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Chapter 14
And Life Tries To Go On

With NOTHING family-wise to hold me in Louisiana, I accelerated my plans to join Jeremy in Virginia. There had been a recruitment team from BDM (a computer engineering company with offices outside Washington DC) at USL looking for Multics experienced people. Multics was the computer system that we had been the first class to use. I had saved information from them for when I graduated. I called BDM and arranged to be flown up for an interview. I told them I was moving to Virginia, and to make it a one way ticket. I withdrew from the university and began plans to move away from this place that held too many memories of a mom I wouldn't be able to grow up with anymore.

To this day I remember her best when I see a mom and her son (or daughter) talking about things that are important in their lives, like whether mom should put a rainbow sticker on the family car, or consoling the child when they break up with their boyfriend or girlfriend, or being happy for them when they tell mom that they've found someone to love.

I miss my mom, I miss her a lot. I wish she were here to share my good and bad times. I will always have a ragged hole in my life where she was ripped from me.

Very few things remained to be done before I left, a few goodbyes, one of them to an adult friend I'd known since junior high, Richard. He was the first gay man that I knew, and I had grown pretty close to him after a summer of working for his catering business. He invited me to dinner at an expensive French restaurant in Lafayette. I accepted and looked forward to the date. I told my Jeremy about it. He was a little jealous, but we had not yet exchanged any formal commitments of monogamy. Jeremy was still going on dates with friends he had made in the DC area. Also, this was in the late 70's, where the "free love" environment was common place.

During Richard and my dinner date, the tuxedo clad waiter came to the table with a folded note on a silver tray for me. The note was very sweet and thoughtful; it was from Jeremy in Virginia. It read, "I love you Craig. - Jeremy." He had gone to a lot of trouble to remember the restaurant, call it, and describe us to the host so a note could be transcribed and brought to me.

Now, I'm feeling a little guilty in thinking about this so I feel I have to justify my next actions; that night after dinner, at the age of 19, I slept with Richard. Now Jeremy and I had agreed to start a relationship together, but that relationship would begin when I arrived in Virginia. We were both still single men until then. Jeremy was going out every weekend, and was doing similar things, though perhaps not with a childhood friend more than twice his age. It was a VERY different time back then compared to the nineties and the present. Though Richard wanted me to sleep with him again, I declined his offer. He even said he'd make it a 3-way with any of the other guys I'd ever seen him around. A couple of very cute ones came to mind, but no. I had wanted a sample, not a second helping.

On the night before I was to leave for Virginia, my friends threw a going away party for me. While the party was underway, a phone call came in for one of my friends. I was handed the phone and told:

" Talk to this guy you might like him."

We ended up talking for a long time. His name was Stephen and he would soon become one of Jeremy's and my best friends. Stephen told me my deep voice sounded like I was in the Radio Industry. He lived about 45 minutes away from Lafayette so he decided he needed to meet me in person before I moved away for good. He was not what I expected to see when he arrived. He was tall and skinny and had a bit of a haunted look to him. Regardless of appearance, he was bright, intelligent, and an incredible conversationalist. We talked together all night long. We lay together in the guest bed I was staying in, and of course as anyone can guess by now, we did a little more than just talking and sleeping. Stephen went on to be a lifelong friend and our best friend for almost 10 years.

The evening I was to leave, Fr. Groschen took me to dinner in Lafayette. We had a great meal, and much too much wine. Soon we realized that we needed to hurry to get me to the airport on time. As I got up into the airport, Fr Carey and my Neumann center friends were there to surprise me with parting hugs and kisses. By the time I got to the check in counter they had already closed the airplane door for departure. I had missed my plane to Virginia. The next flight was not until midnight. What they called a Redeye flight. On the plus side, my coach ticket was now worth a first class seat on the redeye flight.

I’d never flown before, and my first experience was turning out to be a bit hectic. The first class seat sounded like a cool thing. On the downside, my original flight was to have landed at Dulles Airport in Virginia; my new, much later flight was to land at BWI airport in Baltimore Maryland. Over an hour away from where Jeremy lived, whereas Dulles was only 5 miles away. I called Jeremy and broke the news to him. He seemed okay with it, and even a bit amused by the keystone cop antics of barely missing the plane, and surprise goodbyes.

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