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Chapter 2 - Remembering a Christmas PresentRoss and I met on a day in early spring at our lookout point. We met purely by chance. We had both gone for a walk. The air was crisp, but not icy. The sun shone thinly through the cloud cover. The sea below us lay calm. Ross spotted a heron in the kelp bed that stretched along the edge of our bay towards the open sea. The heron was a rare and a welcome sight compared to the ever-present seagulls that had chosen our bay for their home. The world seemed fresher and greener this morning, even though spring had barely begun. Or maybe it was the green quilted jacket that Ross wore, that gave the impression that spring had come. Heather had given it to him that Christmas. He was proud to wear it. It was the first thing that Heather had bought with her first paycheck after Fred had been able to get her onto the coastal surveillance team. The coastal defense system was constantly being expanded and upgraded. Ross had joked about this one day, saying that we were preparing ourselves for a major war, for which there existed no enemy. But that's not what we talked about that day. "Do you think that anyone 'heard' what you were saying last Christmas when you 'unwrapped' my present to everybody?" Ross asked. "Sylvia did hear it," I replied. "Heather? I don't think so. Tony? I think he felt it didn't concern him." "And what about yourself?" Ross asked. "I did the talking, remember?" I replied. "Yes you did, but you didn't answer the question you raised yourself, the one that Sylvia had asked you before, the question concerning me. Sylvia had asked you whether you were seeking the same intimately loving relationship with me that you were seeking with Heather, the kind you had once established with her. You didn't answer her question. You talked around it. I think you owe yourself an answer, Pete." "I don't have an answer yet, Ross," I replied, "because I know what the answer must be within the flow of our love for all that is beautifully human, for all that comes out of our humanity, but I don't know how to get there from the platform that we're at. Things were simpler in India. There were no complex lines of demarcation that kept us apart. Here, the platform for our unity appears to be much more complex, but also simpler at the same time. It appears to be anchored within the flow of our love for all the good and beautiful and their immortality. This brought us together. I know this means embracing all that is good and beautiful in our humanity and in our world. But how does one get into this 'something' that is so exceedingly rare that it is almost deemed to be illegitimate, something that very few human beings have ever experienced? I don't know. Sylvia says that what isolates the two of us from one-another is an easy problem to overcome. I believe its roots go much deeper." "How deep, Peter?" "It is being said that Tchaikovsky was a homosexual man," I replied, "and that this nearly destroyed him in the environment of the time in which he lived. It has even been suggested that this was the real cause for his death. His was an isolating passion, Ross, because the platform had not been established for it to exist openly. In fact, it still doesn't exist. It doesn't exist even when there is no passion involved. Thus, the isolation goes on and on until the required platform is established. We are facing a pioneering type challenge here." "How would you define this challenge, Peter?" "Oh, it's easy to define, Ross, but not so easy to master. Look at us, we have been close friends for a dozen years, but we treat each other as if we were not born as sexual beings but had arrived on the earth from Mars - as if we weren't part of humanity. A friend of mine had counseled a black girl once who had an identity crisis. My friend fell into the same kind of trap. She told that girl, whom she wanted to help, that she didn't see her as a black person at all. I think we are saying much of the same to each other, Ross, in the sexual context. I can well imagine what pain that girl must have felt when her worth as a black person was denied. She wanted to hear that black is beautiful. In a sense we are doing the same thing to each other. What is worse, this is happening throughout the world." || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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