Slugs! Scrotum!

You can't miss a person, I've found, whom you carry around with you. I
haven't really seen Wynn since I graduated from Rice, but he's still with me
in the very best kind of way, and I'm sure he always will be there, lurking
in the corners of my heart and mind.

Wynn was a bright spot even in the decay of Houston grunge like IHOP. It
wasn't our waitress's fault that she was named "Twyla" and given a booth of 6
or 7 of us all-night revelers at the end of a very long shift... "Miss,
miss!" Waggling one topsider by his ear, Wynn flagged her down for more
blueberry syrup or some such. (His foot was still in the topsider of course,
you've all seen this trick, right?) Twyla looked like she needed some
weirdness in her life but she might have been too tired to seize the gift
that morning; she remained very grumpy.

Like you, I was happy to be on the recieving end of love like that. Wynn was
my secret Santa one year at Will Rice. I got things sluggy and the tiniest
bottle of tabasco sauce ever. He thus set a standard for thoughtfulness and
humor and giving that I would strive to achieve.

Wandering down the hall one year at Halloween, Wynn was the most fully-dressed
party-goer for the annual Night of Decadence party at Rice, clothed from neck
to knees as a naked giant hariy scrotum. (That's right--clothed as naked.
Burlap sacking tied strategically here and there with black yarn, in case
you're wondering, concealing two large beach balls.) Tim and I giggled over
it for days afterward.

Then we graduated and left Texas a thousand miles behind. We saw Wynn last
over eight years ago, when I was pregnant with our first kid. He told us he
was gay, and regaled us with his coming out story. Like many of Wynn's
stories, he had it polished into a great comic epic and we laughed like
hyenas.

Around a year later I gave as best a rendition of Wynn's coming out I could
for my dad, when he finally came out of the closet. Dad was clinically
depressed and suicidal while I was a teenager, and had had shock therapy when
he failed to respond to drugs. Coming out at 63 was the end of a life-long
battle, one he had fought hard and survived with his own brand of humor. I
offered Wynn's story, a favorite Allison Bechdel, and coat hangers. Dad
enjoyed Wynn's story and Allison's fine work, but as for the coat hangers, my
own original contribution... What for? Dad wanted to know. Because I wasn't
quite as good as Wynn at these things, I had to kill the joke with
explanation (they were for all the extra space in his closet, don't you
know.)

It was fun to have had our lives twine around with his for those short years
at Rice. He gave much to us that we could not reciprocate directly. We pay
that debt off in the only way we can, to others that we meet who appreciate a
word of support or a funny story to get through. So go ahead: imagine a
middle-age lady who hasn't shaved since August, wearing only her old
underpants and a pair of half-length white althletic socks, swinging through
the kitchen of a 1950's ranch house and snatching away the salt shaker in the
very nick of time, then leaping up on the bed, legs planted shoulder-width
and arms akimbo, shouting "Slugs, never fear! Wonder Woman is here!!" and
know that Wynn has been saluted for a life of love and joy.

ieva swanson, '92, and love also from Tim Holy, '91