As Luck Would Have It (28 page)

Even if I didn’t say the actual words, I was going to be standing up right there with him and his boyfriend when they made their promises for better or worse
on January 2, after we returned from our vacation to celebrate our birthdays.  Joseph’s boyfriend was going to be working on a big project until just before Christmas and couldn’t come along, so their plan was to
go to Cancun for
their honeymoon in March.  Michelle was extremely busy helping to prepare a well publicized civil rights case that was slated for trial in early February, so it would be just the two of us going on the cruise.

With all the plans seeming to come together nicely, there was just one little problem, one small monkey wrench in the works of all of this.  By 2020, nearly every state had passed laws specifically prohibiting same sex marriage.  In just the past few years, much of the progress made by gays and lesbians in the half century since Stonewall was washed away, either by referendum, court order, federal legislation, state mandate, or the steep force of bigotry itself.  Fifteen states that had previously allowed for either legalized marriage or binding civil unions had now rescinded such a basic human right:  Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Washington, Hawaii and California.  California, never to be outdone, did it twice; once by referendum in 2008, then again in 2018 when that state’s Supreme Court overturned its own prior decision that had found the prohibitions to be unconstitutional.  Oh, I forgot to mention the District of Columbia
;
as of
January
1, 2021, gays
would no longer be on the bridal registry at Macy’s in our nation’s capital either.

There was just one exception, Iowa, whose courts had stood firm despite enormous pressure from both politicians and the electorate
a
like; rioting had taken place in Des Moines and other places,
legislators
had been voted out, the religious right spit their hatred over the airwaves, but still the law remained intact; the sanctity, the right and the dignity of marriage would be extended to all citizens regardless. 
If Des
Moines was the most liberal city in the state, Davenport was a much easier drive from Chicago, so Joseph rented a hall there for the event.  That made Michelle and me a little nervous because Davenport had turned into a bit of a hot spot for anti-gay rhetoric and violence. 
Then there was the additional problem of finding an appropriate clergyman to perform the ceremony; many ministers and rabbis were anxious about it, fearing retribution or worse if they officiated at, or even condoned a gay union.  It was not unheard of for so-called religious groups to protest or even disrupt a wedding in much the same way that the Reverend Jim Phelps had done at funerals for gay soldiers years earlier.

But events in life move along in their own way, fast or slow along a broken and confusing path.  The li
n
es they follow may be drawn by fate or something more, but they are sometimes invisible to us; obscured by darkness, sightless curves, and even our own self-imposed blindness.  Th
e
things that we wish for most or believe are important m
a
y suddenly become small and seem insignificant.  Maybe you are looking forward to hearing about Joseph’s wedding, as much I am to being there with him, with a new tuxedo
and a
toast I’d been working on for days, with Michelle and Christian and our other friends, to celebrate their lives and recognize their love, to sanctify not just their joining together
, but life itself for its purity and its beauty.  Yes, I would like to tell you all about it; the music, the gowns, the handsome men and women, the wedding party, the relatives, the joyful couple themselves.  I would love to share that experience with you if only I could.  Circumstances can intervene and change the course of our lives in just an instant, move us in totally unexpected directions and force us to lay down the very best of our plans, and
to
set aside our most magnificent dreams.  For if it was my dream to see him married
and
to share his happiness, that dream was now going to have to wait.

*****

I'm sure I mentioned at least once or twice that I enjoy gambling quite a lot, even though I have no expectation of winning and in fact have not won for as long as I can remember.  Why do it then, you might be asking yourself, if you know you are going to lose?  There is a part of me that thinks eventually I am bound to win, that if I play long enough, a friendly card or spin of the wheel will eventually surface, and when it does, I might just win big.  That's why I buy a lottery ticket ever
y
Sunday morning religiously when I walk up to the corner convenience store for my weekend
Tribune
and
latte.
Mostly though, I gamble because it is fun and exciting, rather than from any fantasy I might imagine about living in a mansion on the lake, vacationing in Fiji, or driving a Rolls Royce.

All of it is fun and exciting to me; the nervous tension at the blackjack table as the dealer lays down the cards, the colorful lights and sounds of the slot machines as the coins jingle one by one, the intense concentration
of the players at the roulette wheel, waiting and hoping until fate decides where it wants the ball to drop.  I like the slot machines best though; maybe it's because pretty much everyone loses money on them, not just me.  Or maybe it's because I know that if I hang around the machines for awhile, playing or not, that someone before too long will probably win at least a respectable size jackpot, and then I can join the other players in a circle around the lucky winner, clapping them on the back, cheering them on; way to go, what good luck!

I like cards too, especially Poker, though I never win at that either.  I do win at card games that don't depend mainly on chance and don't have a payout involved beyond the satisfaction of the competition and enjoyment of the game itself
.
  I love to play Hearts, especially when I've had a few drinks, when I get fairly aggressive and try to shoot the moon with even a moderately decent hand.  I like it also because you don't have a partner to screw things up, like in Bridge or Euchre, where they trump your ace for no apparent reason other than that they've had one too many
whisky sours
or can't count past three tricks.  I like that it is a cut throat game; one where it is easy to get even with someone that messed you up on an earlier round with an ugly pass that laid to waste the best hand you had been dealt all night.  Yes, this time I've got the queen of spades with backers and I'm already short suited.  Go ahead, lead with your Ace of diamonds
now
and watch what happens!

Christian, Joseph, Billie and I took turns hosting Poker games one or two Saturdays each month.  We played a few different games, dealer's choice, but I
usually
dealt seven card stud.  Luckily, the stakes were low because I was always down by the end of the night. 
Michelle, Amanda
, Billie's partner Franz, and Joseph's boyfriend
would
hang out too and sometimes play with us, but most of the time
the
four of them would form
their own table because they like
d
to play Pinochle
or Spades
instead.  As usual, within the first half hour, I was down more than $
4
0.  How is it possible to play ten consecutive Poker hands with nothing better than a pair of fives to show for it?  So I got up to stretch a bit and poured the girls and Joseph's boyfriend a round of the peach Sangria I'd made earlier.  Gee Clifford, you have such bad luck, Christian declared, as I returned to the table with four highball glasses and the unopened bottle of eighteen year Balvenie that Billie and Franz had brought.

I asked them to deal me out a hand or two while I filled our glasses and considered Christian's somewhat unenlightened statement concerning my luck.  Of course he could not have known that luck was sitting right beside me at the table that evening, just like every other evening, or that it was attending to matters of much greater significance than whether or not I'd pull a jack for the inside straight that would have taken the hand.  I looked around at my friends and said a silent prayer of thanks for having them there, but at the same time I had to ask myself who the lucky one really was.

Was Christian lucky?  He had a good marriage with a
fine
woman he had been wit
h
for more than 20 years.  But their first child had been born with the most severe physical and mental disabilities and only lived for a few weeks.  The second pregnancy was a difficult one for Amanda, but they had a beautiful 13
-
year
-
old daughter to show for it, who had loved to visit my apartment when she was a little girl and play with the model cars I had displayed.  She was so good and gentle with them; I had little concern that she would pull the wheels off or smash them beyond repair.  She had loved to sing along while Christian delighted her with his harmonica or saxophone.  After these two children, nature or whoever it was that made these calls decided that they would not have any more; so like me, Alicia was to be an only child.  Christian suffered for years with moderate depression and took medications to ward off its evil spell, but he was in great physical shape and played a more than
decent game of tennis.  His parents were both still living, and so was Mr. Casslemond's wife, who was 96 and in a home for seniors now, but still as caring and nearly as insightful as the day I met her.  His brother Carter had not fared so well; he had trouble keeping a good job and never did anything with the produce business.  Eventually he lost a lot of money in a business venture gone sour and now he lived alone after an ugly divorce, probably drinking more than he should.

What about Joseph; would you say he was lucky?  He was born with beautiful parents who loved him and doted on him without conditions.  But he was called ugly names as a youngster and was spat at and pushed around by the other kids and teachers alike.  But he also had an older brother who kept an eye out for him and taught him both how to defend and respect himself.  Richard had become a lawyer and on a whim, decided to latch on as an investor with a start-up internet venture called Amazon.com.  In just a few years he had made
several
million dollars, but had given nearly all of it away to a charity he founded that fed and clothed the poorest people of Chicago.  Joseph's best friend was a somewhat tortured soul that he had to watch out for and make sure didn't
j
ump off a cliff.  He was forced to question his sexuality and had nothing but useless guys for partners until he finally found
the best of them wh
en he was 5
7
.  He was as smart as Einstein, but never showed off, never bragged or made any of feel us stupid
.  But he had developed a bad case of asthma and his back was messed up too ever since he slipped on the ice a few winters back.  He was never good at any sports and threw a ball like a girl.  On the other hand, he still had almost all of his wavy reddish hair and he kept that crooked smile as his trademark, never bothering to have the chipped tooth repaired.

Were they lucky or not; what do you think?  Life being what it is, with its confusion and uncertainty, all in all, taking everything into consideration, the bad with the good, what might have been or not, the chances taken or missed, I'd say yes; they did OK as far as I'm concerned, they are every bit as lucky as me.

C'mon Clifford, we're dealing you in, we want to take some more of your money.  I snapped out of my daydream right then and looked around the table again as Billie dealt a hand of five card draw.  I passed a Scotch on the rocks to each of them and toasted our friendship;
l'chaim
, to life, Joseph said as we clinked our glasses together in the middle of the table.  Sure, deal me in; I'm feeling lucky tonight.  I kept my two best cards and drew three new ones.  Christian couldn't have been more pleased with himself as he showed his cards; Aman
d
a, look, a full house!  That beat Billie's straight and whatever Joseph
threw in
.  As luck would have it, I had already folded; a pair of deuces would never make it with these guys. 

After our first year in high school, Joseph and I decide that we should sign up for the three week summer driver’s training program that was offered at school.  We figured there might be considerable resistance to this perfect idea from both families, so we lined up our arguments and prepared a case.  We decided to fight the more difficult battle first, Aunt Doreen, then move on to the more affable and lucid Edna and Harold Klein.  The logic of this was simple, that being if we were able to get my aunt to see the benefit of having an extra driver in the family, and subsequently present her stamp of approval to Joseph’s parents, then we would be in for sure.  So we sat down in Joseph’s room the very first day after school let out and banged out a list of every conceivable objection that we might encounter, then the appropriate counter arguments for each.  The list kept growing longer and longer and we rolled on the bed with laughter as the anticipated protestations became more and more ludicrous.  Let’s be attentive and not leave anything to chance, look who we’re up against.  How about this one; you can’t drive because you might hit a dog and you love animals, or if you drive and the car breaks down, you won’t be able to make it home for dinner on time.