Tuesday, March 14, 2006 | by nathan

Thirty Seven and One

This weekend was the kind of time you learn to live for.

Brian and I got up and around nine thirty on Saturday, when the weather was absolutely perfect. The sun was out, there was not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature was hovering somewhere just below 80. When it gets like this I think that Oklahoma may be the most perfect place in the world.

"Can I pick where we drive today?" Brian asked me. We had decided just to go for a drive, and the thought of him taking me along on some adventure to I-knew-not-where sounded perfect. I grabbed my iPod, we stopped for fruity sodas (nothing like grape soda on a spring day), and we headed south down I-35 past Norman.

Brian wanted to show me where he grew up, in Ninnekah and Chickasha. He showed me the house where he grew up, and his grandparents’ house, his elementary school. We listened to Carole King, Bebo Norman, David Wilcox, Matisyahu, Dave Matthews. If you read his blog you get a much better description of the day than what I am writing here, as well as a map of everywhere we traveled.  

After we were done in Chickasha, Brian steered the car north, back toward the city. We were both looking for a certain turnoff to get on State Highway 37, which is absolutely one of the most beautiful, scenic, and peaceful drives you can take in the world. The winter wheat is coming out and turning everything the shade of green that Rich Mullins was writing about. There are high hills that are a blast to take at speed, little towns whose inhabitants stare at you as you zoom past, beautiful views of the prairies all around. The air fills your lungs and invigorates you; it wakes you up.

What amazed me was that Brian and I had discovered this drive each on our own, years ago. He used to drive an oil truck for his dad’s company from time to time. I just hop in the car and get lost, occasionally. I first did Highway 37 when I was sixteen, and I try to do it at least twice a year.

37 takes you just south of Hinton, Oklahoma, which not only has the distinction of being the first place I ever had an extended conversation with Summer, but also is only twenty miles from the town where I grew up, Weatherford. 

"Why don’t we just go over to Weatherford and I can show you all of my childhood stuff?" I said.

Brian was all about it, so we met up with I-40 and took the twenty miles over to Weatherford, me telling all kinds of stories about how much I love the plains and what it was like to grow up where I did. Weatherford and Chickasha are similar towns in that they are both in western Oklahoma, and are both pretty much the biggest towns around them. Both are college towns; everybody knows your business, and if you don’t play sports, well…

I showed Brian the YMCA where, every Friday night from third grade on, all of us kids would pay a dollar to go rollerskating. I showed him my house, and the park where I used to run with my dad when I lived out there with him in the fall of 2004. I drove him around the University, which was really as much my home as anywhere and probably will always be, to some extent.

There is a place at the old science building where you can climb the stairs and go out on this ledge. The University is on top of a hill that overlooks the surrounding area, and when you get out on the ledge, which can be scary if you haven’t been doing it since you were six, like I have, you can see for a million lives. 

Brian wouldn’t go out there with me. "I’ll just watch from here."

I showed him where Bryon Chambers used to live, which was down the street from where my parents first lived after they got married, which I also showed him. I showed Brian the gas station on the corner where Dad used to take us for pints of Blue Bell ice cream, and it always seemed like we were clinging together tightly, waiting for the rain to stop.

Things like this are what make a home, and as much as I do not always like the idea, in some way Weatherford will always be mine. I left there when I was twelve, an incredibly broken, secretive, scared little kid. I returned when I was twenty-four, an incredibly broken, secretive, scared, broke, slightly alcoholic, out-of-shape proto-man, and I experienced a lot of healing and a flood of creativity. As Mitch McVicker said, "If home is where the heart is at, then I forget where all I’ve lived." I found a home here, in Oklahoma City, and one in Winston-Salem. I found a home in Ireland, and tried to find one in Venice. I had an embattled home in New Haven, and made one with Liz in New York when I couldn’t bear being there anymore. And now here I am again, making a real home, a life, you know? And all of those old places, and the people I was in them, live inside me. And it was funny - in Weatherford this weekend, with Brian, I felt like I had the courage to really let myself know and accept the kid I was when I was there.

I told him all kinds of stories I had never told anyone, because I was afraid, and bursting with secrets. I told him about the woman who was nice to everyone we knew but who was very mean to me when no other adults were around, and about my mother’s friend Ruth, who was an old rich lady with huge hair and a foul mouth. I told him about Ruth’s daughter, who was an adult, and who used to call me names. I told him about how my fourth grade teacher said I was going to commit suicide by fifteen, and how John and I used to throw ourselves down the dirt hill behind dad’s house when cars passed to see if we could get one to stop. They almost never did.

For once, all of that was Okay. Brian has been a bigger part of that than even I understand.

We drove back to the city after awhile and went straight to mom’s for family dinner. John and Crystal were in charge this time, and they made - literally - a feast of Mexican food. They made homemade guacamole, empanadas, fajitas. For dessert there was homemade ice cream, but we were all so full by the end that it was ridiculous. I brought Pete’s Wicked Strawberry Blonde Ale, which is my new wonderful beer that I love, and two bottles of wine that we didn’t touch. We had such a wonderful time.

The movie for the night was Crash, which just won Best Picture but which I hadn’t seen. I may be the only gay person in the world who thinks this, but the movie deserved what it got. I saw Brokeback Mountain, which was such a technical masterpiece that it almost felt clinical. It was such a good movie that I took to noticing how good it was and not entirely connecting with the story. Not so with Crash. As John said, "Everyone in America should watch this movie."

It was an absolutely perfect day. Some things are still bitter, and we just have to swallow them. In the meantime I will give thanks for what a perfect day we got on Saturday. We got each other, wonderful music, lots of holding hands, the winter wheat, courage, Jesus, and family. These are the sacraments. Amen.