Choices - Prologue. Prologue

Part III Choices

Prologue

Whatever crisis--real or perceived, precipitated this project--this Chronicling Of My Youth as it were--it has now become a full blown obsession. I spend evenings locked in my study: recalling, reliving, writing and editing. I'm not sure it's healthy, although it has caused me to look at my current situation through slightly different eyes. It may be too soon to tell, but what started as a form of self-therapy might in some ways actually be having some sort of beneficial impact on my outlook.

It is somewhat astonishing to imagine that events that occurred thirty years ago could still reverberate to this day. Choices that we make in the blink of an eye can affect us for years to come, more often than not in totally unexpected ways. Like the ever expanding ripples caused by a pebble tossed into a still pond, these events reach out to us across the smooth surface of time. In Part III of my youthful memoirs, you will read about one such choice, made on the spur of the moment, motivated by love, and driven by the intensely human need to protect those they feel closest to. The implications of that event, so brief in terms of real time, yet massive in terms of its ramifications, is a vivid reminder of how we are consistently compelled to draw from the unconscious well of our deepest resources in order to safely navigate the rocks and eddies of this tumultuous stream we call life. You will also read about another kind of choice--a life choice--made by a dear, sweet friend of ours, and how it, like the pebble tossed in the pond, rippled out, not only through time, but through the people around him, causing more choices and more ripples that ultimately led to an end that we must forever hold in a sacred part of our most recondite memories.

As I continue to receive a veritable avalanche of downlinks--most simply informing me that these chronicles are being read and enjoyed by a broad range of fine, intelligent, and romantically inclined folk, but some becoming quite involved in the lives of the young people portrayed here in their semi-fictional guises--I'm often asked about the ultimate fate of one person or another. Naturally, many things can and do occur in the course of thirty years. Some are eagerly anticipated or purposefully contrived, some unexpected or unlooked for, and some few even reach the pinnacles of high comedy and tragedy. I firmly believe however, if you can look back and honestly say that there was at least as much joy as there was sorrow in your life over such a large span --a whole generation's worth of time--then life has been very good to you indeed. I certainly feel blessed in that regard, and recalling these early memories of my social and sexual awakening, remind me even more intensely of those precious and powerful moments that combine and intertwine to become the fabric of a truly rich and satisfying life. Of course, I've had many of my own choices to make over the long years, a few good and many poor, but one I will never regret is the day I walked up to that beautiful thirteen year old boy, sitting under a tree, hiding from the world with his face stuck resolutely in a book.

Returning to the matter of correspondence, undoubtedly, one of the most frequently asked questions is: if I was so deeply in love with a boy at the young age of thirteen, one who seemed to be my very soulmate, how could I be a happily married man with two children some thirty years later? That is a long and complex story of course, filled with choices, serendipity, and sacrifice, and thus something that can only be hinted at in these youthful memoirs. Some readers have speculated that Jesse Taylor perhaps died a tragic death at a young age, and in my anguish and desperation to fill the void left by his absence, I turned to the fairer sex and the comfort of a traditional 'nuclear' family. Fortunately for me and the rest of the world, it didn't happen like that. In fact, Jesse Taylor is alive and well(and looking mah-velis!), and I have decided to inform him of my little project. Whether he chooses to read any or all of it is entirely up to him, of course. I believe, from his last correspondence, that he's still on tour somewhere in Asia, and is probably much too occupied with concerns and obligations of his own vocation to be bothered with any such inconsequential trivia as this. I do know, without even consulting with him, that he has no personal fear of being exposed by these intimate memoirs of our relationship, as he has been 'out' (and proudly so) for many years now. It's not for his protection that I've changed the names, places, etc...in my little saga. I do however wonder if he will find fault in some of my reconstructions of events some thirty years in the past, and what he will say about my primitive literary stylings. Only time will tell...

Talk to me @Pt-9009-U/D543sat.net (scram/dir)

Perry Thompson, March 19, 2034