A Good Friend

I have a good friend. I have known him since my days growing as a young, catholic, school girl in NYC as we both attended the same fundamentalist church and high school. Growing up in NYC, we were very close. I watched my first porno video with this friend and we attended college together... at least for a year. He lives about 80 miles or so from me along with his devoutly Mormon wife and three kids. Interestingly enough, even after he grew up as religious as I did, he is now atheist.

His wife is extremely needy. He's an extremely good husband and father, but his wife doesn't permit him to do anything outside of the house. As a consequence of his short lease combined with how far away he lives, we rarely get to see each other.

Well he calls me up the other day and tells me that his wife has taken the kids back to her home state of Idaho and that he'd like to spend the night at my place. Now it was just a little over a year ago that I told him I was gay. Of course he had already had known, but I hadn't vocalized the fact prior to that point. At the time, he expressed being hurt that I didn't trust him enough to tell him earlier.

So tonight we had dinner at Clyde's and went to see The Dark Night. Afterwards, we went to a straight Latino bar near my house in Adams Morgan and had a few more drinks as we watched the live band play salsa and merengue. Finally somewhere around 2:45a we returned to my place where we drank Apple Martinis and played Rock Band on the Wii. Believe it or not, the more we drank, the better we played, or at least that's how I remember it.

After all this we talked for a long time. He began to ask me questions about being gay. He expressed that when he found out that I was gay, he became much more sensitive and offended by anti-gay jokes. He told me how it completely altered his thoughts about gay people and all sorts of issues such as gay marriage. Now this friend can be a little naive and trusting, so I've spent a large part of my life protecting him. But this night I had the distinct feeling that the roles were now reversed and that he just wanted to protect me. Now that's a good friend.