As a Senior in high school, I had fallen into a relationship with Christopher -- Kip to all of us -- Jackson, one of the stars of our powerhouse football team. But, it was a clandestine relationship, on the down low, him by day with Corrine on his arm and by night sneaking through my bedroom window.
After we graduated, we continued our affair, but it was still hidden from view, occurring only in the dark of my room after the world and its preying eyes had gone to sleep. Very little grows in the dark.
As the summer wound down, I felt Kip slipping through my fingers, like sands through the hourglass. For college, he was headed to a Division II powerhouse in Georgia, and I was headed to Carleton in Northfield, Minnesota.
He said we'd keep going, but I didn't think we could. I wanted to, but I was not enough for him in our small hometown, so I didn't know how it was possible I could be enough for him when we were separated by a 1,000 miles.
The boy on the side never has staying power. He gets tossed, the way three-day old tuna salad gets tossed.
Beyond that, it was the 80s, and long-distance relationships faced far greater challenges than they face today. Long distance was expensive, and cellular telephones, email, Facetime, and texting were years away.
It is almost impossible for Sunday night telephone calls and handwritten letters to maintain a relationship, much less one that didn't get air or sunlight.
It was in that context that my parents drove me north, to a small Minnesota town.
With each mile that passed under the tires of our Cutlass, my heart broke and scattered.
I was not naive. I didn't believe in "absence makes the heart grow fonder." I believed in "out of sight and out of mind." And, I believed that, out of Kip's sight, I'd be out of Kip's mind.
My beliefs were prescient.
I arrived in Northfield to a room already occupied by Wyatt Bridges, from Madison, Wisconsin, the only son of two UW professors who, to their dismay, eschewed the free Badger education to become a Knight, although we called ourselves Carls, not Knights.
Wyatt was built and sized like I expected from a Dairy State boy. He was 6'4", a half foot taller than me. He was solid and thick, but not fat. He had curly, thick brown hair that he made no effort to tame and that he kept long to cover his ears, which were like wings. When I first saw him, I thought "I bet he can hear everything." Almost immediately after, I thought "I bet those ears would make great handlebars."
Between his ears, Wyatt had bright brown eyes that were so light they were almost green, but weren't. They were the most open, untroubled eyes I'd ever seen. Instinctively, I knew he was without deceit or guile. He was he, his existence and affirmation of "here I am, I'm not complicated, I'm not troubled, I'm just me, for whatever that is worth or not worth, a dichotomy about which I do not care."
He was as comfortable in his own skin as anyone I had ever met.
He hid his eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He was not fashionable; he didn't care.
He was careless with his glass, pulling them off from the front and tossing them here or there.
He had a five o'clock shadow that -- combined with the amount of hair on his arms and legs -- suggested he was hirsute. To my surprise, he wasn't. He had no hair on his back or his chest. His extremities were a contrast with his torso, his edges dark and hairy and mysterious, his base clean and clear and pure.
He had a uniform. In order, depending on the weather, he wore a Wisconsin tank, a Wisconsin tee, or a Wisconsin hoodie, always over cotton grey sweats that he pulled up over his calves.
My goodness, those grey sweats. They were relevatory.
When he left our room, he pulled on a red cap with a giant W emblazoned on the front. When it was cold, he replaced the cotton hat with a wool hat, still red and still bedecked with the giant W.
I like referents. For him, I've never found a better one than Go in "Getting Go." When I watched that movie so many years later, I saw Wyatt in the dancer, the soulful brown eyes, the thick lips, the broad smile and happy, pleased and pleasing face, the thick build. If not for the dancer's tattoos and hairy chest, I'd have been totally mind-fucked.
Wyatt was a contrast. He was big and thick, his hands the size of dinner plates, his feet the size of the boxes not the shoes, his ankles and neck and wrists as thick in diameter as they should have been in circumference.
He looked like a jock or a woodsman, but he was neither. Instead of football or rugby, he painted and wrote poetry. He didn't watch sports, much less play them. And, instead of chopping and hunting, he planted and was vegetarian, refusing to eat meat, no matter how it died.
He didn't take dairy in. He was from the Dairy State, but he was dairy-free.
He didn't drink or smoke or take drugs.
"I'm very purposeful about what I put in my body," he announced.
His academic parents were counter-cultural. They didn't own a television, much less watch one. Instead, they read books at night, aloud, the father, the mother, and the only chlild choosing in order and then reading their choice aloud, words, not pictures, floating around and surrounding them. Their images were in their minds, not their eyes.
They listened to music constantly. "Life without music is not worth living," he declared, unpacking his minimal belongings, sliding a classical CD into his CD player, and hitting play and then repeat. From that moment, there would be classical music in our room, around the clock, his Bach or Beethoven or Mozart or Schubert or any of a number of majesties on "repeat," playing over and over and over until he grew tried and replaced one with another.
Wyatt and I were in Evans, Carleton's most social hall. We were lucky, as we landed in a double, not a triple or a quad, and -- even better -- had one of the few private bathrooms.
Exercising his prerogative as the first to arrive, Bridges had chosen the bed by the window.
I took the bed in the corner and then displayed my desperate love of the Cardinals in my choice of bedding (bright red), wall hangings (all celebrating the most storied franchise in the National League), and throw rug (round and white, with the birds on the bat and "Cardinals" in script right down the middle). I was trying as hard as I could to "hetero" my side of the room, to hide me from him.
As I surveyed it, I knew it was a bit much. Wyatt thought so, too, calling me Redbird, which soon became simply Bird. In no time, everyone called me Bird, except Wyatt, who -- in the confines of our room -- called me Little Bird, the opposite of Sesame Street's Big Bird. I don't know how he got there, but I liked it. It was a secret we kept inside our room.
As days turned to weeks, I couldn't believe my luck. I hadn't for one second believed the detailed "roommate profile" I had completed would actually be used to match me with someone who fit me. But, it had.
"At home, everyone -- literally everyone -- calls me Beef," he told me, after we had hit it off.
"But you don't eat beef."
"I know."
For most of his life, Wyatt had been "Meat." But, when Porky's came out, his parents refused to allow the moniker to continue, not wanting the world to think they referred to their son according to the size of his penis.
Meat was short for Meathead, his grandfather's favorite character on All in the Family. His family followed his grandfather's lead, Wyatt became Meathead, and Meathead became Meat. When Meat couldn't continue, Wyatt became Beef.
From Beef's ubiquitous grey sweatpants, I could tell Meat would not have been an inapt nickname. He seemed extremely proportional, his sweats pulling and pushing in all the right places, the legs tight around his thighs, the back tight over his round ass, and the front revealing that he hung low and right.
Beef was not a weightlifter, but he was devoted to push ups and sit ups, and his body reflected the devotion. He was stacked.
I started doing push ups and sit ups with him. I wanted to get stronger. But, I also liked being with him, doing what he was doing. And, in all candor, I liked holding his feet as he did sit ups. When it was the end of the day, I could smell his crotch, the mixture of sweat and urine wafting up and teasing my nose.
I also started running with him. It was a great way to see Northfield and a better way to get to know my roomate, who insisted the proper running pace was conversational.
We talked and talked and talked, our runs getting longer by the day. We ran regardless of the weather, Beef explaining that Madison Winters were long, Summers were short, and Falls and Springs were shorter still.
