S-Town - Chapter VI
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Chapter six from .

cereal .

this american life. I'm brian read. This is shit town.

Stain old car, my end time .

to get .

another one after a long day running around .

bb county together to the courthouse in the library and passed the bird family compound. Just have a look at IT john. I are driving in his beat up Mercedes back to his place.

It's my last night here. I'm flying home tomorrow. John wants to swing by the little scissors to pick up a pizz for his mother.

It's getting dark OK. We're going to take a short cuts. Do you hear since that returns to diminishing or is passing benefon? Past three for her rise.

A rare moment of quiet with john in the dusk.

I'm gonna miss you. I hate to .

say that i'm going to miss youtube show you back down here.

at least come down here once every one for electoral, climate change, energy. The possibility of playing our ideas.

John g. Grabbed a peppo. I pizz from the little scissors to bring home to marry Grace. And as were climbing back into the car in the parking lot, a very minor confrontation occurs.

A manager emerges from the pizer place and says to me, were you recording in my store? I tell, yeah, I was recording john. He says, there's no recording aloud.

That's alright. I say we're leaving anyway. That's IT. The guy was fined. Me, this was not a big deal, but as we drive away, john will not let you go.

My stole, my stole. I love IT h, my stock. I love a focus. They don't know a pot of P, S, C or a winter. The sling IT out probably lives .

over south forty, south forty trailer park, where Tyler LED at one point across .

the street from john, he is a top dog. The little sees a, but folks and obama must recording.

Like I am over this, but then john bus out.

this lovely word, probably always over come. You have been on both sides of the fence. So I know the psychology of hersell ual, that's probably the tap that likes to over a caron side, the column y of tops here they shut down the bottom. That's usually how that type of relationship were john .

talking like this? I did make me wonder, is going to selling a ridiculous question. But is there a gay scene down here?

Oh my god. Is no tail and hammer class in cases is undertaken. You turn that off now day so OK. Had killed them for that.

This is one of the few times john ever asked me to turn my record off. What that usually means is that I wouldn't tell you what he said without getting his permission to describe IT, but there are a few reasons. I am going to give you an over review of what he told me in the car that day.

First since john died, two other people who knew him well. I've told me the same information on the record. Also, john was very clear that he did not believe in god or in after life.

So john, in his own view, is warm dirt now unaffected by this. And lastly, what john is closed and where he LED me after he died, help me understand him so much more. And I think trying to understand another person is a worthwhile thing to do. So what he told me was about a local man with whom had a sexual relationship not all that long ago.

I'm not going to say exactly who the man was because that's the part john wanted secret IT wasn't the fact that he had been with men that he didn't want recorded, but that he had been with this particular guy because done to talk to me about this guy already multiple times and told me that he was not a good person. The guy worked on john yard over the years, and for a while they'd been close. After john committed suicide, I went to meet with the man.

We didn't interview on the record, but i'm not going to use the recording. He's friendly when I arrive and open to talking. We sit and period ally as we speak. His wife wonders buy and his drops.

He says his relationship with john was close, but a working one john would pay in to do projects on the house in yard, which john IT with lots of people. And the man says that over time john became overly attached to him. John didn't like for the mental leave, or only at other commitments.

At a moment when his wife isn't around, I asked the guy if his and johns relationship was romantic. If IT was sexual, I think that's what he wanted. The man says, I think he just wanted a partner.

Not so much sex, I guess I hope not. Had me scared though. And so IT wasn't ever sexual with you guys, I ask, he says, because he said otherwise.

I tell him the man snp his head towards me with big eyes. Hm, he says, I tell him he doesn't need to talk about IT if he doesn't want, but because john told me about IT, I fall compelled to ask. He says again, he pauses.

And that is all that is set on the matter, though there is one moment later in the conversation when the man is telling me about the reason he and john started spending less time together. The man had started dating a woman, and john would say harsh things about, he says he knew what john was trying to do. He was trying to get the man to be with him instead.

But that what I wanted, the man tells me, I don't want no boyfriend. I want a girlfriend. I'm straight. I'm gonna stay that way too.

I left my visit with that man more than a year after john killed himself. Feeling lots of things, but mostly feeling like a, is that we pass for love in john's life. This guy, maybe who has a wife and doesn't acknowledge a relationship and who job thinks is an ashok.

Anyway, john did of tayler, I guess, and Michael fuller years back, both of who me clearly cared about. But both of them weren't very unstable situations, and oh yeah, were also straight. Towler says he joined, would tell each other, I love you, man, of course, what the request of coffee at that they were trying to get up each other's buts. But that's not love, like love, love the kind of love I hear about all the time on the country music stations as i'm driving around west l. obama.

Did john never have love in his life? not. I really feel something for this kid tyre love, but mississippi river love, fifth of whisky, ve must get on wine time, petty track all night till the sun come back love, or even a quieter, steady, maybe even longer love. Did john ever have a relationship resembling any of that? Or did you spend the entirety of a lifetime without IT?

One night in october two thousand and fifteen, I was getting married. Actually, an email showed up in my inbox. No, I was not checking my email during my wedding.

I noticed the following week, hello, sir. IT began. My name is old and long, and I was a friend of john bee mclaurin for twelve years. I recently learned of his death all in long. I never heard that name before, and I was not on john's contact list that he left behind.

A first suicide only goes on to explain in his email that he had corresponded with a friend of john who was on the list who might spoken to, and that man told all about me that I was doing a story about john. Can you let me know when the segment will air on rights? I would very much like to listen.

also. I need to know the radio station number. M, R, F, M.

Thank you. I write back until one, and it's nice to hear from him. I'll be at under unfortunate circumstances.

I've been talking to all sorts of friends of john. I explained, learning about him. Would he be open to speaking to me? Sometimes he agrees.

He tells me he lives in birmingham, about forty miles from johns. Play in woodstock. He prefers not to meet at his house.

So a few months later, I went a motel room and set IT up as a makeshift recording studio. Waiting in the lobby, I see a man walk in peering around. He's fit, but not skinny, easily dressed in a well fitting red switcher and genes. It's all in which he cans and headed into the room. Welcome to the .

in the yeah right later.

when we get to know each other, olen will ask me hold, I think he is. And I will guess john's age, about fifty, maybe even a Younger, but he tells me he's about to turn sixty. The years haven't shown in him the way they do and others he sets with good posture, military posture.

I learn when I ask him to talk about himself. So I can check the levels of the mike. Let me get a quick level on your voice. He was a linguist in the air force with top secret security clearance, specializing in german and russian.

But I did was just to listen to russian pilots talk and send IT to the national .

security agency these days he's a registered nurse .

at a nearby hospital that in the gal intended there, oh, really yeah. Are you getting a good reading here?

IT sounds great. And also, i'm learning about you, which is helps because I have no idea who you are.

Gosh.

so we're ruin.

How did you know john? I figured you must have met him.

I began to explain how john wrote to our radio show, how he and I spoke on the phone for months before I ever went down there, and before I can get in too much more of the story, only takes over the conversation.

He seems eager to talk. That's very similar. When I met john, we talked on the phone for fifteen months very regularly before we ever met in person.

I'm going to tell you, we met on a single line for men. The only good thing that came out of that single line experience was a friendship with john. I met john on the line, and I called him back at the number.

And within just a few minutes, I knew that I was talking to someone broke again. I learned of john's death on the condolences website. I had not hurt from john and probably a year. So I got curious.

and olan doesn't tell me why he hadn't hurt from john in a year. Maybe i'm getting ahead of myself. He says .

wrong one day.

after all that time, not speaking. One says he wondered about john and finally called him. But his phone number was disconnected, which only thought was strange, because john's family had had that phone line since the nine hundred and sixty. So during some downtime at work, he typed john bee maClaire orbital ary into google. And there was.

and that's all I had to go on, because in all the years I knew john, we had no friends in common. I had no one who knew him, so there was no one I could call.

says in the more than six months since that happened, he's been grieving alone. He's one friend at work. He's told about john. He's been writing about john is journal. And one afternoon he visited his grave and he corresponded with another commentor who have to message on the condolence website, who's the friend of john.

who told all about me, olen.

And I will end up sitting in the motel room for five hours tonight and more than six hours tomorrow. Talking about john, he tells me that he feels exhilarating to finally talk about his relationship with to try to make sense of IT. Now the johns gone with someone else, knew him to the singles line on.

And john medan was called mega phone. This was in two thousand and three before online dating became ubiquitous. IT was essentially grinder for your land line.

You dial into the service, listen to short messages people had recorded describing themselves. If you like them, you'd beat them as I was called. And then if they were intrigued, they could pay to be connected with you on the phone. That's what happened with all and john, john beef dolin and only called him back.

One of the first things he said to me was that he lived with his parent and lived in a small town. And he said, I hope that's not a problem. But we just started talking then.

and that talking went on for months, fifteen months before they met in person, usually talking in the middle night because only keeps night shift hours, even on his days off. And john would just be finishing up his work in the clock shop, what you did in the evening because I was cooler.

and I just remember enjoying talking at night, maybe even sitting in the dark with no lights on, just talking on the phone with john.

They found a lot to discuss. Books they we're reading only gravitated more of fiction, john, to science. They talk about music, things going on in the world, but growing up, and a lot about being gay. E men and alabama olen and still live his hometown like john, but was born, raised in alabama too. And IT lived much of .

his life there.

I have to say, oh, has such a ridiculous recall for the details of these conversations. He could be john official biographer, like what he remembers about johns father.

But tom Michael Moore had one eye that was straight, and the other one was a little off.

who only recalls only from a photography saw hanging on john's wall. He never the man or john's mother.

mary Grace is birthday is november, the twenty nine or november, but the thirty eight hundred and twenty six .

who remembers that about .

their friend's mother? SHE got married in nineteen fifty one.

Yeah, of course. What about cousin Jimmy and .

john's fathers said Jimmy was born and i'll never forget IT four 4 forty four at the fourth nineteen forty four。

Of course, as long and jm chatting, they were filling each other out at one point before they had met, Johnson won a photo of himself standing on a chair alongside a very tall grandfather clock at his house with the extensible reason of showing all in how large the clock was. Only looked at the clock, then looked at the man standing next to IT. He notice john's red hair, his lack of, and thought he's not bad looking. When finally olen visited john and woodstock, he did so with curiosity.

I was trying to decide if I was attracted to him because i'm gonna honest with you. When I would go down there and visit him a few times, i'd go down there. IT was to take a second look.

though, if they were trying to impress each other, john, and necessarily put in a ton of effort.

I mean, I went over their dressed like this one time. He said.

I only .

address that way to go out to the lawyer.

I mean, only was dressed and that he was wearing jeans and a shirt.

The differences mine were clean and untarred red. He was wearing A T shirt with holes in IT, paint stains all over IT, and the trousers they head on very much the same.

And then, of course, I was down there one evening in his bedroom. Isn't in he? I had a, he had a pile of handkerchiefs there in the floor, and I suspected they were used handkerchiefs.

And surely enough, he had to blow, as knows anyone. I picked up the used, walked up handkerchiefs, blue IT in the throat, back down there in the pile. And I didn't say anything that I thought. I don't do that.

So decade all in pause, but still night after night, he and john found themselves talking for hours on the phone. They're getting close.

We got on, well, he was somebody that I could. There was intimacy there. And i'm going to tell you the definition of intimacy that was given to me by a councillor. Intimacy is the feeling that I can tell another person my thoughts and my behaviors without fear of judgment. If I can tell them the things that i've done, even the things that i'm not proud of, and they're still going to answer the phone and say, hey, and how you get along that's how john would do so, how you get along. So we did have a close friendship that her.

As long and john g got to know each other, they did what you do, talk about past relationships. And there they had a lot in common. They built, built with a lot of secrecy and repression.

He told me that he had a relationship at one point with a an older man. He called him William.

This was john's first relationship, according to olen. He says john was probably twenty one when he met this man he called William, which would have been in the late eighties. John told him he was a hot summer day.

and there was a road crew working on the highway right out there in front of Jones house. And john said he went out there with some water, kind of black, the water boy at a football game. And Williams was one of the guys out. They're working on that road crew and as john said later, William said, the first time I saw you, I knew you're hiding something that you needed help.

help coming out of the closet, if not to the world, then at least to one other person in the world, which is far as only one knows, at that point, john had never done olen also had an older, more experienced, but still not publicly out man, coax him out of the closet and teaching on the rope of gay life as he knew IT. His was a professor at his college, a married professor. John was a tattoo de road, cruel worker in the county.

according to john. I don't think anyone else down there. New William was not obviously gay.

No a feminine minories ms. At all. I also know that he was not very literate. IT was like a sympathetic relationship. He had something to offer to john, something to help john come out of his isolation. But at the same time, if he got letters in the mail that looked official and he couldn't read them, well, john would interpret those things for him. John might write his checks for him.

and an exchange William imparted on john knowledge he had owner first them as lessons about sex. I noticed that women is rather forthright when talking about sex, but he uses somewhat clinical words to do IT. Gay people are homosexual. Being gay is your sexual orientation. People sleeping together .

is sexual activity .

or physical contact, or once in a while, when he lets his hair down a little bit, a sexual interlude. Woman believes john and William were together engaging in sexual activity in other secret for at least two years before William moved away. A two year apprentice that will be provided to john. Did you get the sensitive tournament all about how to be .

a gay person that, no, I didn't get that impression. I didn't get that impression at all. I think he was mostly sex. I don't know that there was any. How do we feel about each other? In a discussion of the relationship, I got the impression that Williams experience with gay live, even though that may be extensive, was mostly centered around sexual connections, not relationships.

and only could relate to that because his experience with his professor was very similar. And nineteen oone admire the man and was grateful to him, but the man was also cheating on his wife. And, instead of teaching on how to have a healthy, open relationship, gave him lessons on how to cruise for sex and parks at and in public bathrooms.

Another thing all in junk could relate on, they both came out to their families and weren't accepted. Allen told his mother when he was twenty six, and after that he says he never mentioned IT again of her own volition. He's about to turn sixty.

He has never brought home a partner, alan says. When john tried to come out to his mother years ago, SHE simply left the room and they never spoke of IT again either. Although alen says he never heard john used the word gay to describe himself, he was used clear and told all, and he was, quote, only sixty to seventy percent that way.

John Allen both kept their sexuality hidden for much of their lives. John, talk to olen and to me about how you had to be very careful about that, where he lived. And IT seems there were only a handful of people in his life.

He was out too, once john had a refrain he used to describe his life in bb. Coley, you just learn to live without. He would say, without sex, love, romance, support, companionship, the touch of another person, a partner you learn to live without.

I'll tell you one of the similarities between me and jahn is that we can be celebrate for long periods of time. And i'll just be an honest with you. I didn't mean to get into all of this, but I don't mind telling you, you will soon be six years.

And when they had tried to find a relationship, IT had often been disappointing by the time john olin made on the singles line microphone. They're both pretty disillusioned IT. They each joined naively, only now realizes in the hopes of actually dating people sitting down, getting to know someone maybe who knows some romance.

Living in birmingham, owen says at least he had places to go on a date, places where he could sit with another man in public and get a coffee or drink. But john had nothing like that. There's not a single bar in all a bit conney. And even if there was, it's hard to imagine two men feeling comfortable or safe going on a date there. So instead, according to olen, john and invite guys from the line to his house, which seemed to set a certain expectation or elsey come up with another round point in bib count y.

John told owen about .

meeting a guy from the line in the parking law of a church of Chris near his house on a weekday afternoon. The guy called john once he was there, and john, fresh ed, up from doing work on the yard, changed his shirt, but john told alone when he got to the church and saw the guy, he found a repulsive looking a chain smoker with tobacco s stained teeth. The guy promptly made some lude comments to john, and is john put in the next thing he knew the man had grabbed and shoved his tongue, john throat, so john pulled away and left and refuse to swallow the whole ride home, terrify that you might catch on disease lurking in the guys saliva until he got ten into his bathroom and scrubs his teeth frantically and gargled and took a bath. Another time, one says.

a john's house. He had one guy come over and and john had invited a man, and they were in the kitchen. Of course, mary Grace, his bedroom is nearby.

And so she's in her room, asleep in john as the gentleman. Would you like a glass of water? And any city sit? sure. So we got him a glass of water. And as he was holding the glass under the fast at running the water, he felt someone come up behind him and start trying to pull his pants down. But john said he gently stopped that, and they ended about on the porch, and the guy had .

to .

one expand that sexual energy. So he masturbated on the front porch, john said he mastermaid into whatever that flower bush was there. And then he left .

so much for romance.

There was one time only knows about when john did fall in love about two years under. They're knowing each other. One says there was a period where he stopped hearing from john as often as usual.

And I called him one night, and IT wasn't long before I could tell that there was something on his mind. And the next thing I knew, he went into tears.

John told all in that he'd recently become friends with a guy in town, and they'd started sweeping with each other and spending a lot of time together. The guy told john, hey, had his ion m for a while. He had some college, and he seemed to have ambition in his career, which john liked.

John was had over heels for the guy. He said the only that he told the guy he loved him, but that the guy didn't seem to reciprocate IT. And now john hadn't seen him in a while and he was leaving a messages saying, I love you, call me some time and not getting any calls back.

He told me what was going on and then he burst into tears and he sobbed, was just few years I was, I was sobbing. IT was in the kitchen. You only, but only had a phone in the kitchen. So he was sobbing in there.

Have you ever seen?

I had never heard him cry, never heard him. The mostly what I heard from john was humor, discontent, omit, turned into humor, a little anger. And I didn't know that he would cry.

I knew I could, but I know he would cry. And I just listened, and I and I could so hard, john, i've been there. I've been there.

Thank you. So if you need to cry, go away and finish, get IT all out. When we were on the phone, there was never any hurry.

There was never any hurry to get off. He was desperate. He said, i'm desperate to have that kind of a relationship, you know, one on one partnership, kind of relationship.

I want IT desperately. He only said that one time. And I heard the word desperate.

More in a minute.

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And we were sitting there, and he had made to commit only.

And I was sitting with each other the first night we've met, and he's telling me all these memories of john and IT takes ours before. I understand for sure whether he and john ever a couple, if they ever actually tried. I don't never ask all out, right, but I don't need to, because IT gradually becomes clear that had never happened for them, and that for all in his relationship with john still feels unresolved.

He's telling me stories, remembering things. And in the course of this, his mind drifts now again to a few tiny moments, way in the past that stayed with him, because in them he, john, seem to acknowledge something that they found very difficult to speak about, like one time when they were riding in the car together through bib county. And john had made some remark about all in that otha was unfair. Anyone told john n as much?

And when I finished, he smiled and he's laugh, he said, he said you and I could never live together, said I just pissed you off too much and I didn't know what to think of that we weren't talking about living together .

or another time on the phone .

when he asked me, as long as we've been talking on the phone, do you still consider yourself searching for a partner and .

only thought for a moment and then said, not really, john. He wasn't really talking .

to anyone else and there was some silence there. And I said, why do you ask I? I don't know.

I don't know. I think he was. I think he was trying to express an interest.

I think it's A I didn't know um I didn't I did. I didn't there over any taper. I didn't do any taper.

I'm trying to figure how you feel about this. Like is this something that you feel is a this opportunity?

I'm not really sure I think we had talked so much and I wasn't comfortable enough with what I was feeling. I could identify IT because .

what was so.

There were certain things that I was that I found IT hard to get past some of his profanity and some of his anger. I was somewhat afraid of his anger, even though I was wondering what that would be like. That wasn't certain that IT was really a good place for me to be. Does does that make .

sense only? And john n could get on each other other's nerves if you were feeling sensitive or emotional. John was not necessarily the greatest guy talk to and open felt he could sometimes just be thoughtless or mean. They once had a huge fight that was actually over all ends. Favorite movie.

I got very angry with him when the movie broke back mountain. k.

Mount broke back mountain, of course, with jake, john hall and heath leger playing two cowboys who fall in love one summer on a mountain in one thousand, nine and sixties while owing. When I say this is only his favorite ite movie, he loved this movie. I've noticed during our conversation that a couple times only dates, life events has been before or after this movie is release.

IT was two thousand and five, because IT would have been before broke back. Mountain came out .

and he knows a ton about IT.

The movie was filmed. They wrapped up shooting in August two thousand and four, wasn't released until december of two thousand and five. So we've got a year to have post production only.

How many times have you seen this movie?

I would venture to say probably fifty more times. When I first came out, I couldn't get enough, but I watched IT about every day.

This movie meant so much to all. In his favorite part is the first forty five minutes when the cowboys are falling in love alone together and broke back mountain without the world. There are a judge, or threaten, or intrude to see a love story about two men like that, and moved them after he saw the movie. The first time he purchased a fifty two inch TV specifically so he could have a Better repeat viewing experience in his home, he asked a local cinema to present a special screening of the film. Once that left fears, he devoured the short story the movie is based on and poured over all the behind the .

scenes features. And I got so excited about IT, I got on the phone. I was telling john about IT about the movie, and he was listening and listening, and he wasn't saying very much.

And then he started talking and telling me I was making two big of an issue out of this. You're getting too much into IT. And one thing i'd really dislike is when I get excited about something I important, i'm trying to make point discounted. So I got really irri got off. I think I went outside.

I know what I did. He went to his backyard and pounded the ground to let out his frustration with john olen saw parts of himself in bolt movies, characters he ledges, characters, fear of the world, knowing he was gay, but also the way jack Jones halls character could feel so hurt by that fear. And he really thought john would get a lot from IT too.

I wanted him to relate to that. I wanted him to relate to IT. And he didn't at first. But then over time, we talked again, and I talked about IT more, and I talked about IT more, and then he began to be interested in hearing more a bit. So I said, what is your address?

Johnson? Have a TV, or go to the movies. So all in ordered in a copy of the original short story I did.

I worked a copy, and I had IT sent to john. That was the second time I heard john cry because he read IT. He read broke back mountain.

He read about jack twist and in stone mar there are secret rests after falling for each other on the mountain with their wives and children at home and how, despite jacks pleased to annis to just get a ranch with them and have a real relationship, never do that because innocent sist, i'm stuck with what I got, caught my own loop, can't get out of IT and who go on like that for years. Jack, desperate to regard the loop, and n is too afraid until one day nus sends jack a postcard and IT comes back with a stamp, saying the least.

we were on the phone and he was crying about IT. He had read IT. And after that he always referred to IT as the grief manual. He said, I took down the grief manual and read IT again tonight.

And so this is what all in in john relationship eventually settled into. They were confident and close friends supporting each other through this experience. They were both living of being middle aged and gay and alabama and alone. John giving once in a while hence that maybe he wanted the relationship to be something more.

I want to ask you a question about me. Please hardly take his life in what other circumstances .

I tell me when how jane IT, he had assumed, based on conversations with john, that IT was a gun shut to the head.

He drinks sienite.

He drinks sonet OK.

yeah. Well, that surprising after you sign IDE.

I'm sorry, poor. No, that's alright. That's alright. That's alright.

I was thinking there and this I just, I need to know and i'll work through this. This is poor john. john?

Yeah.

john.

What LED to john ole's not speaking during the last couple years of jon's life was a growing preoccupation with several subjects that owen says john would not stop renting to him about.

I heard a lot about climate change.

also the economy. Women was a good friend. He would listen to john and actually engage with them on these topics.

John would would refer to certain books a lot, and only actually went on to read several of them going dark and walking away from empire by gym's person and l gorse book, an inconvenient truth. He told john, I believe in climate change. I think it's an issue.

I try to do my part. I switched over the energy saving light bubs. I don't know what else we can do besides have everybody do their part.

Then there was mostly shit down that was mostly hit.

and these high rates bothered on the most, because women felt, compared to climate change in oil, in the economy. This was something john could actually do something about. John go on and on about the miseries of shit town, and only would tell them again and again, if it's really that bad, you can leave.

You have the means. You can leave. And john say, I know I want to leave. And then the next time on the phone from his kitchen, he'd hauling about shit town again.

I just couldn't hear anymore, but I couldn't hear shit town, shit town. I could not hear anymore. If you're not going, if if, if you don't like IT, leave IT. You can leave IT. You can leave IT.

After one such conversation in september two thousand and thirteen, having heard IT for the empty time.

only hung up the phone and he sent me an email within a couple of days that was extremely profit.

John had witnessed incident at the Green pung grow sy nearest house that had set him off. All thinks that had something to do with how a father had disciplined his Young son there in public. But one says john also made some indirect jabs at things own had expressed in their previous conversation.

IT wasn't a humorous message. He says he was angry and only felt at the end of his rope. So he responded and wrote simply, john, please don't send me any more of these profile emails. And john replied with another propane email back.

IT was not as thing as the first one, but IT sounded like, sounded like an ending. Relationships, friendships come to an end. And I thought, well, maybe this once run its course. So I took a few deep breaths and I thought, i'm GTA send him one back, but mind's gonna honest.

So I sent him any email back.

I linked the one. I told him everything that i'd ever appreciated in him as a friend. I thanked for being a friend, but I didn't put him into, and I just said, then I said, but I just simply cannot hear anymore of these complaints, particularly about bib county. So I sent IT back to him, and this is the email I G got back. IT was much, much calmer.

And he said.

destiny, he said, I always .

got the .

impression that you thought that I was. Crude, vulgar and beneath you. And that is why I knew that you and I could never be an item. But call me sometime. I never called him again.

Olen wasn't the only one who went through this with john, but I learned talking to lots of john friends. Is that what they say? John had been a tormented person for as long as they knew him. Climate change and the collapse of society and shit town only became fixation for him in more recent years.

One clock collector who'd been close friends with john from more than two decades, who lives in aba not far away and used to spend entire nights hanging out with john as he worked in the shop, told me he got to the point where he just could not talk about climate change and the dissipation of cheap energy anymore. He said he realized that john's negativity was contagious, and he's leave. They are feeling depressed himself. So he had to begin cking himself up for their visits, reassuring himself that he wasn't going to come away in a gloomy mood and that everything was okay until he just slowly started spending less time with john, going from talking to him two or three times a week to once a week to a couple times a month, to having not talk to john for several months before he died and not having visited him .

in about a year.

As best I can tell, this retreat by oin and some of the other people who were close to john started happening in the last few years before he died, which also happens to be right around the time. John wrote email to a radio show saying john bee MC lamor was in ship town, alabama. IT sounds like the john I knew was different than the one his friends had down for years. I got to know john IT seems at the beginning of the end, just as he was driving some of the closest people in his life like olen away, which ended up believing him even more isolated there in shit down.

Olen not calling john after that final email exchange. He says he wasn't thinking of that as i'm never gonna all john again. He just needed a break.

And then in the midst of that break, his time with john ran out. And now he doesn't exactly regret that they never got together. But it's hard sometimes not to wonder what I would have been like if some days had gone differently. And we said, like this one, Allen says, about ten years ago, during a short time when john was running a small nursery and wood stuck and all in had ordered some as allies and met john in the parking lot of a birmingham doctor's office to pick them up and SAT with them there in the front of this truck, talking, cracking jokes about the dating line they'd met on the island is sitting in the sun. Well, john's mother had an appointment inside john, waiting for the .

doctor to call the men. And why he put on a clean navy blue shirt, which I thought really, and step read hair, and he was wearing a pair of pants. I don't know if they were gene made out of dim gene material, but they hugged the top his size and search in his billion.

I just remember I just wanted lean over there and do some stuff because i'm sitting there in a truck with john. Be ma more outside of doctors off is picking up my sales and not exactly what I wanted to do. I'm exactly what I wanted to do.

I wanted to reach over there. I wanted to pull his shirt up, expose his belly and just kiss all over peace belly around that red hair just that extent. And I wanted to do IT slowly, essential sly.

That's what I wanted to do and see what he thought about IT. He's doing nothing but sitting there under the steering wheel of a everyone fifty pickup truck. But IT was just the whole ora IT was the hair, the skin, the intelligence, the joy was in a jolly mood that day.

Yeah, instead of doing anything.

I kept those feelings to myself. I think now if I could go back, if I could get a time machine and go back there in relieve that moment, I would, at this, speak up until him what I was thinking. I'd probably look over.

So john, I know how you're gonna feel about this, but I really wanna kissing you right now. There, I put that out there. That's what I want.

F one fifty pickup truck, love dena hugging on your size, love a zero, love doctors parking lot, love kissing on your belly and all around your red hair. Love too bad that and actually happen because that's something you could write a country song about.

The summer is here, at least the sky is overcast and no one brings a rose for amy. SHE watches her flowers, girl of, and go to give each other roses from A, B.

Roses are fading now. SHE keeps her pride somehow that protecting from in town is produced by Julie snider and nee with editing from iraq lass saracenic and .

wheel drumming widdy danger fields as our digital editor starting kind is a story consult factory cking in research by then fAilin saffo enders are director of Operations liar Smith mixes the show mat tennis or technical director VS town staff includes Emily conn else bergson july wii kr and member henderson music for the show is composed by Daniel heart tay powered a lot of negro and that Mickey music supervision by daming grave.

Our website s town podcast to toward special links to valery seizure, Anthony y. Roman yan byo k. Men and Kitty fuck and Kevin broader rec at the lippin group as town .

is production of cereal and this american life. And as the years go by, SHE will go on and die.

那 完了 法国。