I met a new friend for lunch yesterday. It’s a rather unusual, sweet story. For that reason, I need to write about it.
About three months ago, a young reporter sent me a message via my contact page. He saw a nostalgic piece I wrote about my college years at the University of Missouri.
It included a reference to Hinkson Creek and an abandoned quarry there, which I and many other college freshmen and freshwomen frequented on Friday nights to swim and party.
Apparently, the creek is now polluted–has been for more than thirty years–with an array of contaminants, but there is a push by various environmental groups to salvage it.
In his note, this earnest reporter–a journalism student at the same university I graduated from in 1979–wanted to talk with me to include a few comments about my recollections of Hinkson Creek. He wanted to give the story some texture and a touch of humanity.
As background, I don’t always respond to these sorts of messages. Too many of them are generated by bots or feel exploitive. But this one felt different. So, I responded.
A few days later, we had a pleasant phone conversation. I shared information about the fun I had with friends at Hinkson Creek in the mid 1970s and how sad it was for me to learn that Hinkson Creek is now unsafe due to the presence of E. coli in the water (according to data on the EPA website).
Before I said goodbye to the reporter, he told me how ironic it was that I lived in the Phoenix area, because he would be moving to the Valley of the Sun in July to be with his partner. I suggested he contact me again once he got situated here.
Last week, I received a text from this young man, this recent Mizzou journalism graduate who is forty-eight years younger than me.
He now lives in Phoenix and is looking for a writing job here. He included a link to the story he wrote which appeared in the Columbia Missourian with a few quotes from me.
It’s a thorough, well-researched story, but that’s not the point of my story.
Anyway, I thanked him for sending the link to me. He asked if I was still interested in meeting for lunch. I responded with a definite YES.
Yesterday afternoon–one day before the rain finally arrived to ease our parched earth here–we met in person.
This smart, enterprising, young gay man and I talked about his job search, my writing and my husband’s passion for films, how he and his partner met, his love of writing and music, his early impressions of Phoenix, and my recommendation that he find his place in the LGBTQA community here.
I told him that at this point in my life it is especially meaningful for me to help a younger man–a young gay man–by offering a little guidance in a harsh world.
He smiled when I told him I would pick up the check and–before we parted ways, but after I invited him and his partner to come to the next Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus concert in December–he said jokingly that meeting me is kind of like having an “elder gay” to talk with.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t want to be referred to as an “elder” anything. But in this case, it was a term of endearment. So, I laughed and accepted it that way.
***
My wise, sassy, and “elderly” Aunt Thelma once told me when she was in her seventies, and I was about this young reporter’s age, that “we are all like ships passing in the night.”
I have always taken that to mean that life is fleeting, and that we should try to help each other around every turn. That we should try to do the right thing, because we never know what tomorrow may bring.
I think Thelma would have been proud of me yesterday.
Who could have imagined that a story about a polluted creek would lead to a pleasant lunch?
More important, that I might reach forward to help a young gay man, while looking back to remember that unrealized twenty-one-year-old-gay version of me who most certainly would have loved a little advice from an “elder gay” friend.
Mark Johnson Stories 