Letter to an X-Friend

So how long has it been now?

Six years? Seven? I know I was still at The Lite when the friendship came crashing down around us—was it in June that we, that everything, stopped? I could be misremembering the timeline, but I think it was June. (I’m really coming to dislike the month of June.)

Brendan Lemon’s closeted ballplayer boyfriend. That’s what touched it off, the Out Magazine editor letter. He wrote about the difficulties of being openly gay and trying to maintain a relationship with someone who was not, especially someone with a public profile. The letter caused a sensation in the gay press, was picked up by the mainstream press, and as the guessing game of the ballplayer’s identity commenced, op-ed pieces started appearing in publications that seldom if ever bothered to report or comment upon queer issues of any kind.

You and I seemed to draw different lessons from the controversy, unable to agree even on whether or not Lemon should ever have brought up the matter publicly, though I think we were slowly becoming aware, long before then, that we seemed not to be on the same page about many things to do with gay.

The e-mails between us got stronger, angrier (typically, mine got lengthier). That was our mistake, I realized even then. Instead of tabling the debate about Lemon, his mystery man and whatever and whoever else was getting dragged into the squabble (Jackie Robinson, Rock Hudson, the Brady dad Robert Reed) until we could see one another and talk more calmly over coffee, or dinner, or a bookstore browse, we kept slugging it out electronically, each of accusing the other of not seeing it, both of us more emotionally invested in our viewpoints than we were willing or able to admit.

I know I was. I was absolutely convinced I was right and you were a pigheaded idiot who couldn’t admit when he was wrong. Though I couldn’t actually see you, I could feel your back stiffening with each hit of the send key, until finally you accused me of laughing at you—I realized later you meant “mocking” you—and said we couldn’t be friends anymore.

I’d rolled my eyes at this, exasperated. Not friends anymore? Come on, what was he talking about? Alright, so I’d gone a bit—maybe more than a bit—overboard in my determination to mow down his resistance. So maybe he was right in his accusation that this wasn’t a spirited exchange of ideas any longer (if it ever was) and I had let myself get too gleeful about winning what had turned into a fight. He was still being a drama queen—a melodrama queen—with this relations between us are at an end stuff; he doesn’t mean it. Not really.

But you did.

Even with my semi-conciliatory reply—recognizing at last that I had gone too far, in the execution of my argument at least, if not its substance—you refused to budge. Me too. I waited, not too bothered that the days were turning to weeks, thinking after all that we both needed the cooling off period, and sure that at the end of it you would at last reply, or that one of us would pick up the phone, that we would pick up and stagger forward, the connection between us frayed but not broken, our friendship ultimately stronger having been tested. Like... like... Mary and Rhoda. (Fine. Then you think of somebody.)

It didn’t happen. You didn’t write and we didn’t call and the silence between us grew heavier, lengthened. We didn’t speak; we never saw each other again. And it has been—six years now? Seven? Longer than that?

I didn’t expect that outcome, did you? I knew we could both be stubborn; as I realized the weeks were becoming months I grew uneasy, complaining to Connie about what a baby you were being, and how I should not have to plead for the restoration of our old camaraderie, no matter how much I missed it. Eventually I reached for my sharpest, finest pen to write you longhand; I sat down at my computer, searching for just the right font. I picked up my phone and made ready to dial, determined to end the stalemate. Each time I backed away, uncertain of my welcome, and feeling vaguely…idiotic.

It’s never a good thing when, instead of getting wiser as you get older, you realize you’re only finding new ways to disappoint yourself (and others).

Maybe you feel that too?