of Pete Burns west of the Mississippi, and was deeply impressed that that cassette happened to be in the car. (I'd just heard "You Spin Me 'Round" in a West Hollywood club the week before, and bought it on a lark) We got back to his dump of a studio, which he shared a flipped out freak of a lesbian, and had quite satisfactory sex (the flipped out freak was not present). A strong friendship developed that summer, and even though we only had sex once more, we were all but inseparable until he moved back up to San Luis Obispo in the fall.]

[Rafe couldn't get a job in San Luis, and moved back down to S.B. the following February, sleeping on Sean's and my couch until Sean moved back up to the Bay Area in July. Rafe and I then shared that apartment until October. 1993 was the year RuPaul appeared, and we had an awful lot of fun cutting my hair in the bathroom listening to "Supermodel." Rafe, more than anyone else, helped me get comfortable with being gay. Not homosexual, but happily, flamboyantly (when the situation called for it) G-A-Y.]

[Rafe was always determined to improve himself. When I met him, he was skinny, smoked cigarettes, drank quite a bit, and was barely employed. He owned hundreds of CD's, and was obsessed with 80's dance pop. He'd dropped out of high school and was homeless for a while in his late teens. When we were roommates, he bought a weight set, and really started to bulk up. He started studying computers and, and his low-level admin jobs developed into IT consulting positions.]

[We separated as roommates, but were close as ever even after he moved to San Francisco. He called me in a panic the day he moved up there: his car broke down South of Market, and he needed help with orientation. He settled down in the City, waiting tables in North Beach as long as necessary to finish more studying to advance to the next stage in his computer career. He started dating Antonio, and as my relationship with Ben fell apart, and during that last year before I moved up to S.F. myself, I must have driven up to visit at least once a month.]

[Once I moved up here in '96, things seemed to start changing between us. Rafe got a lot of the partying out of his system in his late teens and early 20's, and wasn't much interested in exploring the parts of San Francisco I wanted to see. Of course, he had a boyfriend, and I didn't, but there was also the fact that he was suddenly making a lot of money, and I was still doing the same old admin/clerical stuff I'd done in Santa Barbara.]

[John's appearance in my life didn't help. John's life-of-the-party persona turned Rafe off, and Rafe couldn't understand what I was doing with such a lightweight. John's persona is just that, though, a persona, and Rafe couldn't get past it. (It's silly really: when John lived in New York and Florida, he was the biggest Pete Burns fan east of the Mississippi. Ask him sometime about the time Pete slapped him and called him a faggot.)]

[It wasn't John, though, not really. Rafe's was a doer, and I'm a dreamer. We became friends just before Rafe was about to jumpstart his life, and I was about shift gears for a, shall we say, less virtuous existence (I'd been the good boy for way too long), and we were met on the same road, going in two different directions (No one's seen so many automotive metaphors in one paragraph since the Go-Go's' "Skidmarks On My Heart." At least I didn't mix them!) Rafe admired my knowledge and my social skills, and was disappointed that I wasn't doing more with my life.]

[The last year or so of our friendship, it was hard not to have a conversation without one of us making little comments about the state of each other's lives: he'd call me a loser, I'd say he used to be a lot more fun. Eventually, he asked me to help him with a software project: he wanted a technical writer, and thought working with him could get me off the ground making a living by writing. I tried, and failed, to get interested in the project. I procrastinated, and eventually we had a heated Instant Messenger conversation in which I said I didn't want to do it, and we haven't spoken since. What a modern way to break up.]

[I think about him a lot, because, in some ways, he was a valuable mirror for me. However, we both had a hard time seeing the difference between constructive criticism and verbal abuse. I think we outgrew each other. I miss the good parts, though.]

[The Rafe List]

[Dead or Alive, Depeche Mode, haircuts, Divine, Ab Fab, customized answering machine messages, scraping the bottom of the sexual partners barrel in Santa Barbara, AB Logic, Ofra Haza, Tales of the City, "If A Woman Answers" by Vanity 6, "Oh, honey, even Siouxsie isn't doing Siouxsie anymore," watered-down Satanism, Divine, Ace of Base, Heinlein, "Fuck Off, Mary," Matt "Call Me" Cleary, relief at negative HIV results, nic fits.]

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