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Flaming Homosexschulls

posted by Liam Reed at 1:05 pm.

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The end of the summer is drawing near. A week from now I’ll be moved back in and working my two jobs at a café and a retail store in the area. I only tell you this because as of late my stalker-to-job ratio has been relatively low, so I welcome all new applicants interested in the job. It requires some hard work and constant “Missed Connection” postings on Craigslist, so please be very hard-working if you consider applying.

All stalkers aside, this past weekend I was in Champaign and/or Urbana having a gay old time (no pun intended. Huzza!) with my buddies who I hadn’t seen in months. There was a lot of Frisbee on the quad, dancing, drinking, gay drama, music, batting cages, and miniature golf. It was a shit ton of fun.

And now I am back in Chicagoland, which of course means the south suburbs and not Chicago at all. And, being in the suburbs during the final week of summer, it’s important to do what south suburban kids do best: drink alcohol and have a bonfire.

This is the last summer that I am going to be in the suburbs. Next year is momentous in that I’ll actually be sticking around on campus. This means that all the friends who I normally hang out with over the summer, not only those high school chums but the friends who stayed and studied in Chicago, will be seen quite a bit less than ever before.

I’m actually quite impressed with how well my circle of suburban friends have stayed in touch to this point. In my group, we have had people leave for New York City, Indiana, Iraq, Germany, random parts of Illinois south of I80, Michigan, and so on and so forth. There has been war, there has been pregnancy, there have even been cases of friends majoring in theater. Yet each year we seem to have been able to maintain that contact and over the summer have plenty of bonfires. There have been occasions where my dogs got into the watermelon; there have been others where the s’mores simply got out of control and ended up stuffed in our faces for some very unflattering photos. Some of us work during the summer (okay, everyone but me works during the summer) yet everyone somehow makes time to make it to the fire and just chill for a while.

What I think I like the most about friendships is that while we have all done some pretty stupid shit, there’s a complete lack of actual judgment. Sure, we may tell each other, “You’re a complete fucktard,” but it’s a very non-judgmental fucktard. Our fucktard, if you will.

When I first started writing today I was thinking about writing about gay drama. About how for the most part gays weren’t out of the closet in high school and they therefore need to bring high school drama to the college level. I was going to write about specific instances of drama within my group, but I decided against it because I’m just not in the mood to write about something so negative. I want to end the summer on a good note, ya know?

Last night was more than likely the last bonfire I will be having at my parents’ house in the suburbs for a very long time. They had become a staple to our summers and now none of us will be coming back. There’s no drama at our fires and I really dig that. It’s peaceful, almost. Sad, but peaceful. Kind of like death I guess.

Next semester is going to be full of drama and backstabbing and people talking behind other people’s backs. In its own way, it’s kind of awesome. It’s very Harry Potter in that with each new year, more and more shit goes down, and more than likely someone will get impaled on a wand (in more ways that one, you kinky reader you). This next semester is going to be intense. Friendships will become tighter, classes will get harder, and adding a work schedule or extracurricular schedule will make everything extremely busy and will fly by very quickly.

But, like I said, in the meantime, I’m pretty down with the bonfires. It’s the end of the summer and the end of an era (that being the get drunk and play with burning logs era), but hopefully some of those friendships will stay cemented. If not, I guess we have photos for a reason.

Fin?

Liam Reed: 1987 model, runs fairly well, few dents, starts in cold weather, no baggage, loves flea markets and canned soup. Send all hate mail, love mail, and sexual advances to withtongue@gmail.com