Toto

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toto_%28Oz%29

I didn't know Charles at Oneonta, but like any lifelong "famous" person, he sure knew me. It's an odd sort of fame, because it means that everyone around me is talking about me behind my back, leaving me out in the cold (socially-speaking), which is a form of abuse in of itself, with or without the backstabbing gossip. It's fucked up, but so are people, and since I live a life in the public eye, I have no choice. I don't like it, and I don't control it. People swirl around me, like I'm the calm cool eye in the center of their tornado-like life, which is absolutely true. I don't participate or enable their dysfunctions, but there they are for me to see right on their surface, in full view. It makes disordered people pull way back from me, which is great for me because it means that I telegraph my intentions clearly. I prefer honesty: it's a deep part of my faith, and like my father, I do not suffer fools easily, just like our Lord and Savior did not during His Time on Earth. It's like being the "King of Lose" that's also the ultimate winning strategy; a baffling combination of human and super to the ill and healthy alike.

Of course, I'm a woman, and just not another Catholic saint (we have more than enough martyrs in the world, real and imagined), although I am those, too. But sometimes, just like any other working class student at a state school, I want to forget the cares of the day and have a good time. Charles knew some of my good friends, but because of my status, a lot of people connected to our various social groups knew me without actually being good friends with me. Charles supposedly had a girlfriend before he left college for good, but I only knew him as an "out" gay man back in the city, and a rather promiscuous one at that. I'm glad that I didn't know him at O-Town, because after a few beers, I would have pulled the poor girl who thought he was just "really nice" aside, to tell her away from the main group at the party that he was obviously gay, because I'm like that. I tell people the truth, unless there's some deep strategy at play that risks life or death, but you don't want to know about that right now.

Suffice to say, after I moved to Brooklyn to work in companies as their apprentice, my friends connected to the city began hanging out together again, as we adjusted to this form of "adult" living. Charles was part of one of my cliques from school, and just like before, I didn't really know him that well. He was just there, drinking and smoking like the rest of us, working low-paying "artsy" jobs while trying to stay afloat, just like we were. He was a gay man raised by a hip single mom from the 'hood who decided she had enough "snap" in her to cut out the deadbeat dad and go it alone. I admired that, as much as I knew all the pratfalls of his life. It ain't easy, yo. We got on fine, until he pulled me in for a closer look. Then it started poppin' off badly.

First, my crazy friend from RISD felt alone in "The Big Apple", so in retaliation for this turn-around she felt happened between Providence and New York, places where she thought she was some hot-shot and I was not, this current series of events was most unwelcome. She set at sabotaging a group of friends by sleeping with one of my college "besties" from state, who I just happened to have set up with another good friend of mine before leaving for art school. After she torpedoed that crew (which was fine with me, because they were quickly figuring out that I wasn't some hard luck case that they pretended I was back then, out of ignorance and spite), she went wacky with Charles, another guy who felt that he was on the fringes of our clique, looking in from the outside. In truth, none of them knew me all that well, they just flattered themselves into thinking so, so as to have access to my crowd of gifted beautiful people they felt were ripe for the picking.

It was fine as long as everyone got along, but in the fierce competition of city life, wanna-be's began dropping like flies around us if I didn't consistently support them in whatever they felt I should, like hooking up indiscriminately with people I cared about, and then whining about how hard life was while ignoring my obvious strengths, in desperate bids to regain some mythical upper hand over me that never really existed, and then resuming their plots against me for their continued exposure to me. Once I pushed Lisa out of the nest, she hooked up with Charles as his "Fag Hag", so she could maintain the illusion of being a real big-time "fashion designer", when in reality, she was struggling to make it like any one of us. The privileges were just gone without her realizing I had removed the braces that held her up. 

She and Charles were disastrous together. After a few months as roommates, vicious baby wars broke out between them, so bad that she wished AIDS on him for having the audacity to attract men she felt she deserved, which is the enemy to every single crazy "art fag" I've ever met. She worked on these boring conversions of adamant gay men like she was some type of goddess, when they really just wanted to party and have fun, occasionally stopping to kiss the girl they danced with at some club or party. It was harmless fun, but she acted like his lovers were some kind of direct attack on her fragile ego, which curdled into a hatred that continues to this day. I was with one of my good friends from school at that point in time, and he and I were trying to make our own way out in the world. We didn't need her around to cause the bitchy conflicts she thrived on, like her needy insecurities that were a bottomless dark pit no one wanted to fall into.

She left for the "Left Coast" because she isn't good enough to make it in New York, and by the time me and my crew finished with her, she knew it. Charles ripped her apart like she was his personal chew toy, which is exactly what she made herself into so she could play the Art Fag game to the hilt. They had used each other for money and convenience, as superficial as any of the many rejected sweater designs at the one and only fashion company she has ever worked at, because she's actually a knitter and a seamstress, and not an actual designer. Needless, we don't stay in touch. Why? She couldn't handle the truth then. I suspect not much has changed in her life since then.

I hooked up with Charles again while I was dating a fellow RISD grad I met at an alumni party. We were in Park Slope, walking around and enjoying the summertime weather, when we happened to pass the bar and restaurant that is right next to Charles' place in the 'hood, with him ensconced at an outdoor picnic table of choice, firmly implanted there as their regular customer. We were excited to see each other, and Charles was already deep in the cups with free-flowing pitchers of Sangria that we began ordering in triple while catching up, enjoying each other's renewed acquaintance. He loved my recent summer fling because he swore he was gay, too, which we laughed about it when my new beau got up to use the restroom. RISD guys can skew as "gay" easily sometimes, especially when a certain someone I was dating then told me that his best friend is bisexual, hence the gayish lisp that often marks the more effeminate type of man.

My guy swore to Charles that he wasn't gay, and we all went back to his apartment next door to the bar to "get high", something me and my RISD friend laughed about, because it was like being in college for us; that's how rare pot smoking had become to us out in the adult world where we thrived and excelled. After my summer romance ended, I didn't see Charles that much anymore, even though he was a block away from my apartment at that time. He was still embroiled in these weird baby wars that he tried to involve me in, with little success. Of course, he had a partner of ten years that he wanted to leave, thinking of using me and my apartment as his launching pad for this supposed upcoming "divorce" in their civil war, but as a woman in my 40s who had beaten most of her demons on her own, I was in no mood to enable a guy who still read comic books high, while occasionally working as a massage therapist out of his apartment, in between trips funded by his rich white boyfriend, and frequent hits off a burning joint.

It was way too "hippie dippie" for me, and I'd never been a hippie, anyway. I was way too working class, but like most kids back then who didn't actually know me, they saw tiny glimpses of me through a smokey haze of their drug use and ineptitude, which typically didn't reach all the way to me personally, so that's how I took it years later, too. One of the last times I saw him was during a rare weekday when I wasn't working at the local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, having a "girlfriend's brunch" while sitting outside at a Bar Toto table, enjoying in the warm October weather. At the time, I knew I'd avoid getting pulled into his messy teenage-like affairs, so I simply enjoyed what little time he and I had left during this century's acquaintance with each other; not as real adult support, but a fun diversion nonetheless.

We talked about the upcoming Halloween holiday, which he accused of being racist and not gay enough. There happened to be a gay couple sitting within ear shot at the table next to us who heard our conversation (the service was slow and really bad), so we chatted about his feeling that there are a lack of gay black superheroes for him to dress up as. I quickly lost interest in the game, preferring to whisper back the under-breath responses that the pretty blond guy at the next table came up with, while his partner was using the restroom. I had tapped out from this kind of teenage life many years ago, and after that brunch, we both knew it, instead of just me. He still had a lot of growing up left to do, like becoming financially independent and on his own, with a thriving career that he tended to by himself.

Before we parted ways (for good?), we recited a list of what we thought could be gay superheroes, me playing the role of "Dorothy" to his "Toto" as part of the supporting role he had in my life, before circumstances put me back in the whirlwind of change that he never had the guts for, for many really good and really messed-up reasons that mark the Gen X'ers who raised themselves, for better or worse. We finally settled on an obscure character from M. Night Shyamalan's movie "Unbreakable" played by Samuel L. Jackson; a character who may or may not be "gay", obviously black, and obviously super-heroed, but just not as good as the everyman played by Bruce Willis, as the relatively unknown character "Elijah Price", an obscure reference that suited his geekish boyish bent towards comic book life with storybook endings. I hope it suited you well, Charles, as the temporary "Boy Wonder" to the forces of my life that were too big for him to handle. Fair thee well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbreakable_%28film%29