and Words
He’s got a thing ’bout losin’ control
Carries it a mile just to see how far he’ll go
Brushes up his chops as he tries to fake a smile
A friend indeed, but I need someone to stay a while
Someone to stay a while
You can bend my ear
We will talk all day
Just make sure I’m around when you’ve finally got somethin’ to say
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
About a year after I started at Microsoft, we welcomed a new developer to the team. Jim’s office sat across the hall from mine, though initially we didn’t work on the same project. However, we’d chat out in the open from our respective desks. On one of those early days, he stood at my door as we chatted and looked upon my corkboard. He marveled about the commemorative Space Shuttle Challenger license plate I had pinned up there, and asked, “How did you get that?” I explained that I moved from the Miami area, and it was a gift from a friend upon my departure.
Jim confessed that he moved from Florida as well, and that he watched that very same Space Shuttle Challenger explode on his rearview mirror as he drove. While we didn’t run in any of the same circles in Florida, having a fellow Floridian made me a bit less homesick. That may have been the very start of our friendship, over 30 years ago.
As friends do, on one particular Monday morning, I asked Jim out loud as I continued to look at my inbox, “What did you do this weekend?” His response is one that I’ve yet to hear since that day and is thus seared into my memory, “I wrote my own 386 micro kernel.” That said, Jim remains a brilliant programmer; he probably remembers that code.
Those days were the infancy of computers playing sound. In fact, we literally introduced audio to Windows. All our computers had sound cards and optical drives, which were completely fancy those days. We had a CD burner in the lab, though those CD blanks alone were $100 each. As you might expect, we often played music while we worked. I kept a boombox on my desk and frequently played music this way. That music didn’t stream from our hard drives or music services (which didn’t exist in 1991). Our hard drives were only 200 MB, which may hold about 40 tunes in MP3 format (which wasn’t a thing yet).
During one such afternoon, I hear this particular song, “Something to Say” playing from his office. I’m naturally intrigued. It’s a meaningful, unassuming song that still bounces in my head. I asked him for the name of the song and the group. The response for the latter? “Toad The Wet Sprocket” He must be lying; this must be a joke.
As it turns out, Jim was not lying, and this is a joke, of sorts. They got the name from a Monty Python skit called “Rock Notes”. While the band name may have started as a joke, their music is far from it. To this day, hearing this song reminds me of my friendship with Jim.
Speaking of which, our friendship continues to grow. We’re part of the same set of friends and often dine out together as our dedicated work skids into the evenings. Our days blended together between work and the little home life we have. We bid farewell to friends as they left to do their own thing, as well as attend his wedding years later. Jim mentored me as well in an unofficial capacity; he helped me whiteboard and design many projects during our years working together.
Microsoft employees get a membership to the local gym as a benefit. That membership was initially free of charge, but once benefits became taxable, they charged us the price of the taxes (while the company still paid for the membership). Everyone I knew got the ‘free’ membership, though few ever used it. Jim and I decided that we would start and spent a couple of evenings each week at the gym. That ‘local gym’ was exceptional too, it’ll spoil you to other gyms.
On one particular night, we make plans to go to dinner and a movie. During our dinner, Jim speaks of a situation he’s navigating, though with some angst. The source of the conflict is with a local church which he shares with other friends. As our conversation continues, he’s surprisingly vague as I speculate as to the specifics of the friction. And finally, those words escaped my lips, and I uttered them with some mock and sarcasm, “You’re not gay, are you?!”
Jim’s response was simple, “Well, yeah.” In that moment, my mind rewound back over all the conversations that we had. All the mentions of attractive women with his terse response, “She’s not my type.” I convinced myself that surely there must’ve been one moment or one reference to his heterosexuality. Though as I sped through those conversations in my mind, the way that you see words speed through microfilm, I came up empty. He never spoke of his sexual orientation; I just assumed he was straight. The words that followed stumbled from my lips, “You’re not interested in me, are you?” He smiled and responded with the familiar, “No, you’re not my type.”
You’ll never know how you’ll respond to a moment like this until it actually happens. I grew up hearing the derogatory word for gay as an insult; it permeated society. Hell, I’ve used it that way. We spoke about ‘them’ in hushed tones. In that moment, I found clarity. I do not know what it’s like to be gay, and it’s something I just learned about him. Everything I know about Jim tells me that he’s decent and honorable. To end our friendship over who he loves is profoundly petty; I won’t do it.
Which movie did we watch that night? I believe that it was, “The Crying Game.”
A few months ago, my director coordinated a group watch of Brené Brown’s talk about empathy. Knowing that I’m a fan, she asked if I may give an example of empathy. I searched for a few moments but settled on that very same conversation so many years before. I reflected on what it would’ve been like to have been my friend seated across that table, understanding that in one conversation, years of friendship may abruptly end. He spoke knowing that, in that moment, who he is and who he loves may be enough for some to abandon him. On that day, he spoke his truth.
In that moment, I felt his anxiety and eventually his relief, even at my hand. We are friends because of everything that he is, not despite it. Nay, it’s beyond friendship; he’s family.
Years have passed since that memorable conversation. This song plays on shuffle. I stop what I was doing to reminisce about my friend. On that day, the words suddenly ring in my head as if they tell our story:
You can take me down
You can show me your home
Not the place where you live
But the place where you belong
And I reflect upon all those who struggle to ‘fit in’ instead of living their truth, indeed ‘the place where they belong’. I won’t pass judgement on their attempts to fit in; I can’t possibly know everything about their lives. I’ve fought my own demons.
However, if you know me and call me a friend. Please reflect upon the words from this song, consider it an invitation, “Just make sure I’m around when you’ve finally got somethin’ to say.”