Bruce Carlson

I’ve known a lot of people in my life.  In fact, I’m noticing that one of the more disconcerting effects of getting older is this weird sense that I seem to know EVERYONE.  I see people all the time in many different places that I know I know, but don’t know where I know them from.  I remember my father always seemed to know everyone too, and remember him telling me it was because he was SOOO old.  He was younger than I am at that time.

Anyway, as I’m sure everyone is aware, there is a very big difference between knowing someone and merely knowing who someone is.  There are many, MANY people around town whom I can identify, but only a few that I could comfortably say I know, and fewer still whom I consider to be, if not friends, at least VERY close acquaintances.  One of these rare, special, and beautiful people died unexpectedly a little less than two weeks ago.  Recently enough, anyway, that his passing still doesn’t seem real.  Not sure, at this moment, that it ever will.

If you were lucky enough to know Bruce Carlson, aka Tich, aka BC, aka Homo erectus, then nothing I’m about to say will be a surprise to you, but we all had communal AND individual knowledge of this unbelievable treasure of a man, and I’m here, of course, to relate my very personal reasons for being so fond of him, as well as my surmisements (hey, it’s a word if I say it and you know what I mean when I do) as to why he was fond of me.

As an early- to mid-teen boy, I was incredibly homophobic.  I’d been taught to be such by my friends and acquaintances at the time, conditioned to religiously avoid being even a little bit effeminate, to not behave in any way that might reveal me to be a fag.  This is, I know, very ugly shit and doesn’t paint me in the best light, but I’d rather be honest about this than pretend I’ve always been a paragon of tolerance.  I haven’t been, so to say otherwise would be a lie.

I can’t even pinpoint when this started to change, but I know that by the time I was sixteen, I was going through a lot of mental and emotional changes that caused me to not only sympathize with, but even to identify with homosexuals.  A lot of this had to do with a burgeoning realization that I really liked to dress well.  Previously, I hadn’t realized that all men with any fashion sense were gay, but believe me, everyone I knew at the time was quick to point this out to me.

Because so many, many of my age-mates were becoming increasingly convinced I must be gay, I began to question my own sexuality.  I matched so very many stereotypes of the gay kid, it was pretty hard to ignore.  I was very into drama, art, unpopular music, and fashion.  I was terribly interested in girls, but none of them seemed at all interested in me.  I took that to mean they must be sensing something I wasn’t consciously aware of.  But like the Katy Parry song says, eventually, at seventeen, “I kissed a girl and I liked it.”  Incidentally, she herself was very into drama, fashion, and unpopular music, and apparently still is.  She’s grown to be every bit as smart, sophisticated, and awesome as I always suspected she would.  But I digress.

As I finished out my teens and entered my early twenties, I had become what I should always have been — completely unconscious of others’ sexual preference as a method for judging their worth.  I actually got to a point where I didn’t notice, in the vast majority of cases, people’s race, sexual orientation, or gender.  I looked at almost everyone I knew or newly met as people first and whatever subcategories either later or, increasingly, not at all.  It was around this time that I met Bruce for the very first time.

No one told me he was gay, but that wasn’t really necessary.  Those of you who knew him will know what I mean when I say that although it was obvious, it also wasn’t the central fact of knowing him.  He never flaunted it, and yet, he ALWAYS did.  He never cared one way or another whether you noticed it.  It was at once his defining characteristic and the least important thing about him.

One of my favorite things about Bruce was that he was a very sharing individual.  Many will back me up when I say that it was at once an endearing and exasperating trait in him.  When he discovered a new joy, a new hobby, a new interest, he would go to extraordinary lengths to get you interested in it as well, and would not be gainsaid.  The earliest conversation with him that I can remember, he was explaining to me why he had a padlock hooked through the button fly of his Levi’s.  It was a new fashion trend he was trying to get going.  He explained all the symbolism behind it, as if it needed explaining.  When I tried to explain the (to me) obvious physical reasons to NOT engage in that particular trend (walking around with a padlock whacking into my junk repeatedly all day), he poopooed my objection by explaining it would teach me to walk more gracefully.  What a guy.

Oddly enough, the LAST conversation of any length I had with him before he died involved fashion, as well.  I had recently posted a photo of Tom Jones in a white mesh t-shirt and was enthusing to Bruce about how unbelievable Tom looked in the photo.  I explained how ridiculous I usually find men in mesh shirts to look, and he seemed to take it as a personal affront.  True to his Bruceness, he immediately lifted the shirt he was wearing to reveal the orange mesh t-shirt he was wearing under it.  He explained he was trying to get mesh t-shirts to catch on again because they make any man, no matter how in or out of shape he might be, look fabulous.  I still disagree, Bruce — VERY few of us can carry off that look.

It’s so very hard not to digress when thinking or speaking (or typing) about Bruce, because there are SO many things to be said about him.  To cut to the chase, somewhat — I loved Bruce because, at the end of any given day, Bruce was always Bruce.  He was one of the most absolutely genuine people I have ever known.  So much so that I have often feared for his safety as he walked or rode his awesome folding bicycle around Ogden, a town not known for its spectacular tolerance of anyone even slightly different.  Bruce taught me, more than anything, that merely tolerating or being tolerant isn’t enough.  We tolerate the things we really and truly don’t like, but have learned to put up with.  Bruce taught me to love the differences in people, not merely ignore them.  And that’s perhaps the biggest reason I have to thank him for having been a part of my life, as well as being the reason I think he liked me.  He so successfully taught me to love people that I never treated him any differently than I do any of my other friends.  His sometimes over-the-top homosexuality never made me uncomfortable, and I think he recognized that in me and many others and appreciated it.

He is also largely responsible for my militant support of the GLBTA community.  Whenever I imagine anyone being shitty toward a gay man or woman, I imagine Bruce as the victim.  I always felt very protective of him, and imagining anyone being horrible to him was (and still is, and hopefully always will be) enough to enrage me, enough to encourage me to never “let it slide” when someone is being as homophobic as I once was.  It’s one of my five or six hot buttons, and was before I met Bruce.  He was merely an intensifier of that feeling, and it’s one more thing I have to thank him for.

Bruce, according to my beliefs, is truly gone in any physical or “reality-based” sense.  I don’t believe any part of him (soul, ka, whatever) has survived him.  However, he touched SO many people’s lives in SO many ways that he will live on through us.  Yeah, the writers among you are groaning at the triteness of such a statement, but I stand by it.  We say things like that about so many people, but it’s very true of Bruce.  Bruce touched people in a way incomparable with anyone else.  I will miss him in ways that will continually surprise even me.