Many years ago I had a friendship that, from my perspective at the time, embodied true love in it’s purest, unpoisoned, platonic state. He was a wonderfully funny, crazy individual who wasn’t afraid to be himself and I loved being around him. He was charming and attractive (in a Mark McGrath/Sugar Ray kind of way). Not only was I really not into that “party, party, pretty boy” type of guy back then, I’m still not. But he was who he was and I completely embraced that. While other women, many of them business professionals, looked at him and drooled sloppily and made nauseatingly pathetic idiots out of themselves around him, I always saw him simply as an unbiological brother.
The thing that got my goat is no one believed it was a platonic relationship. I’m talking no one, not even my closest friends. It was mildly irritating at first but then grew into absolute ridiculousness and I found myself becoming defensive and just plain pissed off about it. I often wondered why the hell people found it so difficult to wrap their minds around the concept of platonic love between two people of the opposite sex. Yes people, it does exist.
My friend and I worked together and outside of work we were often seen together. In retrospect, I guess it was quite natural for people to make assumptions based our close relationship. He and I talked about it a lot and we had quite a few laughs about it. Everything was great and fun and perfect. That is, until the day I met, and fell head over heels for “my type of guy” who, quite literally, rocked.my.world. From that point on, everything about me and my friend changed forever.
By definition, platonic love is a deep and spiritual connection between two individuals: within such a relationship there does not exist any form of sexual connection or sexual elements. Cool, right? That’s what I thought. Then out of left field came the green eyed monster of jealousy. Although I never shared with my friend (or anyone for that matter) any details about my relationship with my “world rocker” I think he just knew on some intuitive level. He became just plain evil.
I never named names. I never hinted that I was involved with anyone. I never made suggestions, nothing. Among the very great many reasons I had for doing so, was the simple fact that it was no one’s business and I’m really not in the habit of sharing details of that nature with anyone. I’ve said it before, I can be a very private person. In my eyes, I was just being the same me I had always been around my friend.
Then it hit me…while my feelings toward my friend were strictly platonic, the feelings he had toward me weren’t. Henceforth, the relationship between my friend and I became forever tainted because I realized that everything I thought our relationship embodied, everything it was built on, was a lie. Like so many guys before him, he was only trying to get in my pants. The trust was gone. To this day, my stomach turns thinking about it.
Then one summer night, at like two in the morning, I received a call from a close friend of my friend’s. I was woken up from a dead sleep and was very disoriented. All I heard on the other end of the phone line was, “You have gotta get out here. ______ is drunk and hopped on on god knows what and now he is screaming incoherently and running around naked in the sprinklers of a golf course.”
I remember shooting straight up in bed and screaming, “What the fuck?!” into the receiver. I spent the next couple of minutes getting details of their location and next thing I know, I was clutching my steering wheel and driving almost twenty miles over the speed limit to get to a town over twenty miles away. I got there in record speed. The scene wasn’t pretty. It took me and three grown male adults over an hour to coax my friend into my car. He was an absolute train wreck. Screaming and throwing punches one minute, laughing and hugging me the next, insisting that he was ok to drive, refusing to tell me what he had taken and how much alcohol he had consumed.
In that moment I was a strange amalgamation of worried friend & protector and furiously pissed off maniac. I knew my friend was prone to drinking, as are many people in their early twenties. But he had taken it too far this time and nearly killed himself in the process. All the way home he blubbered “Why…why not me? Why?!” I was so enraged that all I could think to say was, “Why the fuck do you think?! Look at you! You are pathetic! You need to GROW UP!” I was not kind. Not at all.
I ended up taking him home to his mother’s house. I had the distinct privilege of explaining to her, a registered nurse at the time, why her son was coming home stark-ass naked and drunk and stoned. I helped her get him into bed and I stayed there with him for a while. I thought maybe he would just pass out…but he didn’t.
Instead he just laid there and looked at me and I at him. Again, he asked me, “Why not me?” I never addressed the “why” because my mind and heart weren’t in the right place to. Instead, I just held his hand and continued to fetch him glasses of water. “You need to get your life together.” I told him. “You cannot continue along this path. You need to grow up and find a direction. Otherwise, this lifestyle will eventually kill you.” I never saw or talked to him again.
Years later, when I look back on my friendship with this person, I realize how much I miss him, or rather, who he used to be when we were close. But I also realize that we were simultaneously seeing the relationship from two very different perspectives. I can understand why he was so hurt because I have been in the same situation. Often we want something out of a relationship with someone that they don’t want. We approach it from one angle and they another. No matter how hard we try to manipulate, coerce or interject it just isn’t going to happen the way we want it to. Free will is both a blessing and a curse.
I hate loose ends. Someday I hope to have the opportunity to reconnect with this person so I can communicate all of this to him. I can only hope that he is in a position in his life where he can accept it - just as I have, with the relationships in my life that never manifested the way I envisioned. I dream of one day enjoying the kind of close, platonic relationship with him that I, in my mind’s eye, felt we already shared. The potential is there...he just has to want it as badly as I do.
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