Chapter 24
"It hit me too."
I think those four words threw me harder than Drew's story had. They
didn't say anything
clearly. But of all the possible things Brian could have written to me,
of all the possible things I feared he'd say--along with the
possibility that he wouldn't reply at all--those four words were beyond
all my hopes.
Still, I didn't know how to respond to his e-mail, so at first I didn't.
Of
course, the words themselves were ambiguous. Even given that I had
something of an understanding of Brian from back in the day, and
remembered how he'd seemed to think of me when we were best friends, it
still wasn't completely possible to figure out what he was trying to
tell me.
But it was enough. He clearly wasn't trying to tell me, "Go away." And
he clearly felt at least a version of the sledgehammer effect
I'd experienced reading Drew's story.
That was enough for now. I'd figure out the next step eventually.
* * * * * * * * *
I got an e-mail from Drew the next week. He mentioned that he
was getting too many e-mails about Rip Current
to answer them all individually, so he was starting a Yahoo!
group. Through the group, he could let readers know when a
new chapter
was coming out, and there would be a forum where they could "talk" to
him and to each other. His e-mails had showed him that people's
individual journeys were incredibly varied, but he'd also seen that
there were things those journeys had in common. He thought the group
might be a good experience in bringing his readers together with each
other. He gave me the URL and invited me to join.
I'd never gone
near a Yahoo! group of any kind, so I had no idea what to expect. I was
intrigued, though. It had never occurred to me that I might not be the
only reader who'd had his head messed up by Rip Current.
I clicked on his hyperlink and signed up as a member of "Drew's
Domain," as he called it.
* * * * * * * * *
The conversation there was amazing; the group
was amazing. It was an odd experience for me, unlike any I'd had
before. Before I knew it, I was connecting with a bunch of incredibly
intelligent strangers, strangers who talked about things I just didn't
talk about in my regular life. It struck me that it would feel great to
get some of that stuff off my chest. I also realized that I wouldn't
have to look any of these people in the eye, and because of that, I'd
be able to keep it primarily intellectual rather than emotional. I
couldn't have dealt with any of it on an emotional level; I thought it
might feel safe, though, to talk about things I needed to get off my
chest if I could view it as some sort of academic exercise.
Personalities
began to emerge from the posts. The first and most obvious was Drew's.
As the moderator, he was the most frequent poster, and anyway, the
whole group sort of came together around his story, so it figures that
he'd be the central player. What intrigued me about him, though, was
that he was interested in so many things, and seemed to be able to say
something worthwhile about all of them. As a result, he seemed to
attract members who liked doing the same kind of thing. I'd never been
a member of a Yahoo! group before, but I wondered if there were groups
that had as many smart people as this one appeared to.
Many of the guys were married; some of
those were gay; a couple were even straight; a good
number were
bisexual. That surprised me--were there actually that many people whose
sexuality lay in that cloudy area between gay and straight? Some
had
managed to work out reasonable resolutions for themselves; some were
still troubled, hiding from the world, from their spouses; some had
good marriages, some had bad. Some weren't married. A good number of
Drew's members were merely "lurking," along for the ride. But the ones
who participated in the discussions all had incredibly insightful
things to say about their situations; they all had things to say that I
needed to hear.
There was a guy from Texas named Duane, a
wisecracking goofball. Married and gay and closeted, he had a Barbra
Streisand fetish and a corny way of throwing out oddball Yiddish
expressions just for the hell of it. I thought that was weird, because
his background was Irish. He seemed to have appointed himself the
group's resident comedian. His dumb sense of humor annoyed me
sometimes, but his personality was strangely endearing.
Late-thirtysomething, he was a white-collar professional from a Houston
suburb, and he seemed to be struggling to figure out who he was and how
to make his way through life as a married gay man. He talked like a
life-of-the-party guy, but I could see the pain leaking through the
wisecracks. Man; the things we do to ourselves. The things the world
does to us.
There
was Tony; he was a married guy with a couple of decades on me. He lived
in the UK and was also a successful businessman. Tony was smart and
opinionated. He was deeply wounded, too, I could tell; but he had a
compassionate heart, maybe because he was deeply wounded; who
knows? And he had this astounding way of just dumping things out there
on the table that I'd have died before I admitted if I'd been in his
shoes. He openly discussed his vulnerabilities, his pains, his
ambivalences, the stupid things he'd done in his life, the utterly
savage things that had been done to him in his youth, his feelings of
alienation from other people who shared his gender, conflicts with his
wife...name it, and Tony was willing to talk about it. It was somehow
vastly freeing to experience someone like that. I wondered how it must
feel to be able to do that. I couldn't imagine. But I found it
attractive. As time went by, we became pretty good e-friends, but at
this point I was just enjoying reading his posts.
There was a
member from Indiana named Tom who taught Classical Studies at a small
liberal arts college. He was one of the older guys there, but I think I
came to cherish his e-friendship above most of the rest. That was odd,
in a way, because he didn't post as much as some, but every time he
did, his words radiated intelligence, patience, and compassion. Long
before I ever had the guts to email him, it was his posts more than any
of the others that kept me coming back. I was in awe of him.
Zach
was a member I didn't know well at first, but he became very important
to me. Farther down the line, I discovered that he had a past and a
family that were both far too much like mine, and he understood as no
one else could the ways in which that made a person crazy. As time went
by, his ability to understand that part of me would become critically
important to me. But at this stage I wasn't aware of any of that yet.
These
guys, and many others, came together to form an alternate universe for
me. Drew's Domain became an escape from my "offline" difficulties and a
place where I could open up some, in the company people who understood
a little.
* * * * * * * * *
Things weren't getting any better in
my real-world entanglements, though. Neal was ever-present, and his
behavior was beginning to get more bizarre and unpredictable. I was
starting to get scared for Chris's safety, and Jonah's, and mine.
And
then there was Jonah. He was screwing around with anyone he could, and
everyone knew it, and I knew they knew it. I could navigate this as
long as we could all pretend, as long as it didn't become a topic of
conversation in my presence; one day, though, Jonah's master's advisor
came into my office.
"Sam," he said as he poked his head through my doorway, "got a minute?"
"Sure, Doug," I said. "Have a seat. What's up?"
Doug
took a chair. Blushing a little, his eyes shifted nervously from mine,
to random spots around the room, to the floor, and back to me, before
he said, "I need to tell you some things about Jonah."
I sighed. So much for floating down Denial. Here it comes, I
thought, as a flood of sadness washed through me.
"I don't know how to say this, but it's become a talking point around
here, and I..."
"You didn't want me to be the last to know," I said.
His eyes widened. "You sound like you know what I'm gonna say."
I sighed again. "I guess I won't know for certain until you say what it
is you're going to say. So go ahead and say it."
He shifted in his chair and cracked his knuckles. "I know Jonah is...important
in your life." He frowned, and said, "Damn. That sounds so totally
lame. I know what you are...uh, what you've been...to each
other."
He took a deep breath and said, "I guess you're aware that he's...well,
that he's cheating on you, right?"
I nodded, staring down at my desk.
"It's bad, Sam," he said. "It's really
bad. I don't know what's up. But it's not like he's 'seeing someone
else.' He's...well, shit, man, he's...he's having sex with just about
anyone he can find to have sex with. Man or woman, doesn't matter. And
there are a lot of people here really mad at him for doing that to you,
but none of us have had the balls to tell you; you know, we didn't
wanna get involved, and it's not our business, and maybe you already
knew, and yada yada yada. But I always felt, what if you didn't
know? What if Jonah was playing you? What kind of friend
would I be if I didn't say something?
"And anyway," he began, looking more uncomfortable than ever, "It's not
just..."
"It has professional implications, all the talk," I interrupted.
"Disrupting the academic environment with scandal."
"Yeah," he mumbled, staring at his knees.
I
listened to my desk clock tick away fifteen seconds. Finally I summoned
my courage, looked at him and said, "I already knew it, Doug. I've been
trying to ignore it. You took a chance coming in here, and I appreciate
it. You're a good friend."
"I just kept thinking about how I'd feel if it were me," he said. "I'd
hate it, and I'd hate my friends for not telling me."
"Exactly,"
I said. "You don't have to say anything more about this. I was on the
verge of taking care of it anyway. Maybe it was good you came in here
to give me the final shove."
He smiled weakly. "I don't know what's up, Sam, but no one deserves to
be played like that."
"It's not all him," I said. "I had my part in creating this."
He flashed me a look of indignation. "I don't think so. What, you're
fooling around too?"
"No, I'd never do that. But..."
"That's my point," he said.
"It's
more complicated than that," I said at about the time I realized I was
trying to defend Jonah for breaking his covenant with me. "Still," I
backpedaled, "You're right. And that's why I'm going to deal with it."
I stood up; reflexively, he did the same.
"I hope I haven't made things worse," he said, as I walked him to the
door.
"No," I replied. "If anything, you forced my hand. That's a good thing."
"Okay," he said. "I like Jonah just fine, you know. And he's a decent
grad student. But something's up with him."
"You're
right," I said. "Don't let this be your problem. You don't have to
dislike him to be loyal to me. I don't dislike him, and I've known
about this for a while."
I sat back down. That was the most
embarrassing conversation I'd had in my entire life. And Jonah had been
responsible for it. Now I was angry. This had gone far enough.
* * * * * * * * *
When I got home, after I'd put Chris
to bed, I logged on to Drew's Domain. If I was hoping to escape
melodrama by retreating to my online world, however, I soon found out
that hope was going to be frustrated. There were soap operas brewing
there, in the posts and in the back-chatter, and I got sucked in,
primarily through Tony.
Tony was the first guy from the group
besides Drew that I'd actually had the courage to e-mail, and that was
only because I was concerned that I might have offended him.
It
came about like this: He'd been sharing freely with the group about
some of his personal difficulties, and a member from Texas had been
pretty pointed--though not mean--in his reply to Tony. As I read
through this particular thread and thought back on some of Tony's other
threads, it seemed to me that sometimes he created his own difficulties
by doing things that were so manifestly dumb it was hard to believe he
was as smart as he was. I wanted to soften what the guy from Texas had
said, so I added my own two cents' worth to the discussion. Tony added
a public reply to my post, beginning by saying, "Well, since you
decided to air this in public, I'll reply here too." That irked me a
little; he was the one who'd aired the thing in public, but whatever. I
was a little confused, though; had I said too much? I didn't know
all
the "rules" for these online groups, and I was worried that I might
have been inappropriate in my reply to him. So I sent him an e-mail
saying I was sorry if I had overstepped my bounds.
He replied
that I hadn't, and the next thing I knew, we'd struck up an extended
e-mail conversation and a pretty significant e-friendship. I offered to
listen if he needed to vent; I'm not entirely certain why, because I'm
usually ridiculously shy. I think I just needed to connect with someone
so desperately, someone not in the middle of the mess that was my life.
And it's always been much easier for me to be the listener than the one
doing the talking. That made the match pretty much perfect; Tony didn't
have much trouble talking about his problems.
However, at some
point, the question of why I was in the group came up between us. I was
uncomfortable saying much, but Tony had been so open and forthright
with me, I felt I owed it to him at least to make the effort to
explain. I gave him the brief and heavily-edited version, telling him
that I had had a friendship very much like the one Drew had described
in Rip Current, and mentioning that things had gone awry with
that friendship. As the weeks went by, Tony and I talked a lot
about
me and Brian, in e-mails and then later via instant message chats. I
told Tony that I'd had contact with Brian over the years after high
school, particularly at important points in my life and his. I also
mentioned that I'd e-mailed Brian recently and that he'd sent a short
reply. But somehow Tony got it in his head that Brian and I were
completely out of touch, and he began to urge me to re-connect. It was
a little frustrating to me that Tony was taking what I gave him and
making his own version of my story in his head, but I valued his
e-friendship nonetheless; before we'd connected I'd had far too much
time on my hands to brood about the mess my life had become: Jonah was
never home and Chris always conked out early, meaning that I had a lot
of time alone during which I didn't need to be sitting around
stewing. All the paper-grading on the planet couldn't have filled
those
hours, so my friendship with Tony filled a void.
* * * * * * * * *
A couple of nights after Doug had come
to me with his "news" about Jonah, I decided it was time for us to face
things. After we'd put Chris to bed for the evening, I asked Jonah to
sit down with me over a cup of coffee so we could talk.
It took
me a while to find the words, and he wasn't any help. We stared at each
other, at the floor, talked about the weather for a little bit, about
our academic work, listened to the coffee brew. We both knew what was
coming.
The coffee was finished. I grabbed two cups, sat down with the carafe,
and poured us each a cupful.
"Jonah,"
I began, "there's no way you can think I don't know what you've been
doing. It's time for us to talk about where we go from here."
His face crumpled, and he completely lost it, bursting into tears.
"I'm
sorry," he sobbed. "I'm so, so sorry. I love you so much,
please...can't you love me again like when we started out? I don't know
what I did to make you stop loving me. I know I shouldn't have played
around but it hurt so bad and I was so lonely."
I stared at him.
Of all the things I'd expected to hear from him, I was totally
unprepared for this, totally clueless. I knew that pulling away from
him had caused him to pull away from me, but I thought he'd gotten
tired of the whole thing and wanted out, and was only hesitating
because of Chris and because he hadn't had the courage to tell me he
was leaving.
"Jonah," I stammered in disbelief, "I made a life-commitment to you.
After what you've done, I assumed you wanted out."
That
started him crying even harder. "You pulled away from me. You never
talked to me, you freeze up whenever I touch you; you can't even stand
to be in the same room with me most of the time. What was I supposed to
think?"
I looked at him, tears filling my eyes. "I still love you, Jonah. I've
never stopped."
His eyes widened."You do?"
"Yeah."
He took a few sharp, shallow breaths. "If you still love me, please, please
don't leave me; can't we try to work it out? I thought you didn't love
me anymore."
I
was disgusted with myself. I'd been so wrapped up in my own problems I
hadn't bothered to notice how badly Jonah had been hurting. Just the
way I'd been with Brian, pushing him away with my issues, oblivious to
what I'd done to him.
I couldn't go on being that kind of person. To either of
them. What kind of narcissistic jerk does that to the people who care
for him?
I knew I had to try to explain things to him. To both of them,
a voice inside my head added.
I
wiped the tears from my eyes, then put my hand on his and said, "Jonah,
I need to tell you some things." I looked away for a second, shuddered,
and faced him again. "This is...this is so hard for me to talk about.
Look--I never stopped loving you. It's just I've been struggling real
hard and you got the raw end of the deal."
He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed it, and set it
back on the table, on top of my own hand.
I said, "When I pull away from you it's not you I'm pulling away from."
After
a few false starts, I finally managed to stutter out the bare bones of
what was going on with me. No details, just that Neal had been very
abusive in my past and that when he returned, I'd had something of a
walking breakdown. I tried to let him know that he wasn't the one I'd
been reacting to. I talked to him a little about my flashbacks,
explained how that made it impossible for me to stay "in the now"
during intimacy sometimes.
Jonah was fascinated. He'd known a
little about Neal, but not nearly enough. His eyes widened in horror as
it began to register with him just how deranged Neal was and what I
must have been through. I spared him the details as I tried to explain,
but he was too smart not to be able to piece some of it together.
After
I'd talked for a while, I was drained. Jonah had never completely
stopped crying the whole time, but when I was finished talking he got
himself together and said, "I've ruined everything. I've done the total
opposite of what I should have done."
"I'm not going to pretend
I'm not devastated," I told him. "But I made a promise to you. And I
still love you. Did you mean it when you asked me not to leave you?"
"Of course," he said. "Can you give me another chance?"
"I
made a promise to you," I repeated. "It's been a horrible, disastrous
misunderstanding and you're not the only one at fault. Let's work on
fixing it."
I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He stood
up, and I stood up with him. He reached for me, and before we had a
chance to second-guess, we were in each other's arms.
We made
love that night for the first time in forever. It was good, and for the
most part I was happy. Maybe we had a chance to put this thing back
together.
* * * * * * * * *
After a couple of weeks of trying to
figure out what next to say to Brian, I decided I didn't need to say
anything in particular. I just needed to show him that I wanted to keep
in touch with him. So I began sending him short e-mails talking about
things that were interesting but not too threatening in my life. He
responded in kind, telling me about where he was and what he was
seeing. Sometimes we e-mailed back and forth a little bit about Rip
Current,
reflecting on some things from our past; but there was always a level
of detachment there, as if we were talking about two people we'd known
from high school. I appreciated that, though; it was safe.
We talked about other things too, all safe things. It seemed clear that
both of us wanted this new connection sustained.
I
told him a little bit about "Drew's Domain" and described why I was
finding myself drawn there. I told him a little bit about Tony and a
little bit about Tom and a little bit about Duane, and I talked to him
about my e-mail conversations with Drew. He expressed interest and
asked a few questions. That surprised me a little; I hadn't thought it
would be something he'd be particularly interested in. I had assumed
that Brian would probably just as soon not hear too much of the "gay
stuff."
I noticed one day, as I was perusing Drew's membership
list, that Brian had joined. Not long after that Tony mentioned to me
that Brian had e-mailed him.
I was shocked. I had no idea what
that was about. But since Brian hadn't brought it up, I decided I
wouldn't either. He and I had just begun to repair a friendship that we
both wanted, and it seemed a little fragile at this point for me to
cloud things over with any controversy. Still, I wasn't sure what Brian
was doing e-mailing Tony. It freaked me out a little. Eventually he
said some things to me that suggested he didn't really trust Tony and
wanted me to be careful there.
I didn't get it and the whole
thing felt odd, but I let Brian have his say without coming back at
him. Still, it was strange. And though I loved that Brian and I were
reconnecting, I wasn't on that account going to do something just
because he told me to. Tony had his quirks, but he didn't scare me; he
hadn't hurt me in any way, and Brian didn't get to tell me who I could
talk to and who I couldn't. I was sorry that they hadn't gotten along,
but I intended to be friends with both of them anyway. They'd just have
to deal with it.
* * * * * * * * *
Drew continued to post new chapters of Rip Currents.
That winter, in one agonizing but heartfelt chapter, he narrated a fall
weekend beach trip that the two main characters had taken at the
beginning of their last year in high school. In that chapter Matt
admits to Drew that he knows Drew loves him as more than a best friend.
This brings Drew's barely-submerged awareness of his "gay attractions"
into explicit consciousness, and he's terrified. Matt, though straight,
seeks to demonstrate his love and acceptance of his best friend by
letting Drew make love to him. Drew, emotionally and physically
overcome, can't say no, in spite of his fear and his misgivings.
Once
again Drew's writing stirred up all kinds of suppressed emotions back
into intensity for me. I knew what it was like to have your best friend
call you out on your love for him. Of course, I'd never made love to
Brian, so on the one hand I found myself deeply envious of Drew. On the
other hand, evidently it wasn't all a walk in the park for him either.
The chapter portrayed that he had some trouble handling both his own
attraction to his best friend and his best friend's knowledge of that
attraction. He seemed torn between his love for Matt and the fear and
shame that he'd crossed a line that would ruin things between the two
of them. Boy, I knew that kind of ambivalence like the back of my hand.
The
response to that chapter in Drew's Yahoo! group was very powerful. Many
of the members were deeply moved by it, and Drew mentioned getting many
e-mails from non-group-members who were similarly affected. After a few
days, however, Drew posted a piece in "Drew's Domain" about a reader
having written him saying that it was not believable that Drew hadn't
recognized his feelings for his best friend until that beach weekend.
Reflecting on that e-mail, Drew asked the group if it was really that
strange, or if his opacity was understandable to the group members.
It
was time for me to speak up with a personal truth of my own, finally. I
posted a reply saying that I had had a similar experience, only without
the sex. My post was well-received, and the guys generally conceded
that a person could go for a long time not explicitly aware of same-sex
attractions, or at least trying subconsciously to distance from them,
especially if he were also attracted to the opposite sex.
Drew responded in a private e-mail. He said he'd like to hear more
about that part of my story.
He'd
said to me before that he thought I had a story of my own to tell, and
at the time I'd gotten it in my head that he was right. I felt a lot of
gratitude to him, because his story in many ways had gotten me unstuck.
So I sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote, and finally sent him a
piece of writing that in the future would become Chapter Ten of a story
I would come to call It Started With Brian. He wrote back
with gratitude and appreciation for what I'd sent him, saying, "Man,
you really do have a story to tell."
In
that moment it came to me what I should do next with Brian: I shouldn't
waste the story on just Drew; I needed to try to tell Brian
how I had felt back in my high school days and beyond, and to tell him
how much he had meant to me. Maybe that way I could explain myself to
him and apologize for all the years of betrayal and rejection. I had
destroyed our friendship. Yet he seemed to be willing to forgive and
move beyond all that, if our current regular e-mail conversations were
any indication. In light of that, the very least I could do to make
amends would be to tell him how I'd really been feeling and thinking.
I
copied the stuff I'd written Drew and pasted it into a new Word
document. With that material, I already had some writing to use in my
project. I sat down at the computer and started at the beginning.
* * * * * * * * *
I wrote a lot. If it were a book it
would have amounted to four chapters. I looked over what I had written
and considered the prospect of sending it to Brian. I was scared to
death. Could I be that honest with him? I wanted to, but I was filled
with the usual self-doubts. To get some additional perspective on the
thing, I decided to e-mail Tony about it. He, of course, got ten kinds
of excited about it. As a run-up to sending any of it to Brian, I sent
some chapters to Tony, and he promptly misconstrued some of it,
concluding from some of the material that I might be currently or
recently suicidal.
Sheesh.
I came to realize this whole
Internet-friendship thing was complicated, and prone to foster
misunderstandings and miscommunication. Still, it was doing me good to
be "among" people who could relate in at least partial ways to some of
the things I'd been wrestling with for years. Now, in hindsight, I wish
I'd taken more seriously just how easy it is to be misunderstood by
Internet friends; I might have avoided some of the bumps I encountered
along the way. But at the time I didn't see those bumps ahead, and it
was helping me a great deal to have people online to talk to.
I
let the four chapters of my story sit on my computer. I wanted time to
consider whether sending them to Brian was the right thing to do. There
wasn't any rush. In any case, it had been incredibly therapeutic to get
some of that story put into words.
As time went on I discovered
that Duane, the resident wiseguy of Drew's group, had also written some
stories and posted them to the Internet. These were mostly fiction,
although he admitted that he drew a couple of characters and situations
from his real past. He'd started his own Yahoo! group for his readers.
Duane
was a strange guy. At first, I wasn't sure I liked him. From his posts,
he seemed to be a comedian with a completely goofy sense of humor, but
he was also kind of abrupt and prickly. I enjoyed reading his stories,
though. After I'd been reading his stuff for a while, we exchanged a
handful of e-mails, mostly something to the effect of "nice chapter"
and "gee, thanks". I had gotten into a few political discussions
with
him at his group--he was a hardcore Libertarian--but nothing major.
* * * * * * * * *
One day that winter I logged onto Yahoo groups, and discovered that
Drew's Domain was gone.
Without a word of warning. Without any opportunity for me to prepare
mentally.
After
the initial shock, I shrugged. Stuff happens. You never know what
people are really about on the Internet. These weren't really
friendships; not in the conventional sense anyway, I tried to tell
myself. No big deal. But as the days went by, I discovered I missed it
more than I'd expected I would. It had been the perfect escape in many
ways.
Drew's former members were all abuzz in e-mails with each
other, speculating about what might have happened. The few I'd been
e-mailing with shifted their online discussions over to Duane's group.
It wasn't quite the same, but at least I had a chance to continue
talking to some of these guys.
Drew had also deleted his Yahoo
email account. I couldn't even get in touch with him. It was all very
mysterious to me. I missed him; but since I didn't know what to make of
it, I didn't spend much time dwelling on it. I had my own things to
deal with.
* * * * * * * * *
Around the time Drew and his site
vanished, Duane got an e-mail from a suicidal reader. He wrote
Tony
shortly after and told him about this e-mail, telling Tony that he'd
replied to the guy to stop being a douchebag, and to get over himself
and stop being a coward. Tony was aghast, and when he told me, so was
I.
Tony was ready to rip Duane's head off. I suggested not
doing that because I'd noticed that Duane often ran off at the mouth in
some kneejerk reaction without realizing the destruction he was leaving
behind him. I suggested that Tony write him and tell him--gently--that
his response had probably not been the best way to reply to someone who
was suicidal and trying to reach out.
Tony wrote him;
unfortunately, though, he dragged me into his reply, telling his
version of my early suicide attempts in an effort to illustrate to
Duane that he was being a prick. For some reason Tony sent me copy of
this e-mail. I wasn't happy to have had my history or my sentiments
inaccurately represented, so I wrote back to Duane, setting the
record
straight and suggesting that I'd be happy to talk to his distraught,
suicidal reader, if he just needed someone to vent to, because it
sounded to me as though Duane wasn't up to it. I'd had to do that kind
of thing in previous jobs and it didn't bother me.
The whole
mess rattled Duane, though he never heard from that reader again.
He
and I started e-mailing more frequently. I was pretty peeved with
Tony
in the aftermath of all that. His misrepresentation of the facts was
disturbing. I didn't stop talking to him, but I stopped telling
him
anything personal. He already knew enough. I reflected on the
fact
that this kind of foulup could only happen--at least the way it had
come down--on the Internet. But there were so many advantages to this
medium, it didn't sour me on the thing. And I began to develop a real
appreciation of Duane through our e-mail conversations.
I missed
Drew's group, though, and I missed Drew. Things had not been quite as
"soapy" over at his group, and I just missed the tone of the place.
* * * * * * * * *
A few months went by. Brian and I had been e-mailing each other with
increasing regularity.
I
remained firm in my determination to say things to Brian that I'd
wanted to say ever since we were teenagers. I wanted to let him know
how important he was to me. I wanted us to go back to being the best
friends we'd been so long ago. I knew I could never have what I longed
for with him, but that no longer tortured me. If we could find a way
back to each other as best friends, that would be like a dream come
true.
After I had written down part of our story months
earlier, I'd needed a breather. The story sat dormant while I waited to
see how things would go in my e-mail contacts with Brian. Now I felt it
was time for me to send him what I'd written. Once I'd said those
things to him, I'd be able to move along in my friendship with him. I
really needed a best friend right now, someone I could tell my deepest
personal stuff to. I needed support in dealing with Neal; and I needed
a good strong shoulder to cry on as I tried to get over the damage
Jonah and I had done to each other. It would be so good to have my
best
friend in my corner for moral support.
I'd first gotten the idea
of writing my story down because I'd realized the only way I could tell
Brian what he'd meant to me was by writing something to him;
I'd never have the courage to say those things to his face, and anyway,
he was far away.
I
sat down at the computer and pulled up what I'd written. I looked it
all over one more time, and then stared at the computer for the longest
time. Finally I fired up my e-mail program and started a new e-mail
addressed to Brian. I wrote him a short note and attached the chapters
I'd written about us. Then I closed my eyes tight and pressed "Send."
I
got a reply from him the very next day. Short, a little ambiguous, and
one hundred percent Brian: "I'll be home in January. I'll see you
when
I get back to the States."
My heart jumped into my throat.
* * * * * * * * *
Jonah nearly turned himself inside out
trying to make it work in the days and weeks that followed our
talk. I
tried to follow his example. I felt better than I'd felt in months. But
I couldn't seem to let him into the deepest places in my heart. I
considered from time to time that maybe I'd been damaged too much. But
I decided that time would take care of it; and at least now he
understood that I hadn't been trying to push him away.
Brian and
I had been e-mailing each other almost daily by then. Things were going
well. It was just e-mail, but my heart and hopes were soaring; I was
getting my friend back. Things seemed better between us than they'd
been since...well, since high school.
He came back to the
United States in December, a month earlier than he'd said. He spent
Christmas with his family. Then the new year came, and as planned,
Brian came down for a visit.
The day he was scheduled to arrive,
I was nervous and fidgety. Jonah laughed at me and tried to match my
enthusiasm. I understood, though, what Brian's visit must be doing to
his psyche, especially after the last several months of disaster
between us. He knew what Brian had been in my life.
Finally we heard knock on the door. I opened it, and there he stood.
God help me, he was so beautiful. Even after all these years.
My heart flooded with old feelings that I was completely powerless to
hold at bay.
He smiled, and I was lost in his smile. "Sammy," he said warmly, tenderly
even, as he reached toward me and pulled me into a hug.
Deep
in the recesses of my brain, a part of me--a lost part of me--was
rejoicing. Something felt so right, as right as things had felt in
years. I held on for dear life, as I heard him say "I've missed you."
I wasn't sure I could let go.
I
managed to pull myself away, though, and invited him in. Jonah greeted
him warmly. He tried, anyway, and Brian tried to be cordial in return.
When
Chris woke up from his nap, Brian went in to say hi. Chris remembered
him, and I watched as the two of them renewed their acquaintance. They
seemed to sort of "click" together, and that made me happy.
Brian
stayed for several days. The whole time, he and I were careful around
each other--a little guarded--but things were as close to "right"
between us as they'd been since before I found out that Brian knew how
I felt about him. And that, I reminded myself, was a long, long time
ago.
During the days he was visiting, I never told him how bad
things had been with Jonah. I knew he'd fly off the handle if I told
him all that had happened. In the previous months I had come to realize
that he'd joined Drew's group and written to Tony because he was
concerned about me and wanted to make sure nobody was taking advantage
of me. Brian had always been fiercely protective of me until I'd made
it clear to him that I wanted him out of my life; as we'd reconnected,
he seemed to step into that role again. So as much as I needed to, I
didn't dare tell him the extent of Jonah's infidelities; I knew he'd
lose his temper if he'd known everything that had happened.
In
spite of my silence, though, there was still a low-grade tension
between him and Jonah the entire visit, covered over by genuine
attempts from both of them to be civil. Brian had never liked Jonah.
They had met a handful of times before our commitment ceremony, and had
always ended up sort of quietly snarling at each other. It never
escalated beyond that, and neither of them had ever said it in so many
words, but I knew they didn't like each other, which always puzzled me,
since I knew that they were both great guys.
During Brian's
visit, Jonah bent over backwards to be warm and friendly, to show me
that he could accept my best friend. But I knew Jonah well enough to
know that he was jealous and insecure; he knew how much Brian had meant
to me. What I didn't understand, though, was why Brian had such
animosity towards Jonah, who'd never done him any harm at all. I'd told
Brian in an e-mail that Jonah and I were having some problems, and that
Jonah had cheated on me, but Brian had disliked Jonah long before that,
and things clearly hadn't changed. It didn't make any sense to me. He
bristled every time Jonah came into the room during his visit. He tried
to hide it, but I could see it, and I'm sure Jonah could too.
There
was another factor during that visit which kept me from opening up to
Brian: My idiot pride had reasserted itself. I knew I needed Brian, and
I knew that I needed to confide in him about my troubles, but I
couldn't get over myself enough to tell him how bad it had really been,
how shaken I was from dealing with Neal and with Jonah.
In spite
of those things, though, it's impossible for me to put into words how
healing it was to see Brian again. He only stayed a few days, but his
stay was life-transforming for me. It was the first time since we were
kids that it hadn't hurt to see him.
I realized something in the aftermath of his visit: I still loved him.
In fact, I was still deeply in love with him.
But
I no longer needed him so desperately. I had finally found some way to
bracket being in love with him, and to appreciate his friendship.
After
he left, we continued to talk a lot more as the days went by, on the
phone and in e-mails. Things still felt a little fragile, but the
relationship was becoming stronger. Beyond that, the horrible tension
I'd felt for years--loving him and yet needing to be away from him--had
finally left.
We planned for him to visit again during my spring break in March.
I had my best friend back.