Tribe of Three Chapter Two

First off let me say how amazed I am that none of you offered me any cheese to go with my whine yesterday. I feel much better today.

So... my friend/coworker Sara and I went that night to Billy's art opening at the Artist's Association. I had not been to many of these affairs and did not really know anyone there other than Sara so we sort of hung tight and wandered through looking at the artwork. It was I think a three person show and one of those people was Billy. At the time he was still painting abstracts sort of in the vein of Rothko. I had no idea the work was his. I thought he just worked there as assistant gallery director and had invited me to an opening in general.... not to see his actual work. And being the brilliant mind that I am .... "William McLane" written on the hang tags for the paintings did not register as "Billy" who asked me to the show. Thankfully I did not make an asshole out of myself. I actually told him that my favorite painting in the show was "that blue and white abstract one on the middle wall over there," and he said "That one is mine!" Whoa! You have to remember that at this point the only conversation we had had was "Do you want mayo or mustard on that turkey sandwich?" And things of this nature. I knew nothing about him or what he did.

When the show was winding down he said everyone was going to The Bamboo Supper Club and then to the Chicken Box for drinks, he invited us to come along. At this point in time I was no stranger to the Chicken Box. Being that I lived in a house with a single Irishman and neither of us had a whole lot going on socially I found myself there many nights a week getting plowed and dancing to whatever live band or dj they had that night. I had recently weathered my toughest St. Paddies Day ever with a whole troop of kids from Ireland at The Box. I am not sure I have even been so drunk (before that night and definitely not since that night) in my life.

So we went out and had a great time... the group we were with are all really good people and I managed to not get embarrassingly drunk (I saved that for a week or so later.) Afterwards we discovered that we lived about one block away from one another downtown. So we walked home together. We sat around outside the house I lived in (it was The Black Eyed Susans restaurant employee housing) which is a pretty lonely spot in the winter since the restaurant is closed and there are no employees around. We talked for an hour or so and it was all giddy and stupid feeling (for me anyway) and it was hard to part ways. We actually kissed goodbye on that very first night. I was excited and terrified all at once. Having been alone for awhile on the island it had been a rough winter (my Grandma was killed in a car accident about two months before this) and I had been doing a lot of soul searching. I was just starting to feel like a sane person again. Which was actually a pretty unfamiliar feeling for me... I had not had too many sane moments in my adult life to date. Now here I was on this little island out in the Atlantic in March... I had been gone from Illinois for almost a full year and things were starting to look pretty good where they had been really, really weird before.

Billy was an utter mystery to me in the beginning. I thought maybe he was a trust fund baby... or an international James Bond type spy... or maybe even a hologram. But he was just Billy. It took me a few months to realize that. Things got pretty ridiculous right off the bat. Since he only lived about a 45 second run away from my front door I would frequently jump out of bed at three in the morning, run down Orange St. in my pajamas and throw rocks at his second story bedroom window until I saw the light click on and his face appear in the window. He would then stumble downstairs and be all "Yeah... (rubbing the sleep out of his eyes) are you OK? What are you doing??" And then I would feel dumb and have to say... "I just had to see you for a minute, I couldn't sleep." It's a miracle he did not think I was out of my mind. Maybe he did actually... but on some level he liked it enough to let me get away with acting like a real ding dong. He even put up with me getting so drunk on vodka the following weekend that I threw up at his house. That's pretty. That's a desirable new girlfriend. It was in truth the grand finale of my "drinkin' days." Since Billy is not one to indulge in anything other than good food I naturally tapered off my habits until I stopped drinking all together. At this point in time a half a glass of wine will cause me to pass out.

I will tell you this too... I cannot imagine a better place on this planet to find the boy of your dreams than Nantucket just as spring is about to kick in and then you have summer ahead of you. It was absolutely magical.



It was magical all the way through until we decided to leave the island and spend the coming Winter in Key West, Florida. Then.... well, things took a turn. A turn toward cockroaches and crazy people. But that is for Chapter Three....