[This is a difficult topic; my emotions are still in the way. These pages are in flux and need to be joined up with others.]

Sometimes i have fallen in love with the wrong person. When friendship and sex overlap, i tend to have trouble. With Rabbit, i *so* wanted to be strong enough to not want a traditional romance; but i was not strong enough.

It became one hell of a friendship, and it lasted for something like ten years. My life is still sprinkled with Rabbit-influences and Rabbit-memories.

We first met at a café in Tempe AZ, and i quickly knew i was a goner. From the beginning, we spent days together; and i was in heaven. At Rabbit’s sincere urgings, we agreed to just be friends.

Watching movies and various Star Trek reruns on old TVs. Finding pleasure in massage. Long talks about sexuality and relationships. Comforting each other when relationships went bad. Cat-sitting. Helping each other move between apartments. Going on medical appointments together. Reading each other’s writing. Just being there for each other when we needed it.

I moved to Durango CO with a new romance (and her young child); but that relationship wouldn’t last, and i ended up living elsewhere in town. When it was time for Rabbit’s final year of college, they helped me move back to Tempe.

Meanwhile i had started writing my first book, anomaly, about me jumping off the bridge at Cornell. Rabbit read relevant parts of it and gave me feedback.

I look back at this period now and feel really good about it — i was becoming the person i am today. My writing took off, and i continued working on anomaly and also published a monthly zine called The Moon for six months. I took a few more classes at ASU — Critical Theory and some linguistics (History of English and/or Syntax 2) from a professor i still see (remotely) in a Syntax reading group in 2026.

Rabbit helped lead monthly pagan celebrations at our house with grad-student Religious Studies friends (including meetings of the Church of all Worlds, a group inspired by Robert Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land). It was such a blast, staying up all night on the solstices and participating in pagan rituals (and drinking mead)!

But time went by and eventually Rabbit graduated; soon they were headed back east for grad school. I guess i was done with Tempe.

My father flew out to Phoenix; we drove up to Flagstaff and took the train all the way home to Massachusetts. Then a trip out to Ithaca NY for my 10-year class reunion at Cornell; i’d also sublet an apartment there for the summer — cheap, in those days. A whole summer of fun, back at my old school. (Rabbit even visited, and we went to dinner at the famous Moosewood Restaurant!)

Back at my new apartment in Southborough MA, i knew i still had feelings for Rabbit, so i got more practice at hiding them. Visiting Rabbit meant taking a commuter train into Boston; but it was worth it, and we had some more good years out of the friendship.

One summer i got to sublet a room in the apartment that Rabbit shared with two others. There were multiple massage tables in different rooms, and i got to indulge my enjoyment of giving & receiving massages with a variety of people — dancers, friends, & street performers; the place had a great queer hippy vibe. It was one hell of a summer, and i stored up a ton of memories. Sadly, though, i could never bring myself to have a proper discussion of my long-unrequited love for Rabbit; it was just too difficult.

After that that i moved back to Southborough and took more classes at Framingham State College — Creative Writing and Computer Programming in Java 1 & 2. At the local Starbucks i met this woman, Margot. We saw each other a few times at Starbucks, and at first she wasn’t that interested in me romantically.

But then i went back for a weekend in Boston — more cat-sitting for Rabbit — and Margot heard about the massages & the hippy vibe. Now she wanted to go out with me! I met Margot’s 8-year-old child and soon moved in; it was all a little crazy.

[More on Margot later.]

Rabbit eventually moved to San Francisco, after their Master’s Degree was finished; and we fell more & more out of touch … and i guess our ways of thinking fell out of step.

I don’t really know what happened, but i’m sure i shared responsibility for it. I know Margot was jealous of the way i’d felt about Rabbit, and the new relationship with Margot put a damper on the friendship with Rabbit. Some fractures cannot be healed. Some friendships don’t last.

I really wish i could have talked to Rabbit as Sandi was dying (or during the next year of grieving). But i guess our friendship had decayed too far. They had moved on.

Goodbye, old friend.