Journal

I don’t usually comment on what I read because I really don’t want this to become an opinion site. Although I’m always willing to listen to someone else’s viewpoint, I keep my opinions to myself.

Today I make an exception, sort of. Other than to say these articles broke my heart and my check is in the mail, I’ll leave you to form your own opinion. The first is from last Friday, the story of a gay-bashing in Wyoming, the second, a follow-up article from today.

I’ve never received spam from this service. I’m always suspicious, so I make use of the 25 mailboxes that come with the site and with RoadRunner in order to check up on these things. When I get spam, I just kill the mailbox. Haven’t had to with PlanetOut.

I’ve known it was coming. You can’t be so close to someone and not know. The sleepless nights beside you, the distant silences, punctuated by the deepest thoughts, reluctantly shared. Plus, I’ve had the opportunity to read what I posted for him tonight.

I knew last night before he even got ready to go out, that the time had come. I wouldn’t be seeing him again for a while. And, that I had to let him go. It was the guilt that drove him to it. You’ll have to infer it. I can’t reveal it here.

Yet for all his guilt, I’m guilty as well. For I have caused his guilt. I have failed him. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the thought that I’ve caused him such pain. How can you cause so much pain in someone you love so completely?

This is my punishment. The crushing weight of loneliness. Loneliness, my faithful and constant companion. It gives me the space to contemplate the guilt, to flog myself with it. Within the confines of loneliness.

I’ll tell the story. When I can. When the self-flagellation no longer causes sufficient pain. When the tears won’t come any more.

I’m not a religious man. Yet I’m not completely faithless either. But it seems so out of context with my life …

God, I’ve never asked for anything before, seriously, and with conviction.

And I ask now, not for myself, but for another.

And keep him safe until we can be together again …

He needs so much more love, caring, compassion,

and understanding than he will ever admit.

More than he’ll receive where he is now.

And although I give him all my love, caring, compassion,

and understanding, he needs more than I have to give.

Please, God, ease the torment of his pain, sorrow, guilt and anguish,

For he is the man who has taught me love. How to love unconditionally.

Isn’t that the lesson we’re supposed to learn?

In any event, Jeffrey turned up Thursday night. He hadn’t run into any trouble. Being emotionally and physically exhausted, he’d slept for nearly two days straight. I thank God that he was, and is, safe.

He wrote quite a bit on Friday. Either because he was too anxious to get started, or because I’m a poor trainer, (probably a bit of each,) he hadn’t been hitting the Save button when he was done writing, nor had he been shutting down the PC properly. As a result, what he wrote Friday was not saved.

In spelunking around the disk late Friday night in hopes of recovering something, I wanted to check where his account was storing it’s temp files. (Under Windows NT, you can specify where they’re kept on a user by user basis.) So I was looking at the User Profiles tab of the System Properties window. There should have been three user profiles, Administrator, brucew and jeffreyb. There was a fourth one, Deleted User.

I’d had some indecision when setting up Jeff’s account. I wasn’t sure what I wanted his username to be, and I wasn’t sure how I wanted the account configured. So we went through several different combinations of things before settling the issue. Then, logged in as Administrator, I rounded up all the files that had been created and put them into the proper places in the new, final account, and deleted the interim user accounts.

Somehow, I managed to get one of the old profiles attached to the new user account. So on Friday night, also logged in as Administrator, when I discovered the profile for a deleted user, I figured it belonged to one of the usernames we’d deleted. A natural assumption. So I deleted it.

A few minutes later I was horrified to find out that everything but his username and password were gone. Everything he’s written, all his e-mail and address book, all his account settings, everything. Even Norton Utilities for NT couldn’t bring any of it back. It’s one of NT’s security features. Wonderful when it’s intentional, when it’s accidental, well, not so good. And naturally, I had no backup of his stuff. I was still deciding on how best to do it without logging in myself. Again, to protect his privacy. I’m not entirely done restoring what I could of his files. I’m piecing together what I can, but I’ll have to rekey his resume.

Anyhow, we’ve made it through the weekend, in spite of several hardships, like when he broke his hand Friday night, and on Saturday when we found you practically have to tear-down the entire engine to replace the water pump on my car.

This coming week will be interesting. I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.

Before closing out this week, I’d like to send out a special thinks to Vince-the-ex, for being there when we needed him. He’s a true friend, one of only a handful I have in the world. And I can’t express how grateful I am that I can still rely on him.