Michael, thanks for sharing your story about Jake from Jupiter, Florida. It vividly reminds me that I had a very similar experience with one of my best friends from high school, and I am compelled to relate my own story back to you.
In 1989, I returned home to Des Moines, Iowa from California to spend the summer after my first year in college. Within a week I came out to the crew of friends I had hung out with since junior high, except for one friend, The Marine, who had been delayed at his return home while he was finishing bootcamp. The reaction of my closest friends was warm and supportive. One of them even commented, “Jeez, I thought you were going to tell us something BAD.” Never again did I set a less than positive tone when coming out to anyone.
When The Marine arrived the week later, I struggled to tell him I was gay, mistakenly thinking that he would reject me. He was hotter than ever, muscular and full of confidence. But like the response of my other friends, he was genuinely happy for me and congratulated me on my courage. Within an hour of my coming out to him, he admitted to me that he was straight but had had sex with a man during his time at bootcamp. I was stunned and immediately smitten. From that moment on, for nearly the entire summer we spent almost all our time together.
Since he knew I was a swimmer and knew that I had done it many times before, he asked me to cut his hair for him. I buzzed his head for him several times that summer, keeping it short because he had to put in a couple weekends at the local reserves camp. Cutting his hair in my garage, having him sit at waist high in that chair, holding his head, breathing on his neck, pressing up against him, focussing intently so as to make the buzzcut as close to perfect as possible, were intensely erotic moments for me. To this day I still love cutting my friends’ and lovers’ hair, and it always turns me on.
The summer progressed and our friendship and camaraderie grew stronger. We were constantly wrestling, racing, sparring. Our friends noticed and commented but we didn’t care. It was really the first time in my life that I felt intimate with another man, the first time that I had the kind of friendship and validation from a man that I had always wanted. But as these things go, I wanted more. I fell in love with The Marine, and I feared that telling him would shatter the bond we had built.
The summer neared the end and I had made the decision to tell The Marine the truth: that I was in love with him and lusted after him. It was a warm, humid August evening in Iowa. We finished a night of partying with our friends and came back to my house to skinny dip in the pool and drink and smoke a little more. We swam and wrestled a bit in the pool. We got out and talked and felt each other’s bodies. In that moment of inebriation and erotic arousal, the secret and reality of what I had been feeling, what we had been doing, became too much for me to bear. I broke and admitted my feelings and desires to him.
The Marine didn’t feel the same way as me. He was straight. He didn’t have those kinds of feelings for me. He thought of me as a brother, a comrade, a best friend. He did admit that we had an intimate relationship that meant something to him too, but just not what it had become to me. At that moment, the bond we had was indeed shattered. We moped around each other for the last weeks of summer. Our friends noticed and commented again asking what was going on, but we brushed it off. At the end of the season, everyone scattered away, returning to college or to travel. The Marine and I parted ways as good friends having looked back on many good times together. But nothing was ever like it was in the moment of that Great Summer.
A couple of years later I went on a road trip with my sister. I took advantage of that time to come out to her and ended up telling her the story of The Marine as part of relating what I had experienced of being gay up to that point. She listened quietly to the story and then shocked me by admitting that she had been secretly fucking The Marine that entire summer. Right then I knew for certain, for all that The Marine had insisted to me about how he was straight, the intimacy, companionship and friendship we had with each other was valued by him just as much as it had been for me.
I’ve lost touch with The Marine and I will always wonder how he really felt about it all and how he would reconcile the cognitive dissonant fact that he was bonding with me physically, athletically, emotionally, intellectually and at the same time sexually with my sister. Perhaps he really was like Jake, reveling in the camaraderie of our special bond, but just not capable of taking it as far as we would because we are gay. You are probably right that there was “something made sweeter by the boundary between us,” but I will continue to seek out that uncommon and rare affection that can only be made between two men.
