At long last happy

I am now 67.

Nothing too extraordinary in that except, as a human being in the epoch of the speedy automobile in America, as a man of draft age during the Vietnam War era, and as a gay man during the age of AIDS in the world, survival was still not as easy to come by.

I now find myself surprised to discover, most fortunately indeed, that I am--at long last--happy. 

Not like Goethe's FAUST happy, where I have ruined the lives of one or more others to get to where I am.  Or having wallowed for long stretches in the deepest pools of the most putrid stench in life and been forced to shower myself off before I was able to gladly move on, enlightened.

No.  It's more like that child-like innocent happy when you ask the universe for a few specific--and realistic--presents at Christmas, and then found every single one of them wrapped in a colorful bow under the tree.  With your name on each one.

Everything has come together after so very many years of searching and not finding.  The path I have taken is, indeed, littered with countless--and I do mean countless--disappointments and defeats.  You get knocked down so often and so hard, sometimes you believe you will never get up again.  Never succeed.  Never find true love.  Never be truly contented and, yes, especially happy.  Bitter at times though not given over to lasting bitterness.  Sad and sorrowful, of course, for the many friends and family who are gone at this stage of one's life; but who have left you with a burnished trunk, filled with good and glorious memories.

I am once again living in California. 

After spending over four years in North Dakota, and then settling in for over three cantankerous decades in Colorado; at my age, the snow and cold finally drove me from the state that I had come to adore as a second home.

I have a solid and lovely new home, one that, except for the more traditional shape, is even more advanced and dazzling than Disney's Monsanto house of the future would have anticipated.

I work from home.  My salary is not lavish but decent, especially for these times.  The job isn't bad at all, just tedious now and then.  (I didn't plan for my financial future, so I really cannot retire and be comfortable.)

And after all of these Quixotic years of self-discovery but also increasing discouragement, I have found the man I love.  The man who loves me unconditionally and whom I love with all my heart.  I cannot emphasize this triumph too much, despite the clichéd terminology.  He has been my goal for my entire adult life.  And charging into each decade of my life, I fully expected to find him, only to eventually cross another ten years off of my life without success.

I certainly experienced a few near misses over the past several decades. 

To this day, I remember the sunny afternoon in 1970 or 1971, when I was driving south on the Harbor Freeway (I know California freeways are now numbered instead of named, but this is how I knew them then), having merged from the Santa Monica freeway with a clear path ahead of me.  Suddenly, a car tire still in its rim sailed up and over the center barrier and seemed to hover above and ahead of me and my '66 Mustang.  I instantly gunned the engine as the tire's forward momentum stalled; and I actually held my breath as it slowly disappeared above the closed convertible top.  Time had slowed as I finally saw it reappear just beyond the trunk and bounce harmlessly on the pavement I had just passed over.

In the early 1990's, living in Denver but still teaching night classes in Colorado Springs at Fort Carson, I was driving my 1991 Hondo Civic sedan on I-25, through the most congested bend of the freeway through Denver.  Always in the fast lane so I could reach the base in time, I found myself beside a massive and looming semi, also driving fast.  The passenger window was down on this warm day and I was beside the truck's wheels, appearing taller than the car itself.  Was it a sixth sense?  Or was it just paranoia or good planning when I gunned the engine to pull ahead, only to hear a loud explosion.  In the rearview mirror, I saw not only the tire explode into large and dangerous chunks that flew into the space on the freeway that I had just vacated, but the giant mud flap also shot directly into that space as well.

And then there was the war.  At first I was too young to fight.  But when I graduated in June of 1967, I would have been drafted or would have had to enlist; but I was saved by Miss Fouch's insistence that I, along with my best friend, Mike, see the guidance counselor a few weeks before graduation and at least get into junior college.  From East LAJC, Mike and I transferred to Cal State Dominguez Hills and did not graduate until December of 1971.  My draft lottery number was 119, and I had to report for a draft physical.  I enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve now that they were vacating Vietnam.  As I have already recounted, I was persuaded to sign up for Marine OCS in the Spring of 1972.  And by 1973, I attended Air Force OTS, was assigned to missile in North Dakota, and missed serving in the war entirely.

The 1980's began with me already out of the Air Force and forced to find a new career path, probably the lowest sustained period of my life.  I had given it all up for love, and then did not have love or money.  I had come so very close to losing it all.