Boy Friends

Breaking up is hard to do.

It wasn’t until I’d reached the tender age of 37 that I made my first male friend.

I grew up in a very matriarchal family and I attended an all-girls’ secondary school, so I barely even came in contact with a boy until I was already into my teens. And it didn’t take long for me to decide that boys were for romance and girls were for friendship.

Which was basically how things stood for the next 23 years.

Let’s call my first male friend “M”, because it is the first letter of his name. He moved around a lot when he was growing up. He met all kinds of people from all kinds of places, getting close to them, maybe, then leaving, definitely. It was a fluid and ever-changing upbringing, and the opposite of my own.

When he and I first met - even though he was young, much younger than me - I saw someone who was at ease in the world. By comparison, I was more shy and it took me a long time to feel comfortable with new people. In the campus bar, I stood at the edge of the crowd with one eye on the door, looking for a potential exit route. He also had one eye on the door, looking to see who was coming in and what might be interesting about them. These were my first impressions, though I later got to know that first impressions are only that.

My recollection is that he pursued me, drawing me out of myself even though I didn’t want to be. And it worked. After the first time we hung out, just the two of us, I already I loved him. His way of being was unique to me; he was young, but wise, and had experienced a lot more of life than I had. He was clever, though he was also a careful listener. And he made me laugh.

The entire reason I’m writing this now is because the radio just played a song I haven’t heard for a long time. Ben Folds was suddenly singing in my ear: Don’t call me for years and when you do, I’ll still be here.

That was M’s model of friendship, for obvious reasons - he’d formed and departed from relationships all over the world all throughout his life. I don’t know if it is my model or not, but I do know it isn’t my model where M is concerned. If he called me now, I’d still be angry

His nomadic upbringing meant he was largely uninvested in where he lived and, not long after we first met and became friends, he decided to move to Madrid for a while. I never imagined he would stay forever and so at first there was still a certain distance in the closeness I felt with him. Or perhaps more like a looseness. It was always great to see him, but I didn’t have any expectations. However, that distance was slowly encroached upon by this funny, thoughtful, intelligent, interesting and warm human being, so its borders never really stood a chance.

I also observed this encroachment in action. I saw him charming people, I saw them being charmed as it happened, their eyes glinting as he spoke, mentally stretching themselves out in the warm sunshine of his attention. Though I never thought to ask, I assumed he’d had to learn how be like that - how to win people over, and quickly.

I observed all this and I believed our friendship was on another level. I snickered at those people who thought he actually cared about them. But that was simply another aspect of the seductive nature of his attention. When the beams were trained on you, you believed you were the only one who had ever experienced it.

Like most people, it gets my back up when anyone tries to tell me what I’m like. However, another part of M’s allure was that he was able to do it in a way that was so flattering, even if you knew his version of you was a distant galaxy away from the truth, you let yourself go with it. I was enamoured of the version of me he sold back to me. Maybe I would be that version one day.

Eventually he did leave Madrid, but before long he returned and talked about settling for a few years. We grew even closer. He lived with me for a few weeks, we talked endlessly, we pissed ourselves laughing, we bitched about people, we discussed our partners (or his dating adventures), we wrote poems and stories together, he took care of me after a stay in hospital, we went on holiday. I always looked forward immensely to seeing him. I always wanted to know what was on his mind and what he had to say.

And it was fascinating to explore this new type of friendship. Spending time with M was so different than with my female friends. It's hard to quantify, but here is one example: at times, my desires seemed fiercer than theirs, I seemed to want more than they did and so I often tempered myself. And, about want - when I’ve talked about M to people, both before and after the friendship dissolved, often one of the first questions they would ask was whether or not we were attracted to each other. But we weren’t. That wasn’t what it was all about. Which, in turn, meant we reached a level of candour I’d never experienced in other friendships. One night, out for a drink (that the next day felt like a million drinks), we spent hours talking about desire in a way I’d never done with female friends or romantic partners.

I really loved that bloke.

Then one day he disappeared, stopped replying to my messages and I realised I’d been had. Apparently I’d misconstrued our entire friendship. I’d fallen for his slick ways after all, while telling myself that I was wise to them and that he and I were the exception. But even more humiliating than that - I’d fallen for it precisely because I had experienced his charm so intensely.

After getting ghosted for a while, a mutual acquaintance in Madrid said I should try to track him down, in case something had actually happened to him. I wish I’d listened to my instinct, which was telling me he was fine and I’d basically been dumped. I don’t remember feeling worried about him, but of course I was curious (and perhaps hopeful the friendship could be saved or rekindled) and so I caved and asked another mutual acquaintance, this time in the UK, if he had news of M and if he was safe. Oh yes, I was told, saw him the other day, he is fine. Happy.

Eventually M got in touch. He was back in Madrid to pack up his life. We met and talked, but the bottom line was that I cared more than he did. It embarrasses me hugely now to remember how plaintive and emotional my side of that conversation was, while he sat patiently smiling his polite bank-teller smile. The dynamic was: Me - How could you do this to me?! I’m heartsick. Him - I’m ever so sorry, my dear, I’m having a little trouble placing you, remind me how we know each other again?

I was just another casualty.

During the conversation, he also returned to the Ben Folds view: the fact that someone disappears from sight doesn’t mean they don’t care or they’re no longer a friend. I couldn’t accept that, though. Not after what I thought had become a very deep bond between us. I said, What if I’d needed you? He said, Then I’d have been there. But how, after all those messages went unread? The logistics didn’t stack up.

It was a pointless conversation that went nowhere and I couldn’t let it go for a long while. Even after I’d let go of the actual friendship, I couldn’t get over what I saw as the humiliation – the way I’d been living inside an entirely different version of our relationship all along.

This is just my side of the story and, being so, it only reflects my experiences and feelings. M had a lot going on in his life that was separate to what we shared and outside of the area where our two lives met. He would give a glimpse of it from time to time, then close the door. Another line from that Ben Folds song that I omitted to mention before goes: I just love you for the things you couldn’t change, though you’ve tried. It’s possible I wasn’t a good friend to M, not reading between the lines or letting him be who he was while loving him anyway.

And perhaps that was because I was too caught up in the romance of our friendship.