So I was just sitting on a stool. In the kitchen. And thinking about my friend, Jo, whose girlfriend is away at a camp. I then considered her girlfriend, and how fond they are of one another. And I recalled that Jo said her friend, Bunny, had not been fond at all of the girlfriend. And I wondered if Bunny had not liked her because she was suprised to learn that Jo was dating another woman. Apparently, so I was told, the first time Bunny had learned of this was when she called Jo to plan her next visit, and Jo said something offhand about her girlfriend, Judith. Bunny claims to have taken it all in stride. However, I questioned whether she really had taken it in stride, and if, actually, she was uncomfortable. I then thought it was nice of Bunny to pretend to be comfortable, and to support Jo. This caused me to muse about the whole process of “coming out”, and why it still seemed like a big deal, and something that our straight friends have to be okay with and support. For some reason this reminded me of my old friend Allie, from college, who made a tremendous show of being supportive and constantly referred to all of her gay friends. I always thought she was friends with me simply because I was gay. However, I then remembered the evening at my apartment when I told her for the first time, and how she’d actually been upset because she had had some feelings for me, and hoped that they were returned. This then made me think about how weird that night had been, and emotional, and how it had all started off at her sorrority house, when she and I stole the big urn on the front porch that they used as an ashtray. And then I forgot all about Allie, because I was suddenly reminded of that lovely bronze urn, and how one night, after a long fight with an ex-boyfriend, I had stared at the cigarette butts in the ashtray and thought about how they kind of looked like gravestones. This to me was an interesting image, and I resolved to go and write it down so I wouldn’t forget it and could later harvest it for a possible poem.