Tuesday, May. 28, 2002 - 10:09 p.m.
Spiritless Visitation

My friend came over last night to watch Queer As Folk, and for a long overdue visit. Arriving a half hour before the show began, he had much to report. After a years-long lull, his dance card has swollen. The newest guy, Thomas, he met on the bus a few months back; it turns out my friend works with Thomas’s friend, Andrew. My friend kept running into Thomas everywhere, and for the past several weeks they’ve been hanging out with increasing (albeit still platonic) intensity.

“Now I’ve got a blind date set up with this other guy,” my friend went on, “And it’s made me think about how I really feel about Thomas, what this is about. We’ve never talked about ourselves as dating, or potential boyfriends, and there’s been no sex or anything. But still, I realized I have romantic feelings for him so I wrote him a long email today telling him so.”

You did what?, I thought.

“But yeah, Thomas really seems to like me. I just don’t know in what way. He’s particularly drawn to my spiritual beliefs.”

I braced myself. Here it comes.

It came. “I told Thomas one day that the only kind of love I recognize, now that I’ve taken these Buddhist classes, is unconditional love. You know, the kind of love where if my heart gets broken it only makes me love the guy more. Because if he—whoever it is—doesn’t want to be with me, well, I want him to be happy so I am glad rather than sad. It’s the only way to be; I cannot love someone any other way now. ‘Wow,’ Thomas said, when I told him that, ‘You’re a really incredible guy!’”

No, actually, you’re full of shit, I thought, smiling at my friend attentively. His eyes were clotted with a whole bunch of pain, a whole bunch of music that, to my eyes, did not match his words.

And just like the past few times we’ve gotten together, an extensive lecture on Buddhism followed. It was almost time for Queer As Folk to begin, and my friend has annoyed me in the past with his habit of talking through movies and TV programs. As he talked on, I grew tense and impatient, all the while saying nothing as I did my best to nod and wear a friendly smile on my face.

“The closest Thomas and I ever came to talking about ‘us’ was one day when I said, ‘Now look Thomas, I have something to tell you, or ask you, and I’m hoping you can help clear up my confusion.’ ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘It’s just that when I told Andrew that I’d met you he said ‘Thomas? He’s a great guy, but don’t date him.’”

My friend continued on. “You should have seen the look on his face after I blurted that out. Thomas was really upset. I mean, he almost cried.”

No fucking kidding I thought.

My friend felt bad about his faux pas, but apparently he sorted everything out with Thomas. And now, several platonically-intense weeks later, he eagerly awaits Thomas’s response to his cyber-declaration of affection.

I wanted to shake him.

Much—too much—of this conversation dragged over into the QAF hour. To his credit, my friend did stop talking approximately two minutes or so into each resumption of the program after commercial breaks. I made a mental note that the next time we got together would not be on a QAF night.

The show ended at 11 pm, and that is definitely my bedtime. Exhausted, I wanted him to go home immediately. But no. He was just getting wound up. So I listened to variously intense amplifications of what he’d said before, and I sat here, yawning, smiling vacantly, waiting for the opportune moment to insert a “Well, it’s been great to see you after all this time, sweetie; but I really have to get to bed eh?” into the conversation.

“Why are you smiling like that?” he asked.

Uh oh. “What do you mean?” I asked, smilingly, hopefully differently.

“Just tell me what you think. Say anything; what is your response to what I’ve been telling you?”

I’d been caught red-handed. Put on the spot, I hummed and hawwed, managing to beg off with a well-meaning but ultimately meaningless expression of hope that something shall work out between he and Thomas.

“You’re tired, aren’t you?” he said. I confirmed same. He left about 11:30, after a warm, wonderfully wordless hug at the door.

I felt bad about the contactlessness of our time together last night, but it’s not that big a deal; I was tired, and not in the right space to connect. More, I haven’t been connecting with this friend very much period; that doesn’t mean that either of us are awful people. It just happens; people grow apart.

But it’s also made me think about some things. The disservice you do to someone you care about in feigning interest or support or presence. Never mind how transparent that insincerity is to most folks on the receiving end. It’s far better—especially when asked, but not only then…also when you’re growing increasing annoyed or triggered by the person, as I was last night—to simply blurt out your reaction. With my friend, such a blurt could open all kinds of interesting stuff for us to delve into; we might reconnect more than we have lately, or, equally possible, the conversation might mark some final, authentic recognition that we’re going in different directions.

I didn’t have the energy to do that last night, but it’s good to remind myself that this is how relationships stay alive. (Or, die with their boots on.) I have to prod myself to speak up like that, to speak my mind; interpersonal forthrightness has never come naturally, but when I do speak I feel so much better.

Also, last night reconfirmed the essential thing about me and “spirituality”: I’d much rather a Buddhist give me a hug than a sermon.