I wish I could say that Roel is still a good friend of mine. That is not the case. A few years after we became friends, Suzan called me into her salon when I entered the business.
“Just sit down for a moment, Luc,” she told me.
Sometimes you can immediately hear from someone's voice that something is wrong. I sat down with a terrible feeling of unease.
“Roel has passed away.”
The world stops at such a moment. Deep sadness, incomprehensibility – Roel had to go far too soon. He died doing what he loved: riding motorcycles. An accident. A meaningless, terrible one
accident. I cried like a child in Jeanneke's drawing room. After Roel's funeral again, at home, at the kitchen table, comforted by mom. Roel's family, his parents, his brother and sister, his friends – everyone suf-fered. A gaping grief wound. I continued to keep in close contact with Roel's family. Sharing love and con-viviality together kept Roel's memory alive, as if he were still sitting next to us, shoulder to shoulder. I was also making another group of friends: in the gay community. In the fantastic cafes and clubs that were es-pecially for gays was founded, there the “gay culture” could (and can!) flourish without any shame and in all fun and openness. Les Amis discotheque in Hasselt was such a specific gay club
I went out there a lot. There was also To be or not to be, a nice pub where I loved going and where every-one openly knew me as gay. Gerda and her husband were fantastic people. They completely accepted me for who I was. At the end of the month you had a bill for all your drinks for that month. I always paid it properly. It was a cozy café where I felt completely at home and where I could completely be myself. It sometimes happened that I went for a last drink at Gerda's with a crush from Les Amis - before we went home together or not.
“Where do you find all those handsome men?” Gerda sometimes asked me.
“Just open your eyes!”
Les Amis was a place for play and seduction. One evening I saw a group of three come in – a girl and two boys. One of the boys had a mustache, I quickly spotted him - apparently he did too, he looked back so often - and wow, what beautiful eyes he had. I went back to my seat to take a breather from dancing – and down he came, the handsome boy with the moustache.
“Would you like to drink something from me?”
The absolute classic – but that's why it's a classic: it's a good one. I really wanted to have a drink from him - I wasn't well off at all, but I didn't want to take advantage of him either.
“I don't have much money to give you back.”
“That's not why you treat yourself, is it” –
and we were off. Tim turned out to be this heartbreaker. Once we got past the general small talk, we found real connection number one: Diana Ross was both of our favorite singers. How lovely. We danced away together.
“How do you get home?” he asked.
“With my thumb,” I said. He laughed – did I really mean that?
“May I drop you off at home later?”
-oh wow, Tim, you could do much more –but I didn't tell him that!
“Sure, you can take me home... But I don't plan on getting into the suitcase with you right away hear!"
“No, no, I'm a gentleman,” he replied – and he started fiddling with my sweater.
“Awel!”, I playfully slapped his hands down. “Is that what a gentleman does?”
We laughed, we danced, we played this wonderful game together. Finally we went to Gerda. We walked in and I noticed we were getting a lot of looks.
Gerda stretched forward over the bar and whispered in my ear: “Your arrival had already been an-nounced.” Hmm, oh well, the people going out had spotted us.
“You naughty little thing!”, I teased her back.
The evening only became even more fun at Gerda's. Tim's companions came too, the girl and the other guy, and we had fun. I may not have been drinking - I wasn't really sober, with all those fluttering butter-flies in my body. It was getting quite late.
“I don't think your parents will be waiting for you in Peer?” Tim asked.
“More like a rolling pin!”
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