Menage à Trois Bingo

Chris got a call this morning from the landlord's wife. She thought one of our cats had been hit by a car on our road. At noon, he went to the house to check, and after half-an-hour's search, he found him. The young king has passed.

He'd been abandoned in Cabool outside Polly's Diner, so he was first named Polly after the diner outside which they had found him. His maleness became obvious quickly, however, and he had to have a new name. "Paulie" was vetoed, so being the sixth cat in the household, he became Henry the VI.

As a youngster he had a terrible habit of ( molesting mooses. )

He grew up to be an imposing young silver tabby, cuddly on his terms but somewhat aloof, and like his namesake, lord of all he surveyed. This summer, he acquired a cauliflower ear. It gave him a rakish look that suited him well.

He was bound and determined to be an outside cat despite all our best efforts. It was a pissing contest, literally: he peed on the bed even while people were in it. Eventually we gave in, and let him go out; by preference he spent most of his time outside. Unlike the Washington house, though, this one is on a deceptively busy street, and we knew even then that this might be the result. It doesn't make it any easier to take, though.

He was a good cat. I will miss him.

When I was a senior at Indiana University, the university had free computer accounts for students, with an internal bulletin board systerm called the Forum, where students could start topics and discussions. I spent hours on that, and then VAXphone (it was like a cross between AIM and chat: it worked with up to 5 people at a time) with people I had met there, and eventually meeting the people in person. It was at that time that I began using "semper, fiona" as my signoff phrase, and Fiona of Amber began to be my alter-ego/role-model.

Two of the first people I came to know were Lore and her friend Deb. I spent a lot of time with them in the beginning of that year. Lore talked about her boyfriend, Kirk, but I had never met or talked to him. Then one day I was on VAXphone with Lore, when Kirk logged on and she invited him into the conversation. When we happened to glance aside from the computers we were using in the lab, and noticed exactly the same thing on each other's screens, we realized we were sitting next to each other. That is how I met Kirk. It wasn't long after that that we became fast friends. We started going to the free movie premieres at the student union, sometimes with other VAXfriends, or just the three of us.

One night (the movie was "Look Who's Talking"), Kirk got out a deck of cards while we waited in line, and we bemoaned the lack of a fourth for euchre. At that, the boy seated in front of us in line turned and said he'd play; he became my partner. That was Jim. We played euchre until the movie started. Afterwards, a large group of us including Jim and his roommate, Kirk and Lore and some other friends, went back to Kirk's dorm and played cards and talked some more. Before the night was over, we had decided to make a trip to Brown County State Park that weekend to see the fall colors.

Jim collected everyone's phone numbers "to make the arrangements", and I don't know how I knew it, but I knew he did that just so he could get mine. Sure enough, two days later he asked me out, commenting that he'd wanted to call right away but waited because that was what you're "supposed to do". Odd thing: I still remember what I was wearing that night. In fact, I still have it (not for sentimental reasons, I still have most of the clothes I owned then). It was a pink sweater my parents had given me. I remember one other thing distinctly. Jim bet a dollar that no one would guess his middle name, given that his initial was C. Many guesses were made, but before too long I guessed it. Cecil. He paid me four quarters. I dated Jim all that year. We had a tumultous relationship, but he was my first real lover and I held on for dear life even after it was clearly falling apart.

I'd had sex for the first time with someone else (a man named Matt, six or eight years older than me) shortly before, but only once, somewhat under the influence of alcohol, and didn't make a relationship out of it. In fact I avoided him as much as possible given that we had two classes in common, especially after I'd met Jim. I didn't really like him, he gave me the willies a little bit. But he liked me a great deal--too much, in fact: he'd liked me since freshman year and after my junior year away he still remembered me. I remember him telling me once "I'd know that walk anywhere."

I felt almost stalked, but I didn't quite recognize it. I don't know why I ever slept with him, other than that I was somewhat drunk and also tired of being a 21-year-old virgin. I remember thinking that. "Finally, that's done with." I pointed him out to Lore once. Her comment was, "He's evil." And I hadn't told her anything about him at all.

It took me a lot of years after that to start finding redhaired men attractive again. Britton had been a redhead, and I had always liked red hair on men, but afte Matt that attraction switched off for a long time.