The Hippy

The Hippy with my son in his natural habitat on the shore of Lake Huron.

There are only so many people to let into the inner circle of your life and racists and homophobic people are not the attributes that I am searching for. I am an open minded person that loves mankind. I love people of any shade, any gender and I especially love people that put good into the world. I believe it is important to keep the inner circle of folks closest to me, kind giving people that I feel at ease to give a hug when greeting. My racist, homophobic, womanizing friend is definitely someone that I hug upon arrival because he has been there for me since we practiced alcoholism together somewhere around the year 2000 in Houston, Texas. Let’s call my friend the Hippy.

When we met on a barstool in what would become my haunt, the Hippy was loud and not southern at all, but his sense of humor was raunchy much like my own. We enjoyed talking about sex, drugs and sports – which were our three favorite topics at the time (the Hippy hasn’t changed to this day where I have evolved to exclude drugs for the most part). We are both hustlers when it comes to the nine to five and the Hippy had his own business with a partner that I would befriend as well. We enjoyed success, smoking lots of weed, drinking heavily and laying with women as often as possible. We had a ton in common even though the Hippy is twenty five years older than me. He was probably not the most couth mentor, but the Hippy and I became genuine friends that chose to spend time together. We have played many rounds of golf and have set next to each other on barstools waxing poetic with many “F” words mixed in for hundreds of hours. Do you judge me for befriending a man that breaks out the “N” word from time to time and generally slanders guy and queer folk? I will say that I never joined in with such talk and always pushed back against it, but never believed it was the essence of this particular man. The Hippy loves the Blues, which is performed by many black musicians whom the Hippy reveres. And in the world the Hippy does not disrespect others – he is like a misbehaving teenager that acts out at home but always pulls it together in the world.

One of the craziest nights of my life, and one of my favorite memories, came when I was invited to be Santa Clause with seven other men and three female elves, for a tradition that the Hippy had started with some of his friends. We all piled into a limo dressed as Santa and headed on a bar crawl. This is where I received the nickname of “Rookie”, which the Hippy still calls me. At the first bar, I walked in first, being the rookie that I was, and sat down and ordered a drink. Two minutes later another Santa came wandering into the bar and sat next to me commiserating on the hard holiday season as this was two days after Christmas. Twenty minutes later there were seven Santas and three sexy elves sitting at the bar creating a raucous party at five in afternoon. We moved on to several bars before things began to come apart somewhere after midnight – Santas peeling of with ladies from the bar and others asleep in the limo. There was a small discussion with some police officers, but the rowdy Santa was wrangled into the limo and off to Hippy’s house for the afterparty. The Hippy and I truly enjoyed the chaos of intoxication and I remember feeling pure joy during that entire evening – laughter exploding from every bar and almost blowing the windows out of our limo.

Five years later – and many more drunken excursions with my Hippy friend – I found myself in some very deep water. Not many people on the planet threw me a life preserver, but the Hippy did multiple times. The Drug Enforcement Agency had decided that I was a detriment to American society and that I needed to be incarcerated – they win 98% of their cases, so when I told the Hippy that I had been arrested, he acted as a true friend and aligned me the proper legal council. He was also the only friend that visited me in prison – my wife came every weekend and I saw my mother and father once or twice – but not even the best man from my wedding came to visit. It is a depressing place to visit, but the love it shows the person you are visiting is forever remembered. Not only did the Hippy come to visit, but he employed me when I was let out and his business was a great place to go every day which really put me on the right path. Of coarse, I couldn’t partake with my Hippy buddy, but the time we shared at his business was productive for both of us.

We just went by and saw the Hippy in his natural summertime environment and he has taken to retirement well. Twenty years have passed since I was on his payroll. He has let his hair grown long and he has a ZZ Top beard and he still smokes pot every day. I had my whole family with me when I stopped by and there was no bigotry or racism in front of them, he can act civilized when he needs to. But I did smell a little reefer right before we left to go swim in the lake.

So you might ask, how do I put up with someone that might break out the “N” word in a phone conversation – I do it with patience and love. Whatever creates his foul thoughts is not what he is – there are a lot of factors that go into what makes a man and I can not dig into all the Hippy’s past and figure out why he slanders certain groups of people, but I do ask him not to and tell him that I don’t agree with his perspective. And we can have that discussion without raised voices or pointed fingers, without vitriol judgement. Relationships are complicated and I have benefitted greatly by excluding toxic people from my life, but the Hippy will not be thrown overboard even if some of his views deviate greatly from own.