Dear Ferret Folks-

I have a dear friend named Brian. He is a bold, extravagant gay man
with a great deal of wit. Which he will share with you, whether you
necessarily want to have a slice or not. Love him or hate him, good
luck trying to ignore him.

He does not hold back complaint easily, but there are times when he is
simply pushed too far. The time he and his husband were sitting down to
dinner in their condo and some hateful neighbour thought it would be
funny to shine a laser pointer into their window, miming the action of
a gun with a laser site. Brian wound up with a dot of laser right
between his eyes at the table. Needless to say, he and his husband hit
the deck, not knowing if this was mess with the gay couple time, or
kill the gay couple time.

Funny. Ha ha.

Brian tells that story very, very quietly. No wit, no extravagance.
That much anger makes, as he describes it, "Quiet Brian." He is just
too danged mad to make a funny story out of that event. Quiet Brian
is someone else, altogether. Not the Brian that so many know and love.
We've been friends for more than thirty years, and I can only think of
maybe half a dozen times that I have met "Quiet Brian." We describe it
in those terms. He'll say "remember when X happened? I turned into
Quiet Brian." And then I'll know just how upset he really was.

Well, I have my own Quiet moments. There are some things that just
knock all of the humor right out of me, and humor is my primary tool
for trying to make sense of a world that is even crazier than *I* am.
Some things just make me mad, in a really, really quiet way that is
not my usual mad at all. I transcend mad, and I go somewhere else all
together.

I go there on August 8th. Here I am on August 8th, quiet and still.
This is the second anniversary of my friend Todd Leuthold's murder by
crack-addled thugs. Some of you may remember Todd, he was a friend to
all ferrets. He called his the Fuzzbutt Rodeo Clowns. The crack-addled
thugs are all in jail, thanks the the Good Lord and the State of
Pennsylvania. But Todd is still dead. And I no longer get his
rip-roaringly funny messages in my inbox. He no longer tells me about
his little daughter, what funny thing she had done. He no longer tells
me the ridiculous things that his ferrets had done, or just how
ridiculous something I had done or said was. He had a positive talent
for bringing me back down to earth fast!

Quiet. I will be Quiet today. I won't even send this out on the eighth,
because I just want to wrap myself in the Quiet. I will instead save
this for a little while. I will go to my bean patch and go to work in
the sunshine, snipping green beans and tossing them into the colander.
The bean patch is where I go to Commune with a Higher Power. And I will
consider a prayer I came across lately. Lord, make me a better person
if you think I deserve it.

Todd was one of those people who let me know when I was making progress
toward that goal, and when I was just being an ass. Such friends are
rare in this life. Treasure yours, because life can be awful quick and
dirty and unkind, sometimes. Be a better friend, too, if you can. I
hear all of this very cleary, through the Quiet today.

Gonna go play with a ferret, now.

Alexandra in Ma

[Posted in FML 6420]