Photo courtesy Sarah
Someone I know in North Carolina was murdered recently. It’s a little disturbing to me for two reasons. The first stems from the fact that the victim was, frankly, not someone that I particularly liked. Thus, I’m not sure exactly which emotion is required at this point. The other is that this is the second time in as many years that a violent death has hit my circle of friends in Greensboro.
The newspapers aren’t mentioning it (yet) but it’s pretty apparent that either sex, drugs, or both were major factors. Sex and drugs go hand in hand for lots of my fellow sodomites in the south (and everywhere else). The “restless rednecks” stereotype is more apt than many would care to admit.
I worry about a lot of my friends back home, for whom obliterating reality seems to have become the only way of coping with life. The image becomes even sharper as most of the new friends I make have (like me) abandoned the whole recreational drug scene years ago, looking on it as a pastime more suited to high school and college than to everyday adult life.
It disturbs me when I go home and see friends for whom nothing ever really changes, except the current venue for partying or the currently fashionable party favors.
Granted, I don’t even smoke pot, I rarely drink more than a beer or two anymore, and sex has become (at best) a peripheral interest for me lately. I don’t think this makes me a superior human being. I’m not interested in being a crusader. I realize that I haven’t made such a tremendous success of my life either.
But I do worry. Especially when people start getting brutally murdered for no apparent reason other than for bringing home the wrong boy…