Terri's Birthday Party

Terri was the girl who carried a rose with her books at high school. Dark curly Italian hair, and the fiery temper that goes along with that. Terri wrote poetry in notebooks covered with florid script. Terri was our class Romantic. Terri was one of my permanent crushes in high school.

I was terrified of girls during those years, stuck somewhere between an old-fashioned gentlemanliness that I'd been brought up in and the raging lusts that held my body hostage. Any girl who didn't treat me with outright disdain was likely to be the subject of at least a short crush, and probably one or more of that night's fantasies. (Ok, who am I kidding? ESPECIALLY the girls who treated me with outright disdain.).

But Terri was different. I had a crush on Terri for years. My fantasies with Terri involved working our way around the country together in a van, having adventures every day like a TV series. At night I'd play my guitar and sing her Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" by the firelight.

I was an idiot.

My romantic approach was simple: Moon about from twenty yards away and hope to be noticed. I guess my persistence paid off with Terri, because we actually managed to become sort-of friends. Well, and we had a lot of classes together. I was close enough to truly torture myself in my elegant longing. Her best friend, Lisa Shallcross, even invited me to a birthday party she was throwing for Terri.

It was actually a dual party, Lisa's older brother Scott and Terri together. It was a pool party. I didn't really know many people there, especially not Scott's loud friends. I was aware of most of them only by name and reputation from school. Our reputations were not at all similar. I could just feel line of division forming between me and them. They were being boisterous and obnoxious and I retreated further and further into my shell. I felt every laugh and shout as though it was directed straight at me. Every laugh said, "You don't belong here, kid. If you don't want to rough-house with the boys you're probably a fag". Terri was completely absorbed with other friends and oblivious to my torture.

The party migrated out to the pool, the big boys were jumping off the porch into the pool and Terri was being mostly impressed. I slunk into the pool and was sitting there, realizing that I just needed to leave. Lisa's dad was in the pool I stood near him for a bit.

Lisa's dad said to me, "You know, in this world, some people are just … soft spoken, and that's just fine."

Lisa's dad is my hero. This story has been in my mind for decades waiting to be told. Here we were, in a place on the border between suburb and hick town, a place where we had a word for cowboy wannabes (we called them "goat-ropers" to piss them off), a place in the mid-seventies, about ten years and 50 miles from a place where Brokeback Mountain could have taken place and this kind man was giving me shelter. He didn't care if I was gay or not (I'm not) but he saw a kid needing a kind word and he gave it.

I spent another few grateful minutes in the respite of his kindness and left the party.

Mr. Shallcross, wherever you may be, you are not an idiot.