Meeting James

Time to write something about James. So how did I meet James, who is he and what is he?
I met him at the first pool party in my live. The bear community in Phoenix has a circuit of pool parties, and I understood that Tommy's party is traditionally the first of the season. Tommy is a very sweet Southern gentleman, who had no problems with the fact that Kirk, Harry and Brian brought me to the party.
Since we brought also two different kinds of cocktails and garden chairs, we were the first to arrive. There was a lot of delicious food and drinks at the party and Tommy had that wonderful house with a lovely garden and a pool.
Tommy knows a lot of interesting people. I was talking to a couple of guys, that either I introduced myself to or was introduced to by Kirk: “Meet my friend Jörg from The Netherlands, Amsterdam, you know...” Mostly the other would say then: “Nice to meet you Jerk ... oh I love Scandinavia.” (From former visits I learned from Kirk that it was useless to tell them that I do not live in Amsterdam. “The Netherlands, wherever that might be is Amsterdam”.) Of course many guys have been to Amsterdam or were at least curious about that strange country where everything goes... So starting some chitchat is very easy after that information. I was really having a good time. When I wanted some rest at some point I was just floating in the pool and observed the crowd.
At some point we were in the phase of handing out jello-shots and jumping in the pool to annoy anybody who was in the pool with a big splash. At some point James came jumping into the pool and he came over to Kirk and me. I thought that he was a hot guy, but that he was with a lover, a guy who came over to talk to him. Well, anyway we ended up chatting with each other in a corner of the pool. Kirk had made his way back to the hot tub by then and finally it was only James and me. He told me that he would love to live some time in Europe and that he had thought about going to Belgium with his company. But most important of course was that we had a click right there and then.
We ended up spending the evening and the night together after he had promised to bring me back to Kirk's house the next morning. And he did. :-)
I was supposed to see him again if he was able to make it workwise the next evening at Charlie's (a famous gay bar with an outside patio in Phoenix). Needless to say that he showed up and that we spent an other evening and night together.
The next day I was supposed to leave Phoenix and visit the Organ Pipe Cactus National Park. Before I could hit the highway he told me that he had called in sick from work and how I would feel about going together and come back to Phoenix in the evening. So that's exactly what we did. Traveling together was most enjoyable, since we could make fun about all the agencies selling Mexican insurances as we came close to the border. Or what to think about our preparation for the park? James had read in the guidebook I had bought at Borders, that we could take the big loop, and that it would bring us to Quitobaquito Spring, a historic natural water hole that attracts more then 260 species of birds. We decided to see them all and count them. So how big was our disappointment when the Park Ranger (a hispanic boy of hardly 18 y.o.) told us that the big loop was closed because of “border issues”. So when James asked him what that would be, he kept repeating the those words: “Border issues, you know.” He recommended the small loop combined with a hike. And his solution for my disappointment for not seeing the lake was, that they had a pond (25 liters at the most) outside the Visitor Center. James' answer to this was only: “But will we be able to see more then 260 species of bird there as well?”. Well we had a great time in the park anyway. We were hiking to a hill and it was very nice out there. No snakes, no scorpions and no gila monsters.
The next day James told me that he still was not feeling very well and suggested that we'd go to Jerome, an old mining town in the North of the state. Of course that was only postponing the day of our goodbye. On Wednesday morning I left Phoenix to start my big tour.