Demian, Bruce MacDonald, Kathleen Murphy Celia Ross (Jensen), Rick Best At a reunion at Celia’s house in Seattle, Washington, circa 1986

I learned a lot from living with Bruce (once a sweetie of mine), Celia, Kathleen and RB, and owe them all for their support and the chance to experience the unique interests they brought to our household. Here are a few memorable highlights of those days:

• Kathleen’s (mostly) home birth.
• Changing the face of winter with cross-country skis.
• RB helping me purchase my first car — Black Prince Valiant (a slant-6).
• RB and Celia (both mechanics) teaching me to fix the often broken Black Prince Valiant.
• Celia coming to my rescue when my hands were covered with car grease and I needed to wiz.
• Re-evaluation Co-Counseling (hit that pillow!).
• Bone-weary, blurry-eyed, day-long labor to cut wood for the winter.
• The nine hours creating fresh tofu from scratch. All six pounds devoured in ten minutes.
• My skidding Bruce’s car on ice and impaling the radiator on a tree trunk. Bruce then taking my car to work and slamming on the brakes so hard they ruptured the brake line.
• Lovely presents of mice (often mangled, barely alive) left by Godot in Celia’s slippers.

Tim Conant Ball Farm, Montague, Mass., March 1977

Tim Conant was a sweetie of mine and lived with us on the farm for a while.

One important memory I have of him was the day we drove through Sunderland and accidentally encountered a local school parade. Unknown to us, Tim’s favorite brother, John, was marching. Tim felt very protective of John and missed living with him. John was surprised and thrilled to see us cheering him on. Tim felt so good to have been there for John that he was sobbing.

Patricia Davis Amherst, Mass., circa 1973

Another relationship I cherish was with Patricia Davis. We became sweethearts while producing a slide-tape production together. I remember her primarily because she brought sensitivity and intelligence to everything she did. Pat had once set out to become a nun. I’m very glad she changed her mind.

Stan Wilczynski New York City, 1969

Stan Wilczynski was my first sweetie. Both of us had never been so deeply in love before — not to mention being in love with another man — and it changed our lives. Stan was spooky, moody, and had an uncanny ability to reveal the tethers society used in order to control citizens.

One memory I have of Stan took place before we knew we were in love with each other. We were walking, single-file, through cattails and other high grasses by a creek contributory of the Fenway in Boston. He placed his hand on my shoulder, as if being led. I seemed to me at the time, that we had duplicated a scene from Jean Cocteau’s film “Testament of Orpheus.” In the film, Cocteau himself was being led by a male guide through a surreal landscape. The emotion in the film and our real life experience felt very intimate.

For weeks I had been feeling very close to him — we had become best friends — and his touch electrified me. He later told me that the film had likewise been on his mind. Sometime later, we discovered that Cocteau, a major artistic force in the 20s, was also gay.