My Beloved Daughter,

In my last entry, I mentioned a couple of guys who joined my weekly D&D game at the Fantasy Shop in Poplar Bluff.  I’ll add to their story today.

While, at first, I was simply around them for that game, my buddy, James, was hanging out with them on a more regular basis.  I was a huge fan of the game Super Street Fighter 2 and would regularly beat my friends (including James) at the home version on my Super NES.  James began telling me that I should play against Michael at the game because he would definitely defeat me.

One day, while I was waiting in line at Three Rivers Community College to register for my following semesters’ classes, I ran into Michael.  We talked for a bit and I learned a little bit more about him.  Highly intelligent, he had grown bored with high school, dropped out, took his GED test, and started college at sixteen.  I was floored.  He was also a devout atheist, making him the first person to admit to that whom I’d ever met.

After we had finished registering, we headed down to the student center and played a friendly game of Super Street Fighter 2.  Finally, I was going to get a real challenge.

I trounced him.

To be fair, he was more used to playing the game on a home console and admitted to “playing atrociously” on the arcade game, which he had never touched before.  We resolved to continue the challenge at his house.

A couple of weeks later, your Uncle Evan, James, and I were driving to Poplar Bluff so that I could pick up a set of floor mats for my car, when we decided to make a detour at the turn to Highway 21 and go to see what Michael was doing.  He was just hanging out alone at his house, where he and I played Super Street Fighter 2.

I trounced him.

He rode with us to Poplar Bluff, where we all decided to eat.  I was the first time that I’d ever eaten at a Chinese Buffet.  The name of the place was Kowloon’s and I quickly grew to love Crab Rangoon.

I learned more about Michael and his relationship with his parents.  They owned a convenience store in Doniphan, as well as a few rental properties.  They had owned the liquor store that stood next to their convenience store, until they had gifted it to Michael’s older sister and her husband as a wedding gift.

I was around Michael’s mother more than I was around his father.  They kept different hours and had separate bedrooms.  They did have a date night every Friday night, which is where they were that first night that I’d gone to their house to play Street Fighter.

The two parents showed their love for him with gifts.  He constantly had money for anything that he wanted.  They had bought him a brand new car (an Oldsmobile Achieva) and, when we would hang out at their house, there would always be snacks from the store available to us.

The problem is something that only I could see at first.  There was never any affection shown to him.  While his mother told him that she loved him, I don’t recall ever seeing her hug him.  This was so foreign to me, given the massively affectionate mother that I had.  I truly think that this lack of physical touch made him crave experiences outside of the norm.  At seventeen years of age, he was already an admitted alcoholic.  He finally admitted that he was also gay.

Looking at Jeremy, Michael’s best friend, I saw an even more distinct opposite when I discovered Michael’s sexuality.  Jeremy was a ladies’ man, after all.  His mother was a business owner, as well.   But he had to work in her restaurant in order to earn his spending money, which he seemed to value more than Michael.

The two of them ingratiated themselves into our circle of friends easily.  Michael would stay the night at my house and me at his.  They would come to my house to play D&D when my campaign at the Fantasy Shop finally ended.  The rest of my friends and I would go to Michael’s house to play the RPG, as well.  Things were going smashingly.

Until the summer of 1995.