Lawrence Goodbear

I’ve had a secret lover for over forty years. I call him a lover for want of a better word.

His name is Lawrence Goodbear and I’ve never even met him.

Before my father passed away, we often thumbed through the pages of his World War II album. I met my secret love as I browsed the photographs Daddy had taken while stationed in Okinawa. Smiling faces of happy-go-lucky soldiers in all their black and white glory. So happy-go-lucky, in fact, you’d never know they were there on big business—-war. Among these photos was a gorgeous, well-built Adonis named Warren. Then there was a handsome boy with a winning smile named Ortega. And then, all alone, gazing up at me from a distant world….Lawrence Goodbear.

There he stood with a slight, knowing grin, his leg jauntily propped on the ruins of an old concrete set of steps. One dark hand draped over the concrete and the other hand rested on a slender hip. A ring flashed in the sun on his left hand—one of those forged metal rings the fellows used to make in high school shop class. You know the ones. All the guys wore them.

Daddy knew little about Lawrence’s personal life, only remembered him to be American Indian and thought he might have hailed from Oklahoma. All I know is that, the second I locked on his photo, he immediately became my World War II Valentino with his ethereal features and ravens hair. So lithe, yet with such subtle power in those lissome limbs.

Although his face was a portrait of serenity and gentility, Daddy said Lawrence couldn’t hold his booze very well and became really rowdy when he drank. My Oklahoman Don Juan often grabbed the diminutive Japanese cooks around their necks with a good-natured grip, thumping them on the tops of their heads with his knuckles. As Daddy told this, I pictured it so vividly. I’d already fallen in love with his dark, gentle beauty but the vision of his rambunctious shenanigans just made my “crush” deeper.

That photograph of Lawrence Goodbear is over sixty years old. Yet as those soft dark eyes stare up from the sepia depths, he’s NOW, real. He may be long passed. He may still be among us. Somewhere. I don’t know. If he is still living, he’s more than likely no longer the supple, young Michelangelo’s David from the photo. That’s the beauty of photographs, though. For me, he still is the young, handsome youth captured on a sunny day in Okinawa, and always will be.

Like I said, the moment I saw the photo, I fell in love with him. For me, he’s an enigma that I’d give anything to have known, to have been around when the photo was taken, to have heard his voice, to see how tall he really was, known if his skin was as soft as it looked, if his hair was as thick as it seemed. Was there some girl’s initials engraved on his ring? Did he have a girlfriend? Or was he married?

So, if he’s still out there somewhere, if time has claimed its right to his youth, I’m still crazy about him. If he’s gone on to a final resting place, I’m still crazy about him. My secret love. Lawrence Goodbear.