I went out to dinner on Friday with five Palou Ave neighbors -- Des and Paris, Ellie and Tomo, and Joseph. It could've been a triple date, except that Joseph and I are not dating. Joseph is handsome and smart -- he's a massage therapist who lives sometimes in Santa Cruz and sometimes comes back to the house he grew up in to check on his 90-year-old mother. But he's damaged -- it's understandable, given that his father beat him (and his brothers) regularly and his mother doesn't exactly exude warmth. Desiree, who also had a damaging childhood, was gay until she got involved with Paris. She's ambivalent about relationships of all kinds -- she has difficulty with boundaries, you might say. Paris comes over on the weekends -- that's all she can manage, and he seems to be OK with it. As for Paris, well, he's a character -- a former pro (flyweight) boxer who grew up poor in Berkeley, abused his share of substances, and developed a highly personal, boxer-philosopher approach to life. Ellie is an animal control officer -- a blunt and kindly Brit who became a US citizen years ago. She met Tomo -- a Japanese chef -- through the online personals about ten months ago. Now he has moved in with her and they are expecting a baby in June.
Speaking of damaged childhoods, Nanci and I had lunch yesterday with our cousin Mike and his wife, Natalia. They are on vacation, escaping the Michigan winter. It had been decades since we'd seen Mike -- he's the son of our cousin Martha and was adopted by our uncle/his grandfather/my dad's younger brother, Carl, after Martha died. Martha was a heroin addict, and she died just after xmas in 1984, when she was 21 and Mike was about 4. The story has always been that Mike's biological father was Martha's pimp (that sounds very movie-of-the week, I know), that he was Asian (Chinese? Vietnamese?), and that he died before Mike was born. I've never been sure that being raised by his solipsistic grandfather was the best thing for Mike. When he got old enough, he distanced himself from Carl and grew close to Carl's ex-wife, Kathleen (Martha's mother). And he's been doing fine -- he owns and operates a small raw food restaurant in the Detroit area. He clearly yearns for family, in an introverted sort of way. He talks about my parents very fondly -- about visiting with Carl when he was a kid, loving everything my mom cooked, and the sweetness/awkwardness of keeping in touch with them as an adult.
I think he gets a lot of help from Natalia, who is clearly NOT introverted, and who experienced some childhood drama of her own: Her large Colombian family moved to the US after her father was kidnapped (and ransomed) in the mid-80s. I know I'm getting sentimental in my old age, but they seem like wonderful people -- bright, funny, handsome, warm-hearted. I hope we see each other again soon.
