Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:52:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: K. S. <atryptych@yahoo.com>
Subject: drinking-at-sullivans-grill-5

[Yes, its been forever again. I'll try to do even better. I just got
inspired today.]

FROM CHAPTER FOUR:

"I...uh," he began again. "I like you a lot." As he said those final words,
he quickly looked away, concentrating on the decking of my patio.  I could
hear --and see, in the cold weather -- his breath, coming fast and furious.
He stood, next to me, one hand holding a now half-empty drink, the other
hand tucked until a jacket armpit for warmth. His head down, and tilted
away from me as well, I couldn't see his facial expressions. But I heard
his breath sounds change, and suddenly sound more violent, and he moved his
free hand away from his jacket and up to his face, rubbing at his eyes. It
hit me, suddenly, that he was crying.

CHAPTER FIVE

At this point, I was at a loss.  Or rather, I was in a complete quandary.
I had spent so much energy into being a customer at Sullivans's and getting
to know their bartenders, that I was hurt by Glenn crying and my desire to
"fix it", as quickly as possible, was almost palatable.  At the same time,
though, I suspected he wasn't the person to just suddenly have an emotional
outburst.  Of course, I thought I knew (or at least suspected) the reason
at this point.  Nothing else made sense.  I just couldn't believe it.

"Glenn, dude...", I started, placing my boilermaker very carefully on the
floor of the patio.  I wasn't sure where this was headed, but I wanted to
have my hands free in case a hug helped.

Unfortunately, noise just made things worse.  Glenn went from quietly
crying to noisily making sounds that concerned me.  He'd already gone from
leaning over the rail of my patio to sitting in a spraddle-leg fashion on
the patio, and from what I could see, his beer had gone over the edge into
the hastas a few moments earlier.  From what I could see, none of this was
headed into a good situation.

At this point, the night had turned back into weird.

'Sober up' was the litany I repeated to myself for a few moments - which
seemed like forever - while I watched Glenn collapse to the ground.  Over
and over again, in my head, it actually seemed to help.  I began to realize
that I wished I had known that doing that actually made you seem more in
control; at the same time I wondered if it was just an affectation.  In any
event, I was in this situation (at least partly of my own making) and I was
determined to take care of it.

"Glenn...", I said softly, sinking down to the same level as he on the
patio.  Right behind his back, I was hesitant to put my arms around him,
but he was crying so hard I was hesitant not to.  Compromising, I put my
hand squarely on his back, almost shaking him.

"Glenn...", I repeated.

"I'm OK...", I heard between muffled sobs - Glenn was holding his hands
over his face at this point, and it was difficult to hear clearly.

"Glen, its ok if something is up, I'm just concerned about you."
Immediately my conversation grated on my nerves.  'Just say "It's OK, dude,
I know what you're going through."' I thought.  'Don't tell him you know
what he's going through when you don't really.', I thought at almost the
same time.  Obviously, I wasn't going to get much help from my brain,
tonight.

Going with the heart instead, I wrapped my arms around Glenn, perfectly
prepared for him to throw his arms up, march off my porch and go home,
presumably still crying.  Sometimes though, random stuff works.

In this case it did.  Glenn sank back into my body - I was sitting right
behind him - and I began to revise my definitions of being emotionally
upset.  If he was crying earlier, I wasn't sure what he was doing now, it
was so intense.  His entire body was shaking so bad I thought about what I
knew about seizures.  Not sure he was having one, I was hesitant to put my
wallet in his mouth to bite on, and I'd read that was probably a bad idea
anyway.

So instead, I just held him tighter while he cried.

I'm not sure that crying is an accurate description of what he did, really.
Having cried hard, I know what that is like.  With Glenn, it was a much
more physical thing.  His body shook, and his nose ran, and his ears leaked
tears like they were faucets.  After my arms were around him, it only
seemed to get worse.  I began to wonder if I was helping or hurting, until
he turned his head around, and started shifting his body so that we were
face to face.

Putting his face in between my face and chin - so that his entire face was
in contact with my neck, I just let him cry.