Little Did I Know

I had a mentor of sorts I’d found back in the early 80’s – this cool gay guy who was helping me out with the whole don’t drink and drug thing. He was forever telling me that there was “a plan” for me, that my Higher Power – whatever that was – surely had a plan for me. A good plan, all about caring for me. That plan. One day I walked up to him and asked, with attitude, if my High Power has a plan for me why don’t I know what it is? Then Dick, that was his name, looked at me with his sweet, gentle, grinning smile and answered, “Because if you knew what it was you’d fuck it up.”

When I began this Blog – couchsurfingat70 – back on August 7th in 2018, I choose the name ‘couch surfing at 70’ because it felt kind of cool to me, and because I intended for the Blog, unlike my previous ‘BuddyCushmanArt’ Blog which was a lot about politics and current events and often angry, to be more of a place for stories, mostly my own and as well from those I’d observed over the years – over the decades.

And it, the new Blog, was in fact related directly to years – my rapidly approaching 70th – and my ongoing daydream about spending time with this friend or that one, like I’d been doing a bunch of times with Gavin in Oakland and had with Andy and Jamie on Cape Cod before Portland. It felt funky, in a good way, being 70 and still willing and able to live that couch surfing, nomadic, gypsy-like life.

Little did I know.

Someone once told me that the only real guarantee in life was that if you didn’t pick up the first drink you couldn’t get drunk. I could dig that, seemed like night following day, and it’s worked for this boy for a smidge over 38 years now. It’s just I guess I forgot it was the only guarantee. Because it felt like a guarantee – to think otherwise unimaginable – I would live the rest of my life with my wife Susan. Since the day I met her – September 24th, 2009 – she was my life partner, she was my soulmate, talk about fate and you’re talking about us.

Last Wednesday, the day before that 38th anniversary of sorts, my life partner and soulmate told me she wanted a divorce. To say I was stunned, well, I was stunned to my core. I seem to have forgotten the “no guarantees” thing. Maybe it’s a shame on me. Maybe, like they say, it’s life on life’s terms.

It’s Susan’s house. Me getting out was part of the deal – stated. Is part of the deal. Little did I know, back two and a half years ago birthing this Blog, I would find myself in the position of possibly relying on couch surfing again. Even, maybe, to the point of survival. And the surfing now with a tad less romance – not quite so funky.

I sure wish Dick was still around, because I’d call him up today, this afternoon, Monday April 19th, and I’d ask him, again, about being sure my High Power has a plan for me that involves me being cared for. Because I know, for sure, what his answer would be – “Guaranteed.”

Then, after a moment or so, he’d give me – I swear I’d see it right over the phone – that sweet, funny, caring grin of his, and he’d be the one asking the next question:

“Why, are you fucking it up?”