I really don’t know how to start this post, so I'm just gonna roll. I’ve been sitting here for a while, with the details in my head. It’s a really sweet story, actually…but I’m sure it’s gonna sound fucked up. Life is fucked up sometimes. Life can be fucked up and sweet at the same time though, can’t it?
"I had a huge crush on my dealer in high school."
Biggie 1: I can’t believe you just typed that. That was so stupid on so many levels.
Biggie 2: I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Biggie 1: Well first of all, it sounds like a cross between some fucked up headline on a Modern Detectives magazine from the 70’s and...well...... Tiger Beat.
Biggie 2: Yeah I know.
Biggie 1: You were head over heels in love with Ted when you were 16. He always had the best weed…and not in the normal, pedestrian sense. He never had anything but sweet bud. He was a connoisseur.
Biggie 2: Right. That wasn’t it though. Ok…maybe in part…but no..that wasn’t it. It was more.
Biggie 1: It was the curly black hair and the attitude wasn’t it?
Biggie 2: Yes and no and ….well let me just get on with the story, ok?
Biggie 1: Ok…I’ll shut up.
So anyways….Ted and his girlfriend moved into the house next door when I was 15. Oh Lord…there goes the neighborhood. Hippies! (That’s what my mom and her neighborhood cronies said. Nobody else in the western world had used the term “hippies” for approximately 6 years).
So anyways…on the 4th of July that year, me and my idiot asshole friends decided to aim bottle rockets at their house. To our surprise, we heard uproarious laughter from their place and were in turn…bombarded with return fire. Oh man. Maybe that was the first little indication that I was falling in love with Ted. Here is this gorgeous, albeit freaky 20 something guy shooting bottle rockets back at me. Ok…I know this is getting weirder and weirder...but I was totally 15 years old...and totally queer, remember.
So anyways…Ted and his girlfriend had a big ol’ houseful of friends over that night. They asked us to come over and party. “Come over and party”??? What bunch of dumb 15 year old stoners wouldn’t want to hear that from an equally dumb bunch of 20 somethings? We were there in a flash.
So anyways…We started hanging out at Ted’s. We got to see some wild shit. The crowd at Ted’s dwindled down as he became more of a serious dealer. The weed..the really really good weed…became gratis as he became more of a serious dealer of the other stuff. Weed was too cheap and bulky then to deal anymore and the profit margin wasn’t as good as other things.
So anyways…I’m getting off track. I had worked my way into the Inner Sanctum! I was 16 and I was best friends with this gorgeous 20 something guy that was one of the biggest dealers in Chattanooga. We were cutting up folds of T. Yeah right…in the streets then it was sold as THC…but truth be known…it was nothing but PCP.
So anyways…one Sunday night, me and Ted were sitting in the kitchen, cutting and folding “T” into little wax paper envelopes. In the process, we would lick the residue off of the kitchen table…and get pretty…well you know…high.
So anyways…that night as we were cutting and folding T….out of nowhere, Ted stood up and laid the biggest, deepest kiss on me. I’m talking Ted…Ted the big straight curly headed drop dead gorgeous whoredog.
So anyways…that began the strangest and the sweetest relationship I have ever had. So bizarre. For the next 5 years…all the way through my college days…we were inseparable. I love that man to this day. He taught me how to carry myself with a cool demeanor. He taught me how to look past human exteriors and see souls.
Ted was the one that taught me to look for Jesus on the road.
Ted grew up in Black Bottom…a neighborhood just south of Chattanooga that didn’t... you know...generate many CEOs. This was the roughest neighborhood a white boy could grow up in.
Passionate kisses in the night. Belly wrenching laughter and warm embraces. Sentences begun by one and finished by another. A fucked up 16 year old gay kid and an equally fucked up 20 something straight guy in love. That was then.
Guess what yall? Ted is clean now and get this…owns 3 foundries. No shit. He’s married now….and doesn’t sound like a hippy anymore when I talk to him on the phone. Sold out, we did. But to this day, we still end our conversations with “I love you”.
All that is so long ago it almost seems like a dream. But it’s not a dream. It’s a life. It’s not a cut and dried or pretty life., but it’s a life and a love story I wouldn’t trade for the world. We both have gone on…and rightly so. Our lives intersected for a moment and that was all it took. Me and Ted did good…overcame the obstacles...but never overcame the love.
A. This tune always reminds me of Ted in a fucked up way.
B. This is a love story, yall.
C. Yall bettah reco-nize!
T
Right. 
