Heather Gray and Greg

Greg was a year ahead of me in high school. He was one of the popular guys in school with the standard popular guy package; tall, good looking, athletic build. He had medium brown hair that was slightly long (typical for the early 80s), hazel eyes, full stubble face, broad shoulders, hairy muscular arms, thick legs. He dressed in worn t-shirts or polo shirts, faded jeans, and white leather sneakers or a pair of beat up brown cowboy boots. Greg was the sort of just-a-guy guy I wanted to be.

Greg inspired my first ever fashion inclination with the heather gray t-shirts he favored. I was 15 and had little fashion sense, I wore whatever clothes my folks bought for me...Unless I thought something was ugly. My main concern with clothes was about comfort.

Heather gray t-shirts were pretty standard, but I'd never noticed them until I noticed Greg wearing them. I didn't have the body Greg did so I knew there'd be no way a t-shirt would stretch across my shoulders the way his t-shirt stretched across his. But Greg's heather gray t-shirt became a major symbol of the sort of guy I wanted to be. I eventually scraped together the few bucks to buy one (my family was extremely poor) and it became part of my regular “wardrobe,” not that it mattered. Almost every day I wore the exact same outfit: red flannel hunting shirt, rust corduroy pants from the Sears catalog, and shapeless leather shoes (Sears again).

Unlike most popular guys Greg was genuinely friendly. He was easy going, open, and had a casual presence that gave no hint he knew how good looking or popular he was.

I would have never had any reason to ever cross paths with Greg except we both were in drama class. The class was for juniors and seniors but I'd got in as a sophomore because the class needed more guys. (I also apparently had some acting ability and I showed a willingness to do all the behind the scenes tasks.)

High school drama kids can definitely be as obnoxious as any depiction of them in movies and TV. A lot of pretension and, not surprisingly, dramatic behavior. 

Our class didn't seem obnoxious, but we definitely felt we had something special going on. For the most part we were a group of decent people and there was a sort of member-of-the-club closeness and camaraderie unlike any other high school group I was involved with (student government, newspaper, yearbook, art geeks, and general geeks). The fact that I was a year or two younger than the rest of the drama class meant nothing to the others because I was part of the group.

At the time I didn't know an interest in drama was a big gay cliche so it didn't occur to me that the other guys in the class could, like me, also have an interest in guys. 

During class Greg usually sat with a couple of girls. Before I knew any of them their apparent closeness implied to me that there may have been some sort of romantic involvement. I always tried to sit somewhere that made it easy to study Greg. He had a casual, comfortable with himself manner that I envied. He slouched in his seat, stuck his feet up on the back of the seat ahead of him, and was always fiddling with something he wore on a chain around his neck or biting the cuticles off his fingers. Though he never looked like he'd put any thought into his appearance he always looked great with his slightly disheveled hair, stubbly face, and well worn clothes.

I can't recall how Greg and I became sort of friends in class, though working on a play together always brought people close. Id also gone to a couple parties thrown by drama classmates where I probably talked to Greg. For whatever reason Greg came into class one day and sat down in the seat next to me. It was pretty damned exciting.

On another day shortly after that Greg gave me a ride in his old Ford pickup from the high school to downtown. It felt amazing to be riding in his pickup with him like we were good friends.

After that Greg and I occasionally ran some drama class related errands together, he driving his old Ford pickup, me as a passenger pretending we were great friends. 

On one trip to a hardware store Greg pointed out a cookie jar shaped like a pair of cowboy boots that he was going to get his friend Dean for Christmas. 

I was more than a bit socially inept back then, but still thought the gift was an odd one to give a high school student, especially Dean. Like Greg, Dean was part of the very popular group at school. Unlike Greg, Dean was a standard popular guy jackass who either ignored people beneath his social standing or only gave them a dismissive glare. (Dean really didn't have anything to be smug about; he wore thick glasses, had a blunt face heavily scarred by acne, wiry black hair, and a voice that would have been perfect for an oddball side character in a Warner Brothers cartoon.)

When getting a play together everyone in the drama class was expected to do everything. Most people were only interested in acting, getting people to build and paint sets could be difficult and often meant just two or three people showed up to help. That's how one late afternoon the stage was set, literally, for me and Greg to be the only people working on the set for an upcoming play.

While doing whatever the hell we were doing we had our usual sort of conversation which tended to be Greg  pondering aloud situations or questions. He would contemplate anything that crossed his mind and he did it in an open, unguarded way that was like the late night conversations I'd occasionally have with my closest friends.

Then Greg mentioned the movie Making Love which was about to be released. If you don't know, Making Love was a 1982 major studio film about a woman who finds out her husband is gay. It was very oh-my-god for the time.

I can't recall if Greg asked if I was going to see Making Love, but I know he said he was thinking about it. These days I'd know that bringing up such a film and mentioning you were interested in seeing it was probably an indicator that Greg had some sort of interest in guy-on-guy interactions. The fact that he brought it up to me probably meant that he thought I might be into guys, too. But back then I couldn't make such calculations.

After most the work was done Greg said something about being tired and stretched out on a couch that was being used in the play. I kept working but also kept managing to get an eyeful of Greg on the couch, so much so that the image is still clear in my mind. He was wearing one of his heather gray t-shirts and faded jeans. When he laid back he put one arm behind his head which made the t-shirt stretch tightly across his chest. One leg was propped up on the couch arm, one was on the floor. Greg's stretching out to doze on the couch seemed like an act of comfortableness with my presence.  

Despite my inability to discern the subtle cues about Greg there was one thing he did which made me wonder about him. I often saw Greg and his best friend Lance (another good looking, popular, genuinely nice guy) heading off campus during lunch. This piqued my curiosity because I would often head off campus at lunch with my longtime friends with benefits, Nate, in order to mess around.

My “friendship” with Greg never went further than drama class related activities. He graduated and that was the end of interactions. My junior year was also the end of my interest in drama. The class wasn't fun during my senior year and I quit halfway through the first semester. I also lost interest in theatre and the only plays I ever attended after high school were college class related.

Sometime in my senior year I ran into Abby, a girl who, like Greg, had been a year ahead of me and was in the drama class. She'd been a sort of friend of mine and was the gossipy type who, when she bumped into you after a long period of time, had to give you a rundown on all shared acquaintances. She told me Greg had moved to Seattle and was gay. As I'd already learned to hide any interest in gay subjects I didn't press her for details but of course I pondered the hell out of her info.

Not long after that I ran into Greg when he was back in town visiting his family. We had a brief catch up. He mentioned Seattle and when I asked how it was he enthusiastically said “I've had the best time of my life.” Even though I was a dunderhead who often missed innuendo and subtext in books and film I had to wonder if Greg's “best time” was due to Seattle's large gay population.

I never saw or heard from Greg after that last encounter. I went off to college where I had such a great time and made such good friends that it eclipsed my childhood and high school years. 

I didn't really wonder about Greg until the early 90s when I moved to Seattle. Greg had an unusual last name and I checked for him in the phone book, he wasn't in it. Later in the decade, when I had Internet access, I did the usual searches for anyone I had any vague interest in from my past. I never I found any hits for Greg.

Every few years after that I'd do a search for him again and never found anything. I began to wonder if, like a lot of gay guys in the early 80s, Greg's “best time of my life” had brought about the end of his life, though I didn't even know if Greg had actually been gay.

I recently threw his name into Google again and found a notation from a family reunion blurb in our hometown paper. It mentioned all the family and their spouses and with Greg's name there was the name of another guy. That gave me one more shred of info which led to a finding an online business notice with Greg and his partner cited and a photograph of them standing together.

In the photo Greg looked nothing like the guy I had known. I had to study the picture for a bit to see a similarity in the eyes and smile. He looked happy as hell, which was nice to see.

I have no real interest in contacting Greg, finding him alive and out there was enough. I'm again living in the town where I grew up, and I know Greg still has family here. I've wondered if Greg and I were to cross paths and he recognized me would I mention my high school infatuation with him. Maybe I would. It wasn't a romantic or even sexual infatuation, it was more like hero worship. 

And though it wasn't exactly fashionable my sort of crush on Greg was also my first ever fashion influence. Because of Greg I still think heather gray t-shirts are incredibly masculine.