Christmas 1998 and The Love of My Life

Where we fell in love…

This is a true story based on my memory.

The names have been changed.

The Christmas of 1998 I was in love.

I was in college at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg studying acting - the previous year having worked professionally as an actor for the first time at the Mac-Haydn Theatre. I had returned to school after that gig a different person with new confidence and priorities. I had made a decision – every choice, every relationship, every move was going to get me closer to my dreams of being an actor and director – working in NYC and eventually Hollywood!

That was until I met Tim.

I don’t remember the play, but it was the Freshman showcase production – filled to the brim with new students. I went with my best friend, Lucy, and was sitting in the audience in the Hartwig Arena Theatre at USM when he walked on stage in a white tank top and jeans. He instantly took my breath away. I turned to Lucy  and said, “who is that?” She whispered that he was a new transfer student named Tim before quickly shushing me.

That night after the play there was a big theatre party at one of the designated “theatre houses,” and I was supposed to meet another boy there, but I couldn’t help hoping that Tim would be there instead. He was.

I walked up to him, drink in hand, looking so sexy leaning up against the entry way to the kitchen. I told him that I enjoyed the play and that my name was Brian. I don’t remember much else about our conversation, but I definitely remember him saying the very intoxicating words that continue to give me chills to this day – “Yeah…I’ve heard of you.”

TOGETHER

I can’t remember if we went home together that night, but I will never forget our first date. I took Tim to see “Stepmom” a film where Susan Sarandon’s character is dying from a terminal illness. As the credits rolled Tim leaned over to say, “I guess it’s as good a time as any to tell you my Mom just died.” I was horrified, but in true Tim manner he shrugged it off and said something to the tune of, “wanna go have sex?”

The house I lived in with 3 other theatre students was also a designated theatre house, and Tim and I were notorious for sneaking away during parties into my bedroom to have sex. Our friends were always playing tricks on us, either outside the house heckling us and banging on the bedroom window or even attempting to barge in through the very weak lock on my bedroom door. We were always in high demand, but we simply couldn’t keep our hands off of each other.

DECEMBER 1998

In the 90s my parents were still living in my hometown of Corinth, Mississippi. For the holidays I would drive up the state to spend a few days with my parents and sister, and then we would drive to my Aunt’s home in Coffeeville, MS to celebrate with my Dad’s large family.

Tim was headed to his hometown of Grenada, which seemed like a metropolis compared to the 800 people living in Coffeeville, and just a few miles away. Before leaving Hattiesburg  I told Tim that since we would be so close that we should find a way to see each other. He didn’t seem as excited about the prospect of that as I was, which of course made me worried as I had recently told him that I was in love with him. A first for me, and a pronouncement he didn’t immediately reciprocate.

We didn’t have cell phones back then, and I don’t even remember if I had his Dad’s phone number or not, but either way, I wasn’t going to reach out if he didn’t seem eager to meet.

Every Christmas, a group from our Coffeeville family gathering would find our way to the movie theater in Grenada to watch whatever the most palatable family blockbuster might have been that holiday season. That year it was “The Prince of Egypt.” When the movie ended, and we were exiting the theater, I saw Tim. He was wearing my favorite shirt of his, a sexy orange football jersey and was with his sister and a couple of friends, one of which was a boy a bit too cute and too close to him for my comfort.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey!” he replied, happy to see me.

I turned to my parents and looked back at Tim not sure what to say. We were both hiding something.

I was not out to my parents and not sure what to say. Prior to Tim, the “lie” I told to everyone was cloaked in the truth that nothing mattered to me more than my future career, which was why I had been single for so long. But here I was, with a boyfriend and falling harder and harder each day. The lie was weakening, no doubt.

After a few awkward seconds I introduced Tim as my friend, and he did the same of his male companion. As we were being ushered out of the theater Tim mentioned that he and his friends and sister were going to his Aunt’s for card games and fun and asked if I wanted to come. I said, yes, absolutely.

Once I got there I stepped into a world of which I had only dreamed. Tim was out to his entire family, and they absolutely accepted him and embraced me. Everyone was having such a wonderful time, drinking and smoking cigarettes and cursing, playing cards and laughing and having the most fun. The other boy was still there, but within seconds of me arriving, Tim was in my lap, kissing me for all to see. Of course we had kissed at the theatre house parties back at school but this was something completely new to me. I didn’t want to leave this redneck utopia, but I eventually I had to go back to my Aunt’s and my parents.

I can still remember getting out of my car and walking up to my Aunt’s house, desperately trying to will away the cigarette and beer smell from my lips. When I walked in, some of my family was playing games at the dining room table, which others were in the living room watching a movie.

I think it was my Mom who said, “you look strange” or “different” or maybe “happy.”

Do I?” I said, blushing.

I walked into the living room and sat on the corner of the couch and started to smile so broadly. What a difference an Aunt makes.

BACK TO SCHOOL and an STD

Once I got back to school, Tim and I continued dating -  him often aloof, me attempting to focus on the future, but together, always electric. We had intense feelings for each other, but something was definitely wrong.

The shit hit the fan, as they say, when he admitted to cheating on me, but only after I caught an STD that he tried to blame on the living room carpet. But Tim knew I hadn’t slept with anyone but him, and that I would eventually figure it out. Thinking I couldn’t escape him he finally admitted the truth while I was driving his car on Hardy St one night headed back to my house. In pure dramatic fashion, I stopped the car at a red light, put it in neutral and got out and started walking.  

Back then I don’t remember anyone really talking much about open relationships, and maybe if we had had one I wouldn’t have cared as much about the other boys. Truth be told, it was the lie that hurt the most, not the actual cheating. Especially when I found out the boy at the movie theatre was one of the people he had cheated on me with.

Despite Tim’s indiscretions and me attempting to passively crash his car, we stayed together, but the writing was on the wall. Tim had a few more years at USM, and I had gotten two acting jobs for after I graduated. The first job was back at Mac-Haydn in upstate NY followed by a tour of “Romeo & Juliet” and “Forever Plaid” based out of Omaha, Nebraska, with intentions of moving to NYC and maybe even Los Angeles.

The end finally came when Tim found out that  I had reached out to a professional theatre company in Memphis about a job, considering breaking my contracts with Mac Haydn and Nebraska Theatre Caravan, inevitably postponing my move to NYC - all to be closer to him. Tim broke up with me on the spot. He refused to be the reason I didn’t go after my dreams and did for me what I might not have been able to do for myself. It was devastating and necessary.  

We did our best to separate from each other in the last few weeks of school, but it wasn’t easy.

The night before my graduation, Tim and I ran into each other at one of the theatre houses, and he jumped into my lap, just like that night at his Aunt’s. He kissed me and he asked if we could go back to my place. My parents were on their way the next day, and my friend Lucy let us stay in her larger bedroom. We stayed up all night - making love, kissing, watching “The X-Files” and talking about everything but the future. It was a perfect night.

Tim left the next morning, my parents arrived, and I graduated. The next day right before I was to drive the long trip from Mississippi to Mac-Haydn, Tim came by the house. He briefly said hello to my parents and gave me a gift. The orange jersey.

“Something to remember me by” he said.

I told him how much I loved him, and I got in my car to begin my new life. I listened to our song – Lauryn Hill’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” on repeat, keeping his jersey close by my side. I cried all the way to Chatham, NY. 

AFTER COLLEGE

The years went by, I moved to NYC, and I would see Tim every holiday when I would return to Mississippi. We would always go out with his friends, plan to keep it “friends” ourselves before eventually caving into our desires. Some habits were too hard to break! It was so fun and hot and something to look forward to every year.

Then I met Randall and fell in love again.

After Randall and I broke up, I went back to Mississippi for a few weeks and found my way back at Tim’s who was now living in Jackson, Mississippi and dating someone. Despite this, we found ourselves having sex while the boyfriend was at work. I wish I could say I felt guilty, but I believed in my soul that Tim belonged to me.

The summer before I moved from NYC to Los Angeles I spent some time yet again with my parents in Mississippi who had now moved into the Coffeeville home that used to belong to my Aunt. I would often travel over to Jackson to visit Tim and his boyfriend Luke.

Eventually, we all three had to admit that Tim and I were not going to be able to withhold our feelings from each other and that Luke wasn’t going anywhere either, especially with me moving away to California in a few months.

Needless to say, it was a fun, hot summer for all three of us.

AFTER REHAB

I only lasted one year in Los Angeles, becoming hopelessly addicted to crystal meth. Drugs had been a problem for a while, slowly progressing since first moving to NYC. I left LA, came back to Mississippi and ended up in treatment in Oxford. This was October of 2014, and I have been clean ever since.

Tim and I saw each other briefly one afternoon after I went to treatment, and I told him that my dreams were over. He tried to tell me then that they weren’t, that I was too good to give up, but I simply wouldn’t listen. I think this was the first time we had ever seen each other and not ended up in the bedroom.

I saw Tim one more time a couple of years later. I was at a recovery event down in South Mississippi and decided a bit spontaneously to drive over to Hattiesburg, where Tim had moved back to after breaking up with Luke.

I was nervous to see him. He was single. I was single. He was drinking. I wasn’t. We had sex that night, the first time I had been with another person without substances in over a decade, and it was wonderful and messy and more than a bit complicated. I still believed Tim was the love of my life, but I knew we couldn’t be together. We said our goodbyes the next morning after a quiet breakfast at Shoney’s and promised to stay in touch.

GOODBYE, MY LOVE

I eventually moved back to Los Angeles in 2019, and one of the last messages I received from Tim was him telling me to knock ‘em dead in California. It reminded me so much of the first time I went after my dreams all those years before.

A few months later I got the email from Lucy that Tim had died. She was with me when I first saw him, and she was the one to tell me he was gone.

I was gutted. My Mom was one of the first people I called. I had been out to my parents since 2000, but it wasn’t until I got clean that they truly began to accept me for been gay.  I cried into the phone as I told her Tim was dead, and she loved me unconditionally.

“Did I know Tim?” she asked?

It was then that I told her who he was and what he was to me for the first time.

“Tim was the boy in the orange jersey that you met in the movie theater in Grenada that Christmas back in 1998. Mom, he was my boyfriend.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said. “He was very cute.”

He certainly was.

AFTER

A few months after his death, Tim’s sister sent me some of his things, including a card that I had written him after one of our fights near the end of our relationship back in 1999. Tim wasn’t one to hold onto a lot of sentimental things, but in this card I told him how much that I loved him and that even though we had some tough times, I would always love him. In that moment, years later, I finally understood something.

I had always known that Tim was the love of my life, but reading that card, at my home in Los Angeles, yet again going after my dreams – dreams Tim had always encouraged – I knew.

I was the love of his too short life, too.