Preston
I made my first real friend in high school. His name was Jake. My experience with boys my age had not been a good one. Somewhere along the line I'd developed a fear of them. I met him in the library where I habitually went to avoid the embarrassment of being pulled into boy's activities I was terrible at. In that way I avoided the inevitable ridicule. I was cautious with Jake, but once we started talking I knew he was friend material.
After a while, we became tight friends. I valued his friendship so much that I was afraid if he knew too much about me I might lose him. My secret was my own and at the time, I couldn't share it because I wasn't totally convinced myself.
Jake and I talked about almost everything. While I thought he had secrets of his own, we never discussed them. I suspected he also hoped he had more in common with me than his love of swimming and literature, but at the time, I didn't know why I thought that.
Our plans for the future were similar. We both planned to go to college, and when the time came we chose the same school. I majored in pre-med and he majored in business. We roomed together at the dorm and while we worked to fill our 'core' it was easy to plan some of our classes together.
Years later, he began to pull away. I found myself alone more often than not, realizing that my social life had been seriously restricted. One day he came to me, sat me down, and said he had something to tell me. Before he even started, tears filled his eyes. In all the years I'd known him I'd never seen him cry. Trying to compose himself, he finally spoke. "I suppose you wonder where I've been lately. I know I've been busy a lot and before you start to think we're not friends anymore, I owe you an explanation.
"Preston, you're my very best friend, so this has been bothering me a lot. It's just that I've discovered something that… I mean I was going to… Well… I sort of came out. I'm gay."
He was quiet a minute. I think he was trying to gauge my reaction.
"I just couldn't tell you," he said. "I didn't know how you'd take it and early on I wasn't really sure. Anyway, I'm sure now and since you're my closest friend, I thought you should know. I've been seeing a guy I met online. I just got off the phone with him, and he told me it wasn't working out for him."
Jake started to sob. He was my best friend so, even though we hadn't spent time with each other in what felt like ages, I couldn't help but feel for him. The combined stress of losing that guy and telling me about it was obviously too much for him. We were sitting in our dorm room with the door closed, so I pulled him to me as he buried his head in my chest and let it all out.
"Well," I said, wanting to interrupt his meltdown before I started crying for him, "I think I can easily handle you being gay because…" Taking a deep breath I blurted it out as fast as I could, "I think I am too. I've thought so since we were kids. At first, I wasn't sure either, but even though I've never done anything, I'm sure now."
His eyes grew wide with surprise. "I was kind of hoping, but… well I had no real… let's just say I'm relieved."
We looked at each other differently for a moment, each of us wondering if we wanted to experience the other.
He was the first to speak. "Not with my best friend. We don't want to complicate what we have…right?"
I was thankful. I didn't want to be the first to say it, and with no experience I'd have died if we'd tried and I was bad at it. I'd always thought he was kind of hot, with a full head of thick blonde hair and those piercing blue eyes, and trim body. I hoped he saw me as somewhat attractive, too, but I knew, at least for now, we were just too close. After hearing his reason for not letting this go any further, I had to agree. If only one of us got emotionally involved with the other one, it could ruin everything and having never done anything before I was afraid that might be me.
Besides, the guys I spent my time admiring tended to be bigger than us and dark. If they had chest hair I couldn't keep my eyes off them. Looking back, I had to applaud our decision. If anything had happened at that time, I think it would have ruined everything. Without that complication our friendship lasted.
Neither of us had a lot of time to invest in pursuing our newly announced sexualities. I wanted to get into the University of Arizona College of Medicine and there was a lot of competition. Jake wanted to do well in his business classes so he could turn that into a successful career. On the other hand, he reserved Friday and Saturday nights to go on the prowl or meet someone he'd been chatting with online.
I thought at first that someday I'd go with him when he hit the town, but after watching him go through one disappointment after another, I realized I didn't want to make the same mistakes I saw him making. More than once, he was deeply hungover on Saturday and I seemed to be continually dealing with his broken heart. Once I had to drive him down to the health center because he had a healthy case of gonorrhea.
I couldn't see myself going down that same path and frankly I was afraid. I'd never actually done anything sexual before. My fear of failure kept me from experimenting, so I concentrated on my studies instead. We both graduated, and I was accepted into medical school and Jake was going for his master's in business administration. It seemed that we were studying all the time.