I didn't give anything up for Lent

I didn't give anything up for Lent this year.

Some of my older friends are probably surprised that I give up anything for Lent, ever, because I'm kind of not a very good Catholic most of the time. I'm pro-abortion (actually, I feel like I shouldn't have a say in it at all, because it's not a choice I'll ever have to make, but I support the right of women to make that choice for themselves), I'm gay, I believe in evolution, I've been known to wear a rosary as a fashion accessory, and I only go to church if someone is getting married, buried, or I want to take pictures of the inside. When I was little, my mom called the people who only went to church on Christmas and Easter "C&E Catholics", but I don't even make it that far, since those people actually got dressed up and went to church twice a year. I do pray every night, though, and I skip eating meat on Fridays during Lent, so I'm doing something.

Last year, I gave up Pop Tarts for Lent, because I was inspired by my many friends who give things up for Lent and wanted to support them. People in the office give up things like soda, bread, cable TV, and eating out, and that requires a tremendous amount of dedication. My friend Bryan went to church every week, and he carefully followed all the Catholic rules, and he gave up a tremendous amount of stuff for Lent every year, like eating meat and watching TV and going to the movies all at the same time.

And then he died, and this year I didn't feel like giving up anything for Lent.

You might think I'm just angry at God, but I'm not. I already had that phase a really long time ago, when I was in my twenties, but it started in my teens. For a while, I prayed every night that I would miraculously turn cute, like cheekbones and abs cute. It never happened, but I kept praying. Then at the end of my teens, there was a lot of praying that I would miraculously turn straight. A lot of praying. I really, really didn't want to be gay, but you are what you are and that's what I turned out to be. Then when I was resigned to that, there was a lot more praying that the guy I thought I was in love with more than anything would love me the same way, and he didn't. After years and years of praying, all I had was depression, frustration, and tremendous disappoint, and I figured that if that was all I was going to get from God then I didn't want any of it.

Jesus, in my opinion, could shove it.

It wasn't until many years later that I read that God answers all prayers. It's just that sometimes the answer is "no".

Even though that's not very comforting, it's better than nothing, right? It certainly sounds at least a little bit better than, "God has a plan. The Lord works in mysterious ways," because, really, when has that ever made anyone feel better? It's not very comforting to hear about a plan when you don't know what the plan is or even if it's one that you'll like. When Bryan was in the hospital last fall, lots and lots of people were praying that he would get better, and when he didn't someone tried to comfort me after his memorial with, "God has a plan for everybody." I know they meant well, but what good is a plan that doesn't seem to benefit anyone and makes everyone sad?

You could argue that the plan is just so long range that maybe, sometimes, you can't see it, and you just need to be patient. For example, last fall I was sitting my evening shift in the Resource Center when a student came in to look around and talk. This semester, Pizza Night happens during my shift, so there are lots of people there, but last semester there was no Pizza Night and I had what we will charitably call "low traffic" on the Thursday night shift, but this night I had a visitor so I put my book away and chatted for a while. After a half hour or so the student had to go to a meeting, so I let him know about some of the upcoming programs and asked him to be sure to stop by the center again, and I figured that was it and went to mark him on my visitor tally sheet for the night. After a minute or two, though, he popped back into the doorway and thanked me for being there and keeping the center open.

"You're the only out, you know, adult male I've ever met, and I just wanted to, you know, say thanks. For being here."

I told him he was welcome, and advised him again to stop by more often, because he could meet a lot of out gay people that way, and then he popped out of the doorway again and was gone. Now, I wasn't doing anything special. The center has a lot of volunteers, and he just happened to come by during my shift when all I was doing was sitting there, but it could have been any of us. It wasn't anything special for me, but it seemed to be for him, and it wouldn't have happened if I got what I prayed for back when I was twenty. If God miraculously turned me straight, like I wanted, then I might have still been sitting at the center (I like to think I'd still be an ally, even if I did like girls) but I wouldn't have been an adult out gay male.

Do I think God had a plan all along, and I can draw a magical dotted line from twenty year old me in 1996 praying as hard as he could that he'd turn straight to older me in 2010 who's gay and fine with it?

No. I'm not ready to say that. I may never be.

But is it possible?

Well... maybe.

And in thinking about that, we come back to my friend Bryan, and how we prayed that he'd be ok, and instead he died. Does God have a plan that includes that? Are any of us going to look back someday and think that it makes more sense, and seems maybe not so bad? I don't know. Most of me doesn't think so. But is it possible? Maybe, I guess. Maybe God does have a purpose, and a plan, for everything. Maybe not. The truth is that I can't say, but what I can say is that if there is a plan, I don't always like it.

So when Lent rolled around, and God wanted me to sacrifice something, I didn't feel like it. God took my friend away, and I could have just walked away again, and washed my hands of God. I've done it before, although it doesn't seem to take, so I could probably do it again, but I chose not to. I guess, instead, I have a little bit of faith, or maybe just of hope, that this happened for a reason and someday I'll understand it.

I gave up my friend, apparently for God's plan, and that seemed like enough sacrifice for one year, so I didn't give anything up for Lent.

A quiet walk around campus

After a delicious brunch of biscuits and gravy with eggs, cheese, and chorizo sausage:



with Bryan's family, who are in town for a few days, I took a short walk around campus to clear my head. It's nice to see them, but also sad, and I needed some alone time to process a little.

Fortunately, spring break started on Friday, so walking around campus is pretty solitary:



Not a student in sight.

I wasn't really looking for anything in particular, just walking, thinking, and snapping random images:







In addition to working on my black and white some more:



I also did a little bit of playing with color:



I'm not sure I like that, but I took it with the intention of coming home and tweaking the hell out of the saturation, so yay for deliberate photography over point and click, I guess.

I also took about five versions of this one, which I think is the best picture I took today:



I like that photo a lot, and also, I feel better.

Progress

I was supposed to take this picture a really long time ago:



When I first moved here, the JFG Coffee building was totally vacant. There wasn't even glass in the windows. The painting on the side, which is so vivid there, was faded and a little peeling, and the sign on top, while intact, had seen better days. A couple of years ago I was walking around downtown and I tried to get a picture of the sign, but couldn't get the right angle from street level on Jackson:



I didn't realize at the time that the perfect angle is available if you stand on the Gay Street viaduct, because I hadn't explored enough in that direction to know that the viaduct existed. I was still a little uncertain about that end of town, but Bryan lived down that way, and informed me that I could take a picture of the whole sign from the viaduct. I started down that way once, but was asked for change by homeless people on both sides of the 100 block of Gay Street and ended up turning back before reaching the viaduct or taking the picture.

Bryan offered to walk down there with me someday so that I could get my good picture, but somehow we never got around to it. He never let me forget that, though, and every few weeks he would randomly throw a sentence or two into some email that had nothing to do with it:

"I'll send those forms up in runner mail, and hey, when are you walking down to Gay Street to take that picture of the JFG sign?"

Once he even took a picture of the sign himself on his way in from work and posted it on his facebook to taunt me. Still, I never got around to taking the picture because the building wasn't going anywhere, the sign wasn't going anywhere, and I thought we weren't either. There always seemed to be more time, and then suddenly Bryan is gone and there is no more time, but the sign is still there and this weekend we didn't have to work. Every time I tried to think of a place to go take pictures this weekend my immediate thought was, "Yeah, but you can't call Bryan and see if he wants to go," and then I didn't want to go any more. It's odd, because when Bryan was still here there were lots of times that I never gave it a thought and just got up on Saturday and went somewhere by myself, but this weekend it just seemed horrible that I would have to.

You always want what you can't have.

So the weekend came and almost went. On Sunday afternoon I went to go see a movie with some friends at the Tennessee Theatre on Gay Street, and after the movie was over and everyone was splitting off their separate ways I realized that I was alone, it was a beautiful sunny day, I missed Bryan, and I'd never walked to the viaduct to take that picture, so I just did it. No pause, no thought, off I went, and there was the angle and the photo and the sign and all of a sudden it was like my photography block was broken. There was something to take a picture of every few feet, and plain old buildings that I see every time I go downtown looked different and dramatic:



I found the stairs to the underside of Gay Street where it was raised in the early 1900's and saw the understructure beneath it and Jackson Avenue:



Even places that I had seen before looked interesting and new:









Bryan thought taking that picture would make me happy, and he was right. It did. I stood on the viaduct and I remembered all the emails and that facebook posting and the times he would just casually drop it into conversation over a meal or when we were doing something else, and I felt better. I remembered Bryan, and I felt ok. I think Bryan would be ok with it, too.

I'm going to go somewhere this weekend, and I'm going to take some pictures.

In Memoriam

I've always been told that coming out is a continuing process, something that you have to keep doing over and over and never really finish. From my own experience, I can speak to the truth of that statement, and from my other experience this week I can speak to another truth:

Saying goodbye to a friend is also a continuing process, and it feels like you just keep doing it over and over and will never really finish.

I've said goodbye to Bryan a thousand times this week, in a thousand ways, and I still feel the sudden pain of the knowledge that he is no longer a part of my life each time I do it. I was sending an email to the buildings staffs the other day, using my usual alphabetical by hall list, and there was Bryan's name at the bottom. I had to take it off. I found a voicemail from him on my phone this morning, an old one that for some reason I had listened to and not deleted, and realized that I will never get another one. When we were helping his family pack up his apartment, they gave me a box of canned goods and nonperishable groceries that they didn't know what to do with, and when I got it home I realized that he'd bought the can of chilis and the can of black olives so that he could make the wraps that he always brought to Ben and Elizabeth's house for the 4th of July cookout that he was too sick to come to.

Every time I find one of these things, sometimes in small out of the way places or sometimes in the middle of my living room floor, like the box of books that he and I got at the Boys and Girls Club fundraiser, I have to say goodbye again, and it hurts. People keep pointing out to me that someday it will hurt less, but that's like the people that tell me that someday my prince will come. "Someday" is as unreachable now as "yesterday" is, and yesterday (metaphorical yesterday, anyway) Bryan was still with us.

Yesterday we had a memorial for Bryan, for people to remember and try to say goodbye, and to celebrate his life. About halfway through, there was a spot for friends to share stories, and I stood because none of his friends were speaking. Other than a lot of sobbing, choking, and at least one snort, the only things I remember saying are that Bryan was my friend, and that I couldn't think of any stories to share. It was like my brain locked up and my mouth locked up and I didn't know what to say, but it was also kind of insane because my friendship with Bryan is all about stories.

Bryan is the friend that went on adventures with me. They weren't usually places that he wanted to go, or, sometimes, places where anyone in their right mind would want to go, but he wanted to make his friends happy, and if I wanted to go to Bizarro Philly or Parrot Mountain or on a road trip to the World's Largest Ten Commandments then Bryan wanted to be the one who drove the car. On the weekends we got in the car, we drove around, I took pictures, and somehow this was fun for us both.

I gave Aileen, Bryan's sister, a CD of pictures of him to include in the slide show she was making, and after the memorial she mentioned that they looked at the pictures and tried to figure out what was going on, what the stories were, so here's a brief rundown.

Picture #1:



This is from Kristin's birthday party at Tragic Mexican Hooters. Bryan was trying to explain to Kristin that he was planning to drive her home if she got drunk, not to get her drunk and then drive her back to his home.

Picture #2:



This is from a pool party at our apartment complex. About a minute after this picture was taken, Jeannie's baby peed all over the concrete patio because she had somehow fastened his swim diaper on wrong.

Pictures #3, 4, and 5:







These were all taken during the day trip Bryan and I took to the International Towing and Recovery Museum, the Lookout Mountain Civil War Battlefield, and the Bloodstained Crypt of Little Nina Cragmiles, where Bryan couldn't resist climbing onto the playground equipment.

Picture #6:



This is Bryan serving as a guinea pig, and being the first one brave enough to eat the Cheelows that I made. I adore Cheelows, and Bryan kindly ate a square or two every time I made them.

Picture #7:



That's Bryan holding up the tiny, tiny menu at the pizza place we went to lunch at after we toured the uranium enrichment plant and went to the Secret City Festival.

Picture #8:



That's Bryan impatiently waiting for the roller derby bout to restart after the sprinklers in the arena exploded. We waited for play to resume long enough for Kristin to have about half a dozen cigarettes.

All of the other pictures I gave her:











are from our trip to the Parthenon (of Nashville, not Athens).

Like I said, Bryan was my friend, and he was the friend who went on adventures with me. Even when he went into the hospital, we still treated it as another adventure, something that would be a really good story when he finally got out again. We made it a story about balloons and bitching about how the hand sanitizer smelled and that incredibly terrible apple cobbler because our stories were safe. They were fun, and they always ended the same way: everyone got dropped off at their apartment and we made plans to meet up again soon. Our hospital story didn't end that way, though, and instead of saying goodbye until next weekend we have to figure out how to say goodbye forever instead.

Bryan is still on an adventure, but he's travelling somewhere that we can't follow, and the story he is telling now will have to wait a while for us to catch up with him. I still have all these stories though, and I understand now why I was unable to pick one out to share.

Bryan Murphy was my friend, and in the end all the stories become that story. It's the story of who Bryan was and how he lived and who he was to all of us, how he taught us to be selfless, and brave, and to cherish our friends because we won't always have them.

It's a story that's not over, because now it's a story of how we have to learn to say goodbye.