The following is true story...no names were mentioned, but I wrote this the very day it happened (Jan 27th 2013) and sent it to Nifty as my very first story; the only story I would ever be able to tell.
I knew this day would come. I had always known this day would come. I had lived in a world for so many years where hope had ebbed and flowed, and my dreams were like the mists hiding a mountain. This time though, the tide had gone out and left only the sand and the clouds had drawn back and left no less than Mount Everest looming before me.
That the way it came was so simple surprised me. A surgeon's knife could not have delivered a more swift, decisive and almost painless cut to my heart...a simple text...a few words. "got engaged...wasn't planned, just happened." Just like that, there I was standing on dry sand and looking up at a mountain...
I was happy for him. I had to be. He had managed to get hold of the dream he had been chasing and he deserved that. The funny thing is, not even 5 minutes before that text I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror shaving and thinking to myself "Our twenty year anniversary is next weekend. I'll have to make plans to meet up for dinner...maybe a really nice bottle of scotch...like REALLY nice, to surprise him and mark the occasion". My thoughts started drifting, like they always do, and I started imagining how I could have a little fun with him. "Hey, you know, twenty years is a long fucking time! We could have had a kid halfway through college by now! I don't know why we just didn't call off this search for the perfect one and just get married...who's better than us?"
It all sounded great in my head, and I actually chuckled inside. I managed to ignore the creases under my eyes reminding me that thirty-seven was fast approaching, and felt excitement build a little inside me. I was going to see him today as well...after five weeks of messed up schedules and plans, we were finally supposed to go see "the Hobbit". It was one of our few "things"; anything related to Lord of the Rings we saw together for the first time...no cheating. Just one of the ways we tried to maintain a friendship that life had stretched across time, distance, and the demands of careers.
I had messaged him "What time were you thinking?" noting he was last online at 2:40 am that morning and thinking to myself that the party animal in him was never going to quit, and jumped in the shower. When I had finished shaving I checked the phone, and saw two messages. The first was "gotta pass". The second "got engaged...wasn't planned, just happened." I texted back immediately..."WHAAAAT? Holy hell, the devil has been tamed! Congratulations!" and leaned forward onto the shower door to cry.
Feb 2nd, 1993.
We met in high school. I was a Junior, and in three years had never crossed paths with him. That all changed the day I walked into my Accounting class, and after signing in and chatting with my teacher, walked over to the far side of the room to grab a spot along the wall. As I walked down between the rows of desks, I stepped into another universe. There was this boy, leaning against the wall, third desk from the back. I had never seem him before, and his head was down slightly as he hunched forward a little in his seat.
It felt like my stomach had jumped out of a plane and left me behind to catch up. I stumbled into the desk one behind and one over, forgetting all of my plans for a wall seat to minimize the chance of people crowding me on either side. I don't remember much after that, except the certainty that life had changed in a way I never anticipated.
I had fallen in love for the first time...and at first sight. Maybe it was the tenderness I saw on his face, the gentleness I knew was there from the soft curves of his mouth, the puppy dog eyes, or the cute little nose that would wrinkle when he laughed...but I knew it was more than that. I saw in my mind my hand stretched out towards him, and myself saying "I am for you". In that one look, I had been captured, hogtied and delivered to this boy by a force greater than simple chance or fate.
I didn't know his name, but I knew I would...and by the end of the third day, I was laughing along with his jokes. We made eye contact that first time he noticed me laughing, and the mischievous smile he directed my way was burned into my memory like a brand on a horse.
In ways that surprised me, since I was not the boldest or most outgoing of guys, I befriended him. I'm not sure how I got his number, but I found myself calling him every night under the pretense of reviewing homework. A friendship grew between us, but I was still at arm's length. He was still the popular, athletic one that all the girls blushed around, and I was the tall, skinny, bespectacled one. I wasn't bad looking, but I certainly hadn't come into my own like he had at that point. He was cute, and everyone knew it. Mention my name, and they said "yeah, he's smart!"
By the end of the semester we were relatively established as "friends", enough so that I knew I needed him in my life. Up until that point, I hadn't truly realized I was attracted to guys. I just wasn't attracted to anyone before that. Sex was a mystery, so I was still incredibly sheltered. I didn't have someone in my life to be a mentor, or role model, or someone who could even explain the mystery of human physical contact so I remained blissfully unaware until I met him. The torrent of emotions that coursed through me from that point on became a test...in a nutshell, I learned to stand under Niagara Falls and not bow my head.
The summer holidays stretched long ahead of us, but I had no idea how I could survive them without him. When he flubbed his Business exam and in order not to fall behind signed up to do the course again in summer school, I did the same. Since I had an A in the class, everyone wondered if I was mental, but I dismissed them with the explanation that I had an A+ record to maintain, and I would do whatever it took. We grew closer over the summer as a result, and eventually he would be picking me up in the mornings to head to class. I hung out at his house a couple of times, and each time we were alone I wondered if it would be the time I lost control and blew the lid off my feelings. I didn't...locked in the closet and afraid to jeopardize his presence in my life. I was a chicken, and I didn't even have the nerve to try to cross the road.
When school started up again, I made my boldest move. On the first day of classes, I asked him what his schedule was like...and before the end of the day re-arranged mine to make sure I was in three of his four classes. I was guaranteed time with him that way, and since our friendship was blossoming, with all of the exposure we quickly became inseparable.
The next semester I again ensured I was in two of his classes. I only had three, as I was ahead a year and at that point had taken nearly everything available in the curriculum for seniors.
When it came time for college applications, I applied to everything he did. I was obsessed with just being close to him...I needed him in my life to breath, to feel like there was a purpose in living. Throughout all of those years, I was still struggling with accepting who I was, and trying to control my attraction to the young man who was now my best friend. But as torturous as that was, I kept telling myself it was better than not having met him at all.
When he told me he would consider rooming with me if we ended up at the same university, I felt like the moon and stars had collided with the sun and rained pieces of heaven down on me. We did both get accepted to great schools, and I turned down a scholarship to both of my other choices in order to go to the same place he chose. We checked out the place and found an apartment close to campus, and suddenly I was faced with the fact that I would be living with him in a few months.
He almost backed out of his decision to go to that school...and I remember driving over to his place in a panic and essentially forcing him to reconsider. Years later and I still feel bad about that, but we had already signed a lease on the apartment and my parents would have just about killed me if I had walked away from it. We were not rich by any means, and the confusion of my turning down scholarships and having to take student loans still lingered.
We moved in as roommates and enjoyed the freshmen year as only young guys could. I remained a virgin through all of it; determined that if I couldn't have him I would have no one. Some of the guys who hit on me were unbelievably good looking, as were some of the girls...I remained resolute. It didn't even cross my mind most of the time that I was being hit on, I was that focused on him. Years later I would wish I could have a second shot at some of those cuties chatting me up! So clueless!!
We were closer than anyone else could be; we had one massive fight when I allowed my pain at seeing him with a girlfriend to lash out. I was deliberately a jerk to him, and when he confronted me lateron it, I just lost all control. I didn't think I had the lung capacity to yell as loudly as I did, and when it was done, I felt purged, broken, and done. He must have been confused, as I remember I kept yelling "I gave you everything!! Everything!!" The hurt I felt seeing him fall in love with someone who wasn't me wasn't something I had ever considered could be coming my way and I had no idea how to deal with it. When he first started dating her he told me one night when we were hanging out in his room, "She has no idea how far she has to go to be as close to me as you are". I could have pulled any star from the sky that night, he need only have pointed. What hit me the most is when he crept into my room later that night after our fight and sat next to me on the bed, wrapped up in a blanket...and told me my friendship was the most important thing to him, and he would do anything to mend it. I didn't know what to say, as I was so discharged of any emotion, but I numbly said yes...I would still give him anything he wanted.
We didn't room together the next year, and began to pull apart a little, which was a good thing. I made new friends but still maintained our circle by ensuring we all knew each other. We still hung out, studied together and stayed in each other's lives, but living together seemed like a bad idea. By third year we were back on track...we decided to move in together again, and it was just like old times.
After college, we took different paths for a few years. I started out at a major food company in their accounting department, he started at one of the banks. I started to get over the intensity of the emotions I had for him, whereas just being around him before meant breathing was a shallow experience, I started to accept that things would never happen between us. I was still not about to admit to the world who I was, and who I loved, and he was straight. Talk about the odds stacked against you. I started to move on, to begin to look for other ways to make my life worthwhile. I travelled, made new friends, and put all my efforts into my career. It worked, and I moved up the ladder rapidly while feeling a little empty inside.
A few years later, I was in a massive accident, and was too scarred mentally to drive for a while. He was looking for a career change, and I ended up pulling him in to my company and my department. Just like that we were working together and in our lives every day again. He would pick me up every morning, and we were together most of the time until he dropped me off.
I realized I was falling back into the abyss of my emotions that I had hoped time and distance had managed to have me cap, and after a year, I fled. It came after I sent him an anonymous letter confessing to being someone who had loved him for a long time, in a hope of "putting out the embers of a fire that had been burning for what I was sure was countless lifetimes". He confronted me, and asked him I was playing a joke on him...thinking I was pulling a mean prank to make him feel like he had a secret admirer. It was too close for comfort, and I left behind a company where I had developed a reputation as an up and coming management star, and jumped to another opportunity to put distance between us. We kept in touch, not as frequently as before, but enough to keep me comfortably in the friendship.
I ended up taking a job where I was a road warrior, travelling ninety percent of the time. We kept in touch only occasionally, and saw each other maybe once a year. I tried deliberately to avoid him, even though he tried multiple times to arrange times for us to hang out. I knew what being around him meant for me, and I refused to let me myself fall back into the spell. I blamed work, and brushed him off for almost two years until he gave up trying. I would still message him on his birthday, on Christmas, and on New Years, but otherwise kept away. Deep inside me though, he remained in my heart, remained a part of my soul and was always my definition of what love meant.
He had a string of girlfriends over the years, some serious, some not, and even had a six year long term relationship with one girl who I never met but heard about enough that I thought a wedding invitation would show up in the mail one day.
After some time passed again, I thought that the scab was strong enough over that open cut that was my heart to see him again, for the sake of the friendship. The few times we hung out again after a few years of me being on the road we compared careers, and bragged to each other like the young punks we were back in college. We reminisced about the boys we were, the dreams we had, and the optimism we faced the world with...and I realized, I had become more like he was back then and he was more like me. I was outgoing, confident, a leader who was determined to meet any challenge. He had mellowed into a quieter, introspective, mature man, with the slightest bit of gray starting to caress his temples. I laughed about it one night over our yearly catch up dinner, and he fired back "This was always me...I just became a different person around you because you needed me to be strong". I nearly dropped my fork, because I realized it was true. How could two people have such an impact on each other's lives and not be allowed to merge into a passionate form of love?
He reminded me of a gift I had given him on his 21st birthday...and I blushed. How anybody thought I wasn't in love with his man was probably just denial. It was a small mantel clock, with a frame that was supposed to hold a picture. I had instead inserted a poem I had written, called "Timeless".
I didn't remember much of it, but the last lines I will never forget.
"Know this; when I look back at the end of my life, Yours is one of the faces I will see, For what you mean to me, Is timeless"
He had displayed it for years on the fireplace at his parents' house, and I remember cringing each time I had dropped by and seen it there; a shouting testament to my love for him that everyone else chose to believe was a vow of friendship and brotherhood.
So here I was, nearing the twenty year anniversary of our first meeting. The day that changed my life and made me realize that the universe does truly hold wonders beyond the stars and the planet we live on. The dreams I had were still there, buried under layers of time but still able to astound with their vibrancy.
And then that text.
I stood in against the shower door, leaning on my hanging towel, and ran my trembling fingers over the loops of cotton again and again. Every detail of each loop stood out, as if the world was magnified a thousand times. My eyes filled, emptied, and dried silently, all in the matter of minutes. I knew this day would come you see...I had always known. The countless love songs I sang in my mind, the heartache, the yearning unfulfilled, the running and the hiding, all were part of the journey that I knew would lead me to this place.
Still, on this day, in this moment, the words came to me. "I must not think of the breaking of my heart as the breaking of my dreams. As painful a thing as heartbreak surely is, what can break a dream? I must think of it instead as the loosening of chains, To let my dreams remain free and just as they are; dreams.
For with each piece of my heart that breaks, The pieces crumble smaller and smaller, Till surely the day must come when like sand, My heart will be light enough and small enough to take flight on the wind".
And just like that, I accepted it, like I always accepted inside that he would never be mine in the way I wanted him to be. I accepted it knowing that I had given up on any other choice for my life but this one; to be at his side, at his call, in whatever role he deemed me fit to play. I knew that my goal was simply to be with him throughout this life, to watch him blossom and grow as I had over twenty years already, to maybe watch him start a family and learn to be a husband and father, and maybe one day a grandfather.
I knew that if we were in our 70's and he was sitting on a park bench, whether surrounded by his family or alone, if I could sit a little off to the side and to the back of him, to just be there in case he needed me, needed a hand, a comforting touch, or even a glance at my eyes to see the love there still burned steady and true, that my love story, and my life, would be complete.