A Tripp is a dream your heart makes

Or: A dream is a Tripp your heart makes. Or something like that.

I dreamed of an old friend last night, someone I've not seen in, I would guess, 15 years. It was a sexual dream, and wasn't at the same time.

It’s a commonplace, I suppose, but time moves more swiftly as one ages. At least, it seems so to me. I suspect it’s because you’re so busy collecting knowledge and experience when you’re young, and settle into more of a routine in later life. The years of my childhood and adolescence seemed endless to me at times (though I imagine they were much briefer to my parents) and those from, say, 18 to 25 stretched out in a languid arc. It often seems to me I packed more into those six or seven years than I have in the nearly twenty since.

Events from my late teens and early 20s have a cast-iron quality. I loved more intensely, I think, and more frequently. God knows I experienced more acute and chronic emotional pain. Depression, my constant friend these many years, was raging on in me then, happy and undiagnosed. But even that has a stiller quality now, not nearly so unrestrained. But then no one is happier than an adolescent in the throes of emotional upheaval. It’s a romantic dream that holds on as long as possible.

When I was 20 or 21, I made friends with a co-worker who went by the nickname Tripp. (I want to say I was 21 and he was 19, but I couldn't swear to that. In any case, we were close contemporaries.) To be honest, he caught my appreciate eye the day he walked in the door. It was one of those happy/unhappy coincidences that the object of my affectionate gaze was also bright, smart, funny, open, and knowledgeable in many of the areas I cared—and care—deeply about.

Tripp was medium height, slender but with the broad shoulders, muscled thighs and well-defined upper body of a swimmer, which he'd been in high school. He wore his hair moderately long for the time, as I did myself—back when I had a lot of it to wear longish. He had thick, dark eyebrows and blond hair, the latter bleached. His face was one of the most guileless and open I’ve ever known. He had largish, rubbery lips—not Mick Jagger grotesque, more sensuous and kissable—and a somewhat piggish, upturned nose I thought of as cute as hell.

He also had a backside to die for. Christ, how I wanted to lay my head between those pillows! The whole package—and I mean his personality and kindness as well as his physique—was attractive enough, but that ass was frosting on a very tasty cake. (I remember one summer afternoon when he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and I commented on how damp it was. “I’ve got a sweaty butt,” he grinned, and all I could think was a bad paraphrase of Shakespeare: O, that I was a wallet upon that cheek …)

I couldn’t “read” people as well then as I have come to be able to subsequently: he was so open and sweet-natured, his smile so quick and genuine. The more I talked to him, the more frequently I saw him on the stock room floor, the more aware I was of how friendly feeling was quickly turning to infatuation. I sent him a note on afternoon, letting him know I was gay and hoping that wouldn’t interfere with our being friends. His answer was positive, although he noted that he’d “had a bad experience and, once bitten, twice shy …”

I asked Tripp about that later. He told me a slightly retarded neighbor kid had tried something with him when he was younger. Still, I kept wondering about him. One is never sure, when succumbing to feelings of love (which I was) whether the sensations one receives are real, or hoped-for. Tripp had been in a rock band (Another Roadside Attraction, named for the Tom Robbins book) with his best friend, and did once confess to me that he had some erotic feelings for him. Trying, in that well-meaning way a gay boy has of hoping to appear non-threatening, I invoked the “it could just be a phase” cliché. Idiot.

I spent a couple of Friday nights at his family’s house—he still lived with his parents—and tried to match Tripp blow-for-blow in beer drinking. To my great satisfaction, I never threw up during one of these binges, but I certainly tired out. One of my proudest moments was his awarding me a small gold medal he’d gotten for some swim meet in honor of my growing drink capacity. It bore the initials “FHST,” which he re-christened for me as “Fast as Hell Suds Taster.” I think I still have it, somewhere.

His bedroom had bunk-beds. He would lie on the top bunk and I would take the bottom. If I remember correctly, the assignments were by choice—I’m acrophobic, and none too steady after getting drunk. I’d fall asleep quickly, under the influence, but wake up early. While he slept I’d lie on my back, staring up at the top bunk, and imagine how it might feel to be up there with him. To wake with him beside me. To feel his warm, nearly hairless, silken flesh snuggled up against my own.

I’m aware that I’m going into more detail than is strictly necessary. But this is a part of my past I’ve never written about before, and Tripp has a small chamber of my heart even now. I’m collecting impressions, trying to get it all down before something slips way. Like the debt I owe his father, a conservative Republican, in making me defend my leftist positions through knowledge and intellectual acumen, not simply emotion and instinct. “Why do you feel like that?” or “What makes you think that?” were, as Tripp told me, his dad’s way of telling me I needed more information if I wanted to hold my own in a debate. It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten. Now, if I have a gut feeling about something but no data to base it on, I try to keep my mouth shut until I know something about the subject. My own father never gave me that.

I’m also aware of how rambling, and possibly incoherent, these musings are. Which is the way with memory—it isn’t linear. One thought or memory causes one to recall another. Bear with me, please.

I’m reminded now of how he got his nickname. He had a younger cousin (if cousin it was—some relation, anyway) who, when he was a toddler, couldn’t say Tripp’s real name. Using one of the slang terms of the ‘70s—is it still in use? I’m not sure—someone had said in front of this child that my friend was “a trip.” The kid couldn’t pronounce _________ but he could say “Trip.” So, Tripp it was.

Since Tripp wanted to leave home, and my so-called “studio” apartment consisted of a dingy room with a kitchenette, bathroom, and cockroaches, we decided to put in together and located a two-bedroom in the suburbs. It was already a curious relationship, slightly masochistic on my part. I wanted him desperately, loved him deeply, and it would have made far more sense for me to keep a respectful distance. The last thing my pain required was working with Tripp and living in close quarters at the same time. But you can’t maintain a cool reserve, can you, when someone comes to mean something to you. My tendency throughout my adult life is to live in hope. I’m not sure why, since it’s never panned out, but it seems a part of my nature—a coping mechanism, maybe. I can live on a vague, unintentional hint the way a bear can survive hibernation on his own stored blubber.

I was largely passive in those days, and much too susceptible to the acts and opinions of others. My best friend (and on-again/off-again lover) had helped get me hooked on cigarettes, and Tripp influenced my future brand. I’d always smoked lights. He smoked light Menthols. While in the middle pf moving my stuff to our new apartment in a borrowed truck, I’d run out of Camels. He gave me his Merit Menthols to tide me over, and that was that. I used to switch brands in those days fairly regularly. Merits, then Benson & Hedges, then something else. I finally settled on Salem Ultra Lights. So the brand changed, but the Menthol stayed.

I should say that life with Tripp was hardly all Sturm und Drang, regardless of my thwarted desire. We continued to enjoy each other’s company, go to movies together, drive to other cities for late shows, discuss music and television and books. But there was an irresistible force and an immoveable object, and it made for an unspoken something, a tension, a frisson that lay between us like the elephant in the room no one will talk about. As long as I didn’t press it, we could pretend it wasn’t there.

Having this boy, for whom I burned so brightly, around made for some interesting contours. Instead of a bed, Tripp had a simple mattress on the floor of his bedroom, usually strewn with clothing. For the first—and so far, only—time in my life I became something of a furtive pantie-sniffer. Not, if memory serves, his actual undershorts, but the bikini-style briefs he wore when swimming. When they were lying around, discarded, on his mattress and Tripp was out, I would bring them to my face and inhale him, deeply—crotch and seat. Then I’d take off my trousers and slip on his briefs, get hard, and masturbate.

I jacked off in the oddest places in those days. Part of my job with the big office supply distributor for which I worked involved keeping inventories. Now and then I would take an inventory binder in hand and wander to the basement. (I had no stock there to count, but the basement personnel probably didn’t know that.) In my wanderings I had discovered the small, dark, dusty room where the boiler resided. You walked in, and next to the boiler was a concrete partition. If you crouched there, no one could see you, even if they were actually in the boiler room itself. So, several times a month (whenever my libido was too randy to ignore) I would grab a couple paper towels from the men’s room, stuff them in my pocket, and mosey down to the boiler room. Hidden behind the concrete wall I’d drop my pants and shorts and bring myself to orgasm. Usually while thinking about Tripp.

When I still lived alone, Tripp took me to a local movie-house for my first taste of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The theatre was small, the audience was sparse, but I loved the experience, and loved it even more for being shared with him. When the audience pulls off shirts and jackets to wave at the smoke on-screen, my heart skipped a beat to see Tripp remove his T-shirt. He kept himself, scrupulously I now think, or at least chastely, clothed around me. The brief glimpse of hairless, sculpted chest was intoxicating.

Tripp struck up a friendly acquaintance with a couple of girls that night, and we all stood chatting comfortably outside the theatre when the movie ended—until he took me aside and confided that they would come with us if we asked them. To my place. He all but begged me, and I refused. The thought of him in sexual congress that close to me was more unsettling to me than the notion of fucking the other girl. I didn’t want to end up participating in either event. It was one thing to “share” him with some young woman, but to be in the same room? Thanks a lot, but—no thanks.

He wasn’t angry, or even all that disappointed, though he pressed me fairly hard at the time. On the drive back to my place, he pumped me for my reaction to the movie, wanting me to share his enthusiasm. Didn’t I think Tim Curry was “sexy”? I did. But Tripp was sexier. And he was alive, beside me. Unattainable, but at least in the here and now, not several years, a few cameras and several thousand miles away.

I puzzled over that one. “Isn’t he sexy?” Was it the fish-net stockings? The half-feminine look and sound and expression? I didn’t think so. But I would never pin Tripp down on that one. But what was it that made him tell Michael, within minutes of meeting him, that he “might be bisexual”? That Michael wasn’t living with him, and pining for him, under the same roof? It was also the kind of thing that, in those days, served only to reinforce my own negativity about my physical self. Michael had made me feel unattractive, so I believed I was. (Typical of Michael, too, to repeat Tripp’s comments to me—sadist to my masochist. At least Tripp was never cruel.)

In hindsight, and with photographic evidence, I now understand that I looked as good then as I ever had, and better than I ever will again. When I see old photographs of myself at that age, my heart flutters slightly. Who is that cute kid? Aw, fuck—it’s me. Why didn’t someone tell me?

And now, in the meandering turns of memory, each remembered occurrence feeding off another, I recall how I posed Tripp for a photograph in my ratty old apartment. I had the sense of atmosphere in my head, although of course I had neither the photographic acumen nor the lighting equipment to realize it. But I saw him very specifically, and tried to make it real. First, I sat him at my small, cheap wooden table, my sporty cap on his head, a scarf around his neck. Then I gave him a hand of cards before carefully (and as slowly as I could manage without making him self-conscious or causing my own fingers to tremble) I unbuttoned his shirt and opened it, gently pulling the sides apart to reveal as much of his naked chest as possible. I can’t remember what I said to him about the look I wanted him to give the camera, but whatever it was, he got it. In the photograph he’s staring up, and his gaze is the living embodiment of the term “bedroom eyes.” They smolder, sensual and grave. It was all I could do not to sit myself on his lap.

I remember now, too, the night he asked to stretch out on my bed and nap. Was he sleeping, or only pretending to, when—after what I considered a decent interval to insure his slumber—I knelt by the side of the bed and, watching his back rise and fall with each breath and his incredibly shapely bottom curving up on my mattress, slid down my trousers and masturbated until I came? I have a feeling he knew very well what was going on, maybe even wanted it to happen, but he never said a word to acknowledge the event, and it’s sure as hell I didn’t either.

Looking back from this distance, I don’t entirely blame myself for what eventually happened, as I did at the time. I think he was complicit to some degree, even if it wasn’t wholly conscious on his part. Although never an overt or even covert sexual tease, I wonder now if some part of him didn’t enjoy being the object of my desire, and perhaps even illicitly (and wholly un-consciously) even encourage it.

I’m not going to recite my misdeeds with Tripp here. The catalogue is long, and some of it embarrasses me still. The long and the short of it is, I made him uncomfortable enough to leave. Reading over this account, it occurs to me that I may have given the impression that my feelings for Tripp were entirely, or perhaps largely, sexual. They weren't. Had it been merely a matter of physical attraction, I doubt I could have been so tormented by our friendship and our close proximity. It could have been treated as a kind of cosmic joke. But I wanted Tripp in every way it is possible to desire another human being; only love can make us behave so badly. But as that great Western philosopher Woody Allen once remarked, the heart wants what it wants.

A few years later, in a moment of rue and rather typical self-hatred, I wrote him a fairly long letter in care of his parents, apologizing for it all and wishing him well. That I never heard back didn’t altogether surprise me. Perhaps he never even received it.

I saw him again around 1990 or 1991. I was having dinner with a friend on her dinner break. She worked at a Waldenbooks in a local shopping mall, and she had just leant me enough money to put to rest a very expensive and extremely inconvenient bill from the IRS. I was giving her my undivided attention … when the doors to the mall opened and Tripp walked in.

He was dressed in business attire, which took me a bit aback; jeans, a T-shirt and an unbuttoned long-sleeved shirt over that were his everyday attire when I’d known him. He caught my eye, smiled that sweet smile of his, and moved off to get himself some food.

I ached to go and speak to him, but I couldn’t. I felt I owed her my solicitude. It would be rude, wouldn’t it, to get up and talk to someone else? This is the way money affects me. If someone—parent, a friend, whomever—loans or gifts me emergency funds, I feel beholden in a very immediate and all-pervasive way. I just couldn’t excuse myself and go talk to Tripp—could I?

I never saw him again. Until last night. In Dreamsville, Baby.

I don’t know what prompted the dream. Probably a combination of things. As autumn chases summer’s dreams, my seasonal depression is taking hold, aided this year by the numerous jolts of the last couple of months. I’ve been wool-gathering after going to bed of late, and my anxiety takes in both the future, of which I am uncertain and scared, and he past, which is filled with regret. I was also loading some old files into a new PC last night, among them a couple of erotic fantasy stories I’d written about Tripp, so that may have contributed to the mix as well.

In my dream, he had agreed to a sort of sex-date with me. It wasn’t just fucking—I never wanted anyone I loved in that period of my life in only those terms—but was to be the initiation of our making love. Odd that we were planning it rather than allowing it to happen spontaneously, but that’s the way with dreams, isn’t it? They hold their own logic, of which logic knows nothing.

In the dream he told me it would be that night, when he got home. In the meanwhile, I was to prepare the music—in particular, I was instructed to listen to a specific cassette which he gave me. It had a hidden track of some kind (which, in typical dream-logic, was actually a second strip of tape in the cassette itself) that pertained directly to us.

I never heard what was on that tape, though in the dream I listened to it. I also, maddeningly, didn’t get to witness our union. It wasn’t so much “discrete fade-out” as it was never fade-in. The dream segued from my perusal of the tape to the two of us, the following day. We were walking and Tripp was talking to a third person whose identity is unclear to me. He was speaking almost as though I wasn’t there, and when asked about his opinion of whatever it was they were discussing, said “My girlfriend agrees with me, but my boyfriend doesn’t.”

In the dream I was flush with equal parts pleasure and amazement. Shock that he would admit a same-sex relationship to a third party, wild excitement that his “boyfriend” in question was me.

That was it. All of it. So little, to provoke so much. But old yearnings may, unlike old soldiers, not fade away so much as receded for a time, until resurrected by a look, a phrase, a melody, or a dream.

Of all my regrets, and have more than my share, Tripp has always been high on the list. Regret for my actions, rue for our never having been together as I so fervently desired, and a strong prickle of anxious sorrow for that last glimpse of him.

What would I have said? Does it matter? Does any of it? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.