"Queer as Faith"
by Nathan Gunter

Queer as Faith is Nathan Gunter's unconventional, thought-provoking, and sometimes raw column about struggling to live authentically in the real world.

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This edition:
Treasures

Last winter I got an internship with my favorite newspaper, an alternative newsweekly in my hometown. I got to work with some very cool people who were tuned in to what was happening politically and culturally. I learned how to write concisely and to really edit myself.

I befriended the staff, as I believe that no workplace situation cannot be made better with friendly banter and a few people on your side, should the need arise. I had a chance to write some wonderful stories.

The woman with whom I worked directly was a fantastic woman named Karen. Karen and I would brainstorm about what events around the city I could write about for that week's Life section. Immediately I knew that she was someone to get to know: she was funny and lively, she despised the war, and when she told me that she had lung cancer, she said not to feel sorry for her or make a big deal out of it.

The office was down the street from a small arts district, and one day I went there to eat lunch at a small cafe. Next door was a little shop selling curios and incense, and after lunch I browsed around. For some reason I found a little hippo, made of ceramic and painted bright blue. I bought him and put him on my dashboard for the drive back to work.

When I showed him to Karen her eyes lit up, and I set him on her desk for the rest of the day. It was her last day at work for awhile, as she was about to undergo surgery and radiation.

I meant to tell Karen to take the little blue hippo with her, but I didn't, and then she was gone for several weeks, and the hippo came home with me. She came back to work - unsteady but recovering - just as I was about to get promoted from intern to contributing writer. The change meant I was, for the first time, getting paid to write, but also that I would not be in the office. I told Karen, and everyone else, goodbye, but that I would be back to say hello.

I got a great new job, and while I kept writing for the paper - and got to see my very first actual check for actual writing - I never made it back to the office.

This summer my good friend Erica got married. She and I have been close since high school, and we lived together once upon a time. Two years ago she met Alex, and they have more or less lived happily ever after since then.

Alex proposed just before Christmas, and they bought their first house in May. The wedding was the first Saturday in August.

Alex asked me to be a groomsman almost immediately. I have grown to love and respect him since we met, and as such I was honored. I was the only groomsman who was not related to the couple in some way, and Erica kept calling me her "gay maid of honor." I threw them a stock the bar party so that everyone could see their new house and buy them booze.

One of the bridesmaids was a friend of ours with two wonderful kids. Her youngest, a little girl, was to act as flower girl in the wedding, while the little boy, who is six, would be the ring bearer. The little girl is remarkably self-possessed for a two-year-old, but like most children, she did not take to me very well when I first met her as an infant. I'm not great with kids.

Leading up to the wedding things got crazy, as they are prone to do. The bride and groom were stressed, as brides and grooms tend to be. While the first three weekends in July were given over to various wedding bacchanalia, the week before was quiet, like the eye of some white chiffon hurricane.

Brian and I wanted to get out of the city all weekend, and so we planned to go camping. We packed the car with our tent, sleeping bags, a cooler full of food and beer, and some insect repellent.

The day of our departure I got an email from my editor. "Karen passed away last night. The funeral is on Monday."

It was like the bottom fell out of my chair. I hadn't known her that long, but things suddenly seemed so hopeless. I took several deep breaths and, as I was at my brand-new job, did my best not to cry.

People close to me have died before. I have lost family members to car crashes and illnesses, friends to sickness and suicide. Yet every time it happened I felt enveloped in a cocoon of calmness. This is how I get in a crisis: level-headed and calm, which is odd, as most days this is so deeply not me.

The funeral was surreal. I was late, and though I begged to be allowed to just stand in the back so as not to be disruptive, the usher insisted on seating me in the fourth row, where everyone could see me walk in, and where I would be right behind Karen's family.

I was not sure what to do. I zoned in and out during the eulogies and the scripture readings. When they opened the casked my first, morbid thought was to sit up straight to try to get a better look, and then to quickly look away.

Open caskets are so upsetting; people never look right. Karen seemed to wear a tight frown, and I only got as close as absolutely necessary.

I hugged Karen's daughter, who worked at the paper as well, and made uncomfortable small-talk with my editor for only a few seconds in the foyer before I got claustrophobic and had to step outside for some deep breaths.

I desperately wanted to bum a cigarette, but thought that would be in bad taste, considering how she had died.

I spent the rest of the day doing little except feeling vaguely sad and freaked out. I had lunch with some friends so I wouldn't have to be alone, but then I got home and looked at the little blue hippo on the shelf in my living room, and grief and regret assaulted me.

And then it was Friday, and the next day was the wedding. At the rehearsal I did my groomsman thing, walking dutifully up to the altar, then going back and doing it again.

The flower girl would not sit still, and, being two years old, got a little panicky when her mother was nowhere in sight. I ended up sitting with her for awhile, and at first she gave me disbelieving looks, like, "You're in charge of my well-being now? Well that's just wonderful."

Slowly she warmed up to me. I would kiss the end of my finger and then tap her nose gently, and in spite of herself, she found this highly amusing.

During the rehearsal she was unpredictable, as children are. When the doors opened she took off at a run for her mother, who was standing at the front of the church with the rest of us.

Before the wedding she was placed in my care again, and she was flirty and adorable, because she knew she was scoring points with me. I put her down for a minute and she found a stash of starlight mints. Her mother let her have one, and she handed me the wrapper.

I don't know why, but something in me lurched at the earnest look in her eyes as she handed me this tiny bit of trash. "Thank you," I said gratefully, and I put it in my pocket. She began unwrapping more mints just so she could hand me the wrappers, and after each one, I said, "Thank you!"

It turned into a mantra, a ritual that we repeated. "Thank you! Thank you!"

During the ceremony I stared up at my friends as they said their vows. I felt sad about Karen again, and so unbelievably thankful that she got to have a family, and friends, and good years, and that I got to know her.

And because weddings make me have these kinds of thoughts, I thought about how I will lose everyone I love sooner or later, and they will lose me. Erica and Alex will have children who will one day lose them, just like we will lose our parents.

I was so thankful that we all get to have each other before that happens.

The whole week had been like some awful British comedy, and I was failing to get the joke. I put my hand in my pocket to reach for a hankerchief, and there were those little wrappers, those little pieces of flotsam, that the flower girl had given me.

I held on for dear life.