#plutonic

I can remember helping Adam move to the first of his multiple residences after that relationship ended, we were carrying this huge-ass bookshelves through Park Slope to Fort Greene. That was something I did often during that time, helping friends to move. Curiously I would only have two moves during my life, once out of my first/starter apartment, then the second time out of my aunt's home after staying with her for the year.

I can't say definitively if Adam was my first co-dependent relationship, it was just the one that totally had some problematic elements that would come into play later in the friendship. In all honesty I can say we had a very close and intimate relationship even though it never crossed the boundary into anything remotely sexual. Curiously in hindsight I question how close it really was, I never had keys to any of Adam's homes, even though I was made to feel like they were my own, and there were aspects of his life he seemed to keep away from me even though we spent so much time together. I had mentioned in a recent essay how I never met his parents, not even spoke to them on the phone. I was led to believe they never visited him once in New York, but I feel that may not have been true. Also he had this huge collection of collectable toys that I never knew about until he moved into his house in Crown Heights, I wondered how I had never seen them previously, when clearly he had spent time collecting them. It led me to believe he possibly had a storage place he kept all of these things in, that I was also not privy to.

Adam and I traveled together repeatedly, sharing rooms, we had dozens of meals together, clocked an ungodly amount of phone time and were very present in each others lives, well to a point. I stated I thought he was attractive, but I wasn't ever attracted to him, and maybe that made the difference, also we became friends when I had more or less gotten over the bulk of mixed-relationships with friends, I had sort of gotten it out of my system.

Later in the friendship he showed a level of jealousy over the relationship I had with my boyfriend at the time Paul. He expressed that I never bought gifts for him like I did Paul, and he seemed to be envious of how our time together had shifted to Paul and me. Interestingly whenever Adam was dating I didn't usually hear from him at all, and I can only recall one of these men I actually met, Rafi, the one who broke his heart and exposed him to HIV.

I found that it seemed easier for me to integrate Adam into my relationship with Paul than the other way around. All three of us even took a trip to Puerto Rico together, a trip that had always been exclusive to Adam and I. I was just looking for a photo of all three of us, and couldn't find one, this was the time before I started using the timer on the camera, so if I am in a photo with one of them usually the other one was taking the picture.

The closest thing to something sexual happening with Adam occurred when he wasn't even there. I had found the sex-tapes he had created with Rafi on his computer, and I watched them. Why sit and lie, I am queer, and dudes fucking dudes is my love language. Was I turned on by them, probably not, I think I was more fascinated than anything, because this had been the man who deceived Adam about his sero-status and proceeded to have unprotected sex with him, which was clearly documented in these videos.

I think it wasn't too long after my relationship with Karl, who was Adam's tenant, that our friendship ended. Adam thought Karl was someone he wasn't, he also knew my status, and thought I was doing to Karl what Rafi did to him, and that was the farthest thing from the truth. Unlike Adam I saw no reason to disclose any of Karl's business to his landlord. I understood the importance of not sharing someone's status without their permission, furthermore it wasn't any of his business.

The final straw came when Adam disclosed my status to another friend without my consent, looking back I realize he was really dealing with his unresolved anger issues with Rafi, but why did I need to be pulled into it? Why did what I did with other consenting adults need to come into play, I wasn't Rafi, I wasn't doing the old bait and switch, I was clear with all of my partners exactly what they were getting into, and they were consenting adults, and they agreed to it. It wasn't Adam's place to police what I was, or wasn't doing in my bedroom. His meddling ended the friendship, our relationship had always been based on mutual trust and respect, and for some reason due to what this other man did to him, he didn't trust me anymore, and that wasn't going to work.

Well damn, I didn't mean to spend one thousand words just on Adam, but clearly I needed to unpack some residual feelings about that relationship. Let's move on to someone else. Let's take it back to the late eighties, this is about four years before I met Adam, I am in high school, I am obviously a teenager, I am having gay-feelings, I am deluding myself that I might be bisexual, my sex-play with my elementary school friend has more or less wrapped up by this point. I am attending a specialized high school in Manhattan that brings me into contact with such a different class of folks than the ones I was meeting in the Bronx.

Enter Andy Feder

Andy or Andrew, I never called him Andrew, is a Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Tall wide-hipped very alternative with a pointy jaw, brown-eyes, ska-listening soft-spoken art major. I did say specialized school, it is what is known to the wider public as the Performing Arts High School, the one from the TV show Fame, which is actually called the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

I was a drama major, very appropriate, I am trying to recall how we specifically first met, but I think it was related to him and his art major friends hanging around the basement a lot, that is where the drama department was located. I think I was drawn to him because he was so different than me, so exotic with his dark clothes, Doc Martens, curly-hair and withdrawn personality.

He was from a different class background than me, albeit it didn't come into play, it was obvious from his living with his mom in Brooklyn Heights in a co-op where he had his own room, which it seemed his mom let him have free range over. I can recall how parts of the wall were spray-painted, and how he had drawn black and white patterns on his stereo. He had a freedom of expression that seemed to be encouraged and I was curious and jealous of this.

The kids in my high school all seemed so much more mature and worldly, mind you I was doing myself a disservice I had already traveled to Europe, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean at that point it's not like I was bought up in some hood, didn't know what a passport was, or had never left the country before. But I was under the assumption that I was still poor living in a lower class household like I had with my mom.

That wasn't true, my grandparents were not upper middle class, but with their two income household they were solidly and squarely middle class, and because they didn't have their full litter, they had something none of their friends had, disposable income. But unlike many of her contemporaries my grandmother took that money and invested it, the smartest thing she could have done, because those funds took care of her during her later decompensation due to dementia.

There was something significantly different about my household versus Andy's, I was being raised by grandparents, not a parent, so there were certain cultural things that I wasn't getting exposed to with such a huge generational boundary, and I think that was part of the disconnect for me and why I found Andy and his world so fascinating. I had been bought up in a Christian household where service and prayer were a part of the foundation of their values. Andy was probably more exposed to art, music and just culture in general which made him seem so much more interesting to me.

We began to spend a lot of time together, I can recall riding the A train to Brooklyn spending time with him at his house, and even a sleepover that I sponsored with mostly his friends because my grandparents wouldn't let me sleep away from home. In some ways it felt like we were dating, we would fall asleep on the phone talking to each other, and be excited to see each other the next day at school. We were friends but it felt like there was something more going on, and I don't think at the time we quite knew what it was.

With much thought and meditation I have finally figured out decades later that I was in love with Andy, and albeit our relationship maintained a plutonic distance, there were feelings roaring under the surface that were never fully communicated, but comprehended by both of us. I think what needs to be understood about this time was I didn't really know what "gay" was, it was still more of an abstract, something distant and faraway, not something that looked, smelled and acted like me. I couldn't visualize a gay, and what that was and felt like, it would be another year before I met and had an openly gay friend, which would become very informative and nurturing to my burgeoning sexual identity.

This is what was so awkward when we "broke up", we called it that, even though why would two boys who were just friends, be "breaking up"? But that is how it felt, I can remember the phone call where it happened, and how upset I was, the tremendous loss I felt, and the deep sadness that seemed to linger for months afterwards.

That break up led to the first fight I had with my grandmother regarding my sexuality. I think she knew what was really going on and as opposed to be nurturing, and careful she attempted to belittle and attack me, asking me, "So are you gay?" to which I responded with the falsehood that, "No, I was bi!", this spiraled into a mandate that none of my male friends could spend the night at the house, to which I responded, well what about my lesbian friends? They should be safe. This was a prime-time teen hormone driven showdown.

The obvious transition would be to discuss my first openly gay friend Henry. I am not sure how we became friends particularly since he was an underclassman and traditionally those are boundaries that are not usually crossed, but I have never been one to color within the lines, I was friends with quite a few students below my grade, I even assisted in teaching them in the dance class.

Henry came out very publicly in People magazine, there was press outside the school it was a big to-do. Henry was a short hairy green-eyed Latino male fully stocked with an uncircumcised penis and he didn't mind getting a piece of his 15 minutes. He had like eight siblings, and lied that he was half-Sicilian and half-Dominican, he wasn't half anything, he was fully Dominican. Both Henry and Adam had identity issues which I never fully understood, both of them seemed to aspire to cultural heritages that weren't their own. Henry traded his alleged mixed-heritage in for indigenous Taino roots.

Henry had a very unstable living situation, I don't think his parents put him out as much as he felt the need to be on his own. He lived with an older friend Kim Magillicudy in the south Bronx in an apartment that was painted all white, I mean everything doorknobs, fixtures, I mean everything, it was a bit weird, and very poverty-adjacent. He left the basement in his parents house for this room he had in Kim's house, so I think he wanted the freedom.

I have always loved light-eyes so of course I found Henry attractive, but I never desired him like the whyte boys who chased him about. While still in high school utilizing the momentum of his People article, he starred in a documentary film, which I appeared in and worked on while in high school.

I talked about proximity and how that led a lot of young-gays to fuck each other. That was never the situation with Henry and I am not sure if he didn't find me attractive or maybe he didn't like Blacks in that context, I am not saying he was racist, but he had a tendency to exclusively date whyte men.

I remember he briefly dated author Michaelangelo Signorile that seemed like a big deal at the time because Michael was sort of a big deal in the early nineties. Henry also loved the nightlife and due to folks he knew like Chip Duckett, would get us admission to clubs like the Limelight and the Palladium. I think he also was briefly in a house under a mother who was a drag queen. He had embraced this urban gayness in a way I didn't fully have access to.

When I decided that I would be better off starting my theatre career in New York, Henry was my first roommate in our tiny two-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg. I used the remaining savings I had for college to buy some pieces at IKEA and futons for both of us. It really was a starter apartment, and I loved all the folks we made friends with and hosted during that time. It was all the things a starter apartment should be.

At that age Henry was attractive in a way that was desirable to the wider gay communities, I was his Black friend who didn't necessarily fit in any of those sought after categories, so folks like Chip wasn't in love with me, because he couldn't leverage my looks for his own interest, like he did Henry. Henry worked at Patricia Fields's boutique in the village another part of New York gay culture. But Henry was searching for himself amongst all of these trendy little circumstances, and he soon left our starter apartment to become a shaman. I am not sure if that ever came to be, but we would become friends again when he had moved to the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Our friendship ended over something I allegedly did or didn't do, but he never told me exactly what, I was like whatever, at that point our lives had wandered in different directions. I had had more financial success in my career, and he was still struggling as he had most of his life. For all of his looks, none of that ever translated into financial success.

There is one fond memory of Henry that I want to leave this section on, it was a time I was house-sitting for someone, I don't remember who. But I think it was on a break from college, maybe Ari had gotten me the gig. But I can recall Henry and Matt coming over to the house which I think was somewhere on the west side in Manhattan in the 70s or so. All three of us had decided to dress up in the lady of the house's clothes and attempt to go outside. We were all giggling so much, that we barely made it to the elevator before running back to the apartment to take it all off.

It was a lovely memory of being young and silly and maybe not being the most responsible, but having a good time. During that same week, I remember Henry taking a bath at the house, and I guess he had called me into the bathroom to talk. He wasn't in the least ashamed to be in the tub as his uncut penis floated in-between the bubbles in the tub. It was a comfortable moment, not remotely laced in anything sexual at all, we were just two friends talking to each other as we spent time in this strangers house. It's the way I like to remember that friendship best.

I am currently at three thousand words, and trust I am not giving my last friend here Brad another 1k.

You know I was just thinking if there were any photos of Brad and me together and there aren't, I think that sums up our friendship in a nut-shell. I wanted to be friends with him more than he wanted to be my friend. It was Kelsey Carrington all over again. I was a friend whom he called if Howie or someone else wasn't available.

But unlike anyone else on this list I had a crush on Brad from jump. I can remember in junior high school recording what top and bottom he wore every day. I would right the day of the week, then write what he wore for that day. I was a bit obsessed. Once again I can't remember how we actually became friends, we were in the same eighth grade homeroom, so that may have been conducive to us spending more time together.

Brad was blue-eyed, brown haired slim, and in the summer tanned. I think he actually had braces too, and if we're being candid he was totally whyte-trash. Our junior high school was predominately filled with people of color, the whytes that were there, were usually quite poor, and couldn't afford better educations. I remember he primarily lived with his mom, and younger sister Denise. But his dad Sheldon lived exactly one block away, the parents were separated, but lived close to each other.

Something else odd with my Brad friendship was how my hyper-sexuality spilled out. I can recall renting porn videos and the boys coming to either my house or Brad's to watch them. I am not sure why I begin doing this, but I started openly masturbating to the videos in front of the boys. In my head I wanted to encourage them to be as bold as me, but my size sort of scared them from showing their own members. I can recall our friend Howie telling me he learned how to improve his stroking technique from watching me. I was sort of flattered.

During this same time I can recall attempting to convince each of them separately to show me their penis. I was successful with Howie, and Brad's friend, who's name I can't remember, but Brad never gave up the goods. The most I saw of Brad was his rear, he really enjoyed mooning people, something that I thought was a part of those trashy frat movies of the eighties, not something someone actually did in real life.

If I am being totally honest, which I have a habit of doing, I was hoping to recreate the situation with my elementary school friend who I had been fellating for a couple of years. I would have been perfectly content to be swallowing all the spunk of other teenaged boys in the northern Bronx, but alas that never came to be, I had to suffice with the brief glimpses they volunteered, but none of them ever let me get close enough to pop it in my mouth. Subconsciously they may have known that which is why they kept their penises far away from me.

Brad was definitively straight and nothing I did, nor how much porn we watched together ever swayed him from how he was born. I really wanted to explore sexual play something well-known amongst adolescent boys, but the opportunity never presented itself. Our friendship for what it was, more or less dissolved when I ended up going to a specialized high school and he just went to the local high school Columbus or CoDumbus as we would call it locally.

These were four very different friendships with four very different kinds of people their social economic background varied, their races and even their sexualities. I was closer to some, not as close to others, but we were still friends, we still attempted to be all the things friends were supposed to be during the tenure of our relationships.

Personally I don't have any regrets about any of them, I mean I would love to do a post-mortem with Andy, but I don't think he was ever really interested in ever talking with me after high school, I did make some tentative attempts, and they were always met with a lukewarm response. But Andy is also on the list of people I would like to see before I die, not that I ever finished compiling that list.

Having a totally plutonic relationship isn't odd to me, of course that is the standard in all of my relationship with women, for obvious reasons. With men it does present a unique challenge, because if left to their own means, men will fuck anything and everything, so its nice to have a relationship where a certain level of restraint was shown.

Nowadays I don't really have any friends, I have devolved into a life of mostly solitude finding my connection usually with myself in exploring some unprocessed experience from my life or a person from my past who had some significant impact on me. I actually don't mind it, I am at a different place in my life, and more than anything I value my piece of mind. As a child I had learned how to entertain myself and be my own best friend, those are the lessons I now apply to my life, keeping my own council till it's time for me to go home.

[Photos courtesy of the Brown Estate]

Sexual Experimenting

Friends I Fucked