Day 07 - Your best friend, in great detail
Last night my sisters and I went to hear Michael Pollan speak at Bellarmine University in Louisville. It was alright. Nothing he hasn't said before. A lot of people there but also a lot of loud and annoying high school kids. I still want that taser I've been mentioning.
I don't usually rank my friends but I guess I'd say my friend Geoff is my best friend. We've known and annoyed one another for nearly 15 years.
I first met Geoff at the church I was attending in Nashville. I was an "elder" (I was 24 then so, yeah, that was the kind of operation this place was) and I would often have to shuttle people back and forth to their cars before and after church because we met in the pastor's basement for service. Geoff remembers how he and I met better than me but apparently I was pissed off about something that night I was shuttling him because I was making the people in my car listen to something obnoxious at an equally obnoxious volume. Apparently Geoff liked the music I was playing in my car or something and we started talking about it.
I do remember the first time he and I hung out by ourselves. I'd gone to his place to look through his music and I swore to myself I would never talk to him again after I left. He was critical of everything! I probably swore I'd never talk to him again at least a hundred times in the first couple years we were friends. We argued about everything!
Despite the arguing, Geoff was one of the first people I told I was gay. I'd found out the pastor of the church had leaked my secret to a few people in the church and the rumor was making the rounds. I was devastated but I wanted to be the one to tell people close to me before it got to them. I remember asking Geoff to come over (he only lived about a half mile away then) and we sat at the table in my living room. I couldn't look him in the face but I remember telling him I thought I might be gay, that I felt horrible and wasn't sure what I was going to do. I don't remember him saying much. He might have said he had an idea that I might be though this might have been something he said later on.
Geoff was more conservative (for lack of a better word) theologically then and, while he disagreed with me, he stuck with me during that terrible time of people finding out and many of them either not talking to me anymore and some being actively hostile toward me. Geoff could be hostile as well. It wasn't long before I became really hostile toward him and others. More times than I can begin to imagine, Geoff and I would sit in one of our cars until early in the morning talking through all this stuff. It was a raw and painful time for us both that went on for a very long time.
I moved out to Seattle from Nashville in 2000. Originally it was just going to be me coming but I got Geoff a job at where I was working and he came out shortly after I did. We worked together for a couple years in Seattle (we had worked together the last year and a half in Nashville) before he was laid off. Despite not working together we still talked or emailed nearly every day. When I moved to southern CA for those couple years he drove with me down and we still talked nearly every day while I was gone.
Geoff moved to the UK a couple weeks ago to get his PhD in Philosophical Theology. In the last 15 years this is the farthest either of us have been from one another and I have to say, when he left about a month ago (he moved in with his parents in OK for a bit to save $) it was really, really hard. Even though we were emailing and Skyping it still felt like I was grieving.
Over the last 15 years Geoff's theology has loosened up a bit and I've become more comfortable in my agnosticism. We still disagree on a lot of things and know the buttons of the other to push if we want to argue but we've still remained close and committed to each other.
I don't usually rank my friends but I guess I'd say my friend Geoff is my best friend. We've known and annoyed one another for nearly 15 years.
I first met Geoff at the church I was attending in Nashville. I was an "elder" (I was 24 then so, yeah, that was the kind of operation this place was) and I would often have to shuttle people back and forth to their cars before and after church because we met in the pastor's basement for service. Geoff remembers how he and I met better than me but apparently I was pissed off about something that night I was shuttling him because I was making the people in my car listen to something obnoxious at an equally obnoxious volume. Apparently Geoff liked the music I was playing in my car or something and we started talking about it.
I do remember the first time he and I hung out by ourselves. I'd gone to his place to look through his music and I swore to myself I would never talk to him again after I left. He was critical of everything! I probably swore I'd never talk to him again at least a hundred times in the first couple years we were friends. We argued about everything!
Despite the arguing, Geoff was one of the first people I told I was gay. I'd found out the pastor of the church had leaked my secret to a few people in the church and the rumor was making the rounds. I was devastated but I wanted to be the one to tell people close to me before it got to them. I remember asking Geoff to come over (he only lived about a half mile away then) and we sat at the table in my living room. I couldn't look him in the face but I remember telling him I thought I might be gay, that I felt horrible and wasn't sure what I was going to do. I don't remember him saying much. He might have said he had an idea that I might be though this might have been something he said later on.
Geoff was more conservative (for lack of a better word) theologically then and, while he disagreed with me, he stuck with me during that terrible time of people finding out and many of them either not talking to me anymore and some being actively hostile toward me. Geoff could be hostile as well. It wasn't long before I became really hostile toward him and others. More times than I can begin to imagine, Geoff and I would sit in one of our cars until early in the morning talking through all this stuff. It was a raw and painful time for us both that went on for a very long time.
I moved out to Seattle from Nashville in 2000. Originally it was just going to be me coming but I got Geoff a job at where I was working and he came out shortly after I did. We worked together for a couple years in Seattle (we had worked together the last year and a half in Nashville) before he was laid off. Despite not working together we still talked or emailed nearly every day. When I moved to southern CA for those couple years he drove with me down and we still talked nearly every day while I was gone.
Geoff moved to the UK a couple weeks ago to get his PhD in Philosophical Theology. In the last 15 years this is the farthest either of us have been from one another and I have to say, when he left about a month ago (he moved in with his parents in OK for a bit to save $) it was really, really hard. Even though we were emailing and Skyping it still felt like I was grieving.
Over the last 15 years Geoff's theology has loosened up a bit and I've become more comfortable in my agnosticism. We still disagree on a lot of things and know the buttons of the other to push if we want to argue but we've still remained close and committed to each other.