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I met James Sears (Jim) a couple of months ago here in Chicago at Little Jim's, and we spent an evening together. He is married, and lives with his family out in Iowa in a small town. He comes to Chicago every once in a while to visit some friends of his and go out to the gay bars. He says he has known that he was gay all his life, but that the pressure of family and friends in his small hometown made him get married and start a family. His wife, he says, doesn't suspect his inclinations, but I have no idea. He was fun to be with that one night, and in fact returned to Chicago one more time when we got together. He has written a number of times; his letters are entertaining but a little hard to follow grammatically. The three pictures below were enclosed in the one I just received.

Seeing these pictures made me wonder who was taking them. Although they are not overtly gay, it is odd to take a picture of someone who is so obviously posing for the camera. Usually, family pictures are taken with some activity going on. I wish that there had been at least one picture of him looking directly into the camera; I think he's better looking than the pictures. All in all he was a pretty nice guy, but not someone I could settle down with.

NOTE:
Writing this in 2017, I have more news about Jim. In 2004, I received a very surprising telephone call. It turned out to be from Jim, although even when he told me his name, I couldn't place it right away. He had done some Internet sleuthing and had tracked me down via my website.

Jim was now divorced and the two kids he told me he had were all grown. He told me he was going to be in Dallas for an antique car show, and wanted to know if we could get together to catch up. We made plans to meet at his hotel for breakfast on Monday morning, and we did just that.

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In 20 years, Jim had changed quite a bit (as have we all), but I could still see the much younger guy that I knew from Chicago underneath his gray (almost white) hair and beard. We talked for a long time; both of us had changed a lot and experienced a lot since we'd met back then. I found out, for example, that James certainly had the time and resources to track me down. He had, apparently, won a major prize in the Iowa lottery about four years earlier, and it was enough to enable him to stop working very much and indulge his interest in antique automobiles.

It was quite a surprise and a very pleasant visit. Before I left the hotel downtown, I also took a short movie of James and one of his friends in the antique car association that was sponsoring the meeting at the Adams Mark- more to record what James looked and sounded like than for any other reason. You can watch that movie with the player at right.

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