The Little Mermaid?

Brendan Lai-wing Leung’s Deep Dark Secret…….

“The Little Mermaid”....his favorite Disney movie. I kid you not, I have his Little Mermaid Necklace, towel and washcloth to prove it. (Which his mum bought him by-the-way).

Working at McHenry Library, UCSC has tons of perks. One of them is that we’ve got the biggest collection of media items of all the UC’s. 10,000 DVDs to name just a few. I worked a couple of hours a day in the Film & Music Department and would peruse the collection on Fridays to see what Brendan and I might watch for our Saturday movie nights. We have quite a lot of remastered Disney movies. Brendan and I watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mary Poppins, the Sword in the Stone, Fantasia, & of course the Little Mermaid. I know I’m leaving a couple of Disney movies out that I can’t remember at this moment in time.

Anyway, the reason I’m mentioning this is that last night I had a dream about Brendan. In the dream he is sitting on Uncle Julio's black leather couch (that was passed down to him....you all the know the one). In the dream, he’s staring up at his big screen TV absolutely absorbed in the Little Mermaid movie. Meanwhile I’m putting antibiotic ointment on the dozens of scrapes, cuts and gashes he has on his body from his recent skateboard outing with friend Jason M. By the way; I alway carried antibiotic ointment on me. Brendan did not tend to his own injuries. He was a tough guy after all. He didn’t need antibiotic ointment. That would mean he was “....some kind of Sally!” So I would “trick” him by telling him that he would have to strip down to his boxers so that I could work on his knee. While he was distracted by some show he was watching I would apply antibiotic ointment to all his gaping wounds and “road rash” and he wouldn’t even notice.

That’s what I’m doing in this particular dream….I know it sounds like I was some kind of crazy codependent when it came to Brendan. Like I said in previous posts; there was some kind of driving force behind the loving care that I gave Brendan; something which I can’t explain. Especially since I hadn’t been that way with any other guy I dated. Whether or not you want to pathologize my love for Brendan doesn’t really matter at this point. I know that, now that he is gone, you are all deeply grateful for my loyal, committed, attentive, nurturing, over-the-top, ridiculous (as he would say) Brendan Love.