Hearing From Old Friends

A few days ago, I received an email from an old friend. It was someone who I hadn’t talked to in ten years. When I received the email, I didn’t recognize the name at first. We exchanged a few emails, and I gave him my phone number. I didn’t expect him to call actually, But that same night, he called me.

He said that he wanted to thank me for being such a positive force in his life. I honestly didn’t know what he was talking about. He told me that because of me, he now had a career in technology. He reminded me when I would help him with programs when he was with the company. Today, he works as a consultant with an IT consulting firm. He has a beautiful family with two small children. He sent me photos of them, and I saw him for the first time. You see, we never met in person. I worked with him long distance as he worked at a remote office within my company.

I was touched by his friendship and his desire to become better friends. But then, something rather dreaded happened. I realized that he didn’t know about me being gay.

If there’s one thing in the world that is horrible to me, it’s the dreaded conversation I have to have with someone I hold very dear to me. I hadn’t talked to my friend in ten years, and he is just as much a friend to me now as he as ten years ago. That is how I am.

I read this article on the Internet entitled “Finding out old friend is gay is not so important”.

I was chatting with a new young friend a few days ago when the talk turned to an old friend. It seems my new friend “spent a good part of the ’80s working for” this older guy. [...]

I haven’t seen the old friend in years, which happens sometimes, even when you both stay in the same town. It’s the way of the world. As much as you still enjoy them, some friends are linked to certain times of your life. They were co-stars of an era, and you see them in your mind’s eye, forever young at that place where everybody knew your name.

So, I asked for an update.

“How is old so-and-so?” I said. “You know you were lucky to work for him. He’s a legend in that whole industry.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “And he lived his life as a proud gay man. That couldn’t have been easy in the 1970s.”

Long pause.

I stood there with a just-walked-into-a-glass-door look on my face as I reshuffled my mental files. [...]

But sometimes these days, we get the feeling that being gay is not just important, it’s the most important thing about a person. Listening to the political and religious storm around us, we can wonder if it’s the defining thing, the thing that determines whether a person should be teaching our kids, taking communion or even living next door.

In that sense, you can argue I really didn’t know this person at all. I could tell you that he was a good man and trustworthy friend, and you might say, yeah, sure, you didn’t even know he was gay.

I guess I was feeling a little that way myself. My feelings were hurt that I missed something important. I wasn’t in the loop on something a friend was proud of.

If there’s one thing I’m beginning to learn about straight society, it’s how little they really understand gay culture.

In that sense, you can argue I really didn’t know this person at all. ... My feelings were hurt that I missed something important. I wasn’t in the loop on something a friend was proud of.

That statement right there tells me that the concept of not being able to be yourself is absolutely foreign to so many people. They don’t understand the fear of being rejected by friends and family.

I am 50 now. If I haven’t gotten over the fear of losing friends because I’m gay, I suppose I never will. But it amazes me that society doesn’t understand us being open with them when people like me are commonly beaten up, verbally berated, or killed. We are talking very basic survival here in many instances.

For me, I take friendship seriously. So seriously in fact, that I will avoid the topic of my sexuality in friendships. If I don’t need to bring it up, I won’t. The problem is, at some point in time if the friendship develops, there is a time of reckoning. You have to tell your friend that you are gay because if you don’t do that, they will never understand who you are.

Many straight people will say, “Well, I never tell my friends I’m straight. Why do you feel the need to say anything?” The answer is that being straight is assumed, so all these questions are automatically answered. It is assumed that you have someone in your life (or will have) and it is assumed that it will be someone who is the opposite sex. All of this does not need to be articulated.

For us, getting to know a new friend who is straight or disclosing the fact that we are gay can be risky on many fronts. Do you know how he/she feels about gays or gay civil rights? How about gay marriage? A new friend could seem like a nice person, but what you may not know is that they have real issues with gays. I suppose many will say that I’m too sensitive about this, but I’m only talking from experience.

I’ll end with this letter that I posted over a year ago. I says it all.