I've slept with a good amount of my friends. But it's not what you're thinking... they didn't start as friends. For some reason the gays get together and when things don't work out between them they pretend as though each other never existed, how mature? That leads to awkward stare, look away, stare, look aways at common homosexual meeting places such as clubs, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, really anywhere in Manhattan below 23rd, Harlem, etc (read more about my awkward encounters with exes in this post). I've always tried to end things as amicably as possible with my exes and it usually works out with us becoming really good friends, not right away though, usually after at least a few weeks of not speaking. I guess you would consider that processing time. Sometimes the resulting friendship works out so well that we even wonder how we ever had sex. The other night was definitely a shining example of that.
I was walking to the bus stop from the gym and I got a phone call from who for our purposes here we'll call Friend #1:
"What you givin'?"
"What you takin'?"
"Bitch, where you at?"
"I'm on the corner of (my location) waiting for the bus. I just came from the gym. What's up? What you doin? Where you stayin' at again?"
"I'm at (his location)."
"Oh aight, that's four blocks away. You want me to come meet you?"
"Yeah."
So we met up and walked a few blocks and then we settled on stoop in front of a school. I hadn't seen him in almost a year as he had just moved back to New York from a stint elsewhere. We sat there and talked and then we went to Central Park and sat by Harlem Meer (thankfully there was only one small raccoon this time [click here to read about my run in with the Central Park raccoons]) and talked some more. As he talked and I looked at his eyes and his lips as they moved and I thought that while yes I still find him attractive he is really my good girlfriend now. All the sexual attraction to him just like all floated away somewhere. I had no nasty thoughts, my dick didn't move, I didn't even flirt, I just listened to everything he said. It's weird, it's like I couldn't even imagine us in a sexual place again. He ended up walking me to my next friend's house. We'll call him Friend #2.
Now me and Friend #2 never had a quote-unquote "relationship". We met online about a year and a half, or two years ago, we lost and then got back in contact with eachother like six months later, from there we had a few intense online and phone conversations. We finally met up to hook up about a year ago. I remember taking that long ass train ride from East New York, Brooklyn to Harlem at two in the morning to meet him. Shiiiit, I never traveled that far for a piece of ass before... well there was the trip to Florida, and that time to Delaware (that is one ol' blog post right there) but who's counting, right? Anyway I got the ass, it was good and worth the trip and I ended up staying the night. This happened a few months before I made the move to live Harlem myself.
Unfortunately though I must have gotten the wrong impression from our phone and internet conversations because I put forth the effort to get to know Friend #2 better. My effort was met with unanswered phone calls and instant messages. The player got played, "Boomerang"-style. I was pissed, when I finally got to him online about a week or so later I told his ass off. The conversation online went something like this:
Friend #2: I'm sorry but, we could be friends.
Adam: Friends, this is how your treat your friends. I don't wanna be your friend!
Friend #2: We're gonna be neighbors soon.
System message: User Adam is no longer signed on.
Yeah, I went off like that... In retrospect I see that that was so NOT cool and not in accordance with the laid-back, aloof vibe I usually give. After going off on Friend #2 online we didn't talk for another seven or eight months.
One night last winter after I had been living up here in Harlem for about four months I get an IM. It was from Friend #2 asking me how was I, how I had been doing, etc., etc., etc. We ended up exchanging numbers and he told me why he ended things with me so abruptly. It was because he was talking to someone else at the time we hooked up and our meeting was basically the last fling before things got serious between them. I was like the stripper the bride sleeps with at the bachelorette party. Keep in mind though that at that present time they were still together. But what he didn't know was that I already knew who his boyfriend was. Friend #2's boyfriend tried to talk to me a few weeks prior and with the help of my friend we put the pieces together. Just to be clear I had NO interest in his boyfriend whatsoever, I'm not attracted to him at all, he was a fellow top (ewww, yuk!) and he was an asshole, well he was drunk that night but nevertheless an asshole. In an effort to not be messy didn't bother imparting that little tidbit.
After that conversation all was well between us and we became really good friends. We both worked in Midtown so every so often we would get together during our breaks and have "Sex And The City"-esque lunches, discussing our lives and current romantic situations. We'd actually grown fairly close on a platonic level but I still felt like I could hit it if I wanted to. The other night was our first chill session at his house and by this time him and his boyfriend had broken up. Now if I was gonna try something this was certainly the time. If I were evil enough just to fuck him for spite I had my golden opportunity, but fortunately for all the citizens of our planet, I'm not that evil.
We met up and all we did was talk. He told me about his current romantic situation, well really the lack thereof and how that came about. I regaled him with my current drama (ie the "pending litigation" I alluded to in this post) and it was nice to see that someone else agreed with me. Thank God for normal people. But anyway, throughout all our time together I realized that if I wanted to push the sexual envelope I could have. There was a room with a bed (like I really need a bed to have sex). But I really didn't want to. I realized the value of Friend #2's friendship and getting my nutt off wasn't that serious to me anymore. What the fuck? Did I just say that?
Am I actually growing up?
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Playing In The Background...
"Violet Stars Happy Hunting"
by Janelle Monae
from the album "Metropolis"
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Yup! That's growth for yuh.
I had a friend who started as a possiblity-of-a-relationship, but turned into just-a-friendship, but managed to later involve some buddy-lovin. Well beyond that I made a massive decision to be absolutely sexless and avoid the pursuit of a relationship and focus on me and my life and my success, advancement and progress as an individual, career-wise and lifestyle-wise. I wanted to be the best I could be for me and the future relationship I intended to have. I honestly am still open to a relationship, if the right words and actions are being performed and they prove beneficial to me as a person and doesn't affect my career choices, my ideas and my creativity and whatever else positive about me. If they enriched me further then they a go, but it's about me and making me better and productive and making my dreams come true.
Now it comes to my friend, well he hit me up and was all cool and friend-like to start and threw the sex part in and how he wanted some (since apparently he's into bottoming now, we've done it before; I ain't gon' lie I heard he bottomed for some femmes, but you didn't get that info from me). I'm deep into my celibacy and I'm like all virginal and adament about no sex without a relationship. I don't want a relationship with him, I prefer us as friends and the continued ties with sex jus' cheapens the friendship for me and cheapens me as a person. Yeah I want sex and I kinda miss it and I'm often tempted, but my future and my life is more important (besides, I don't know what he been doin' an' who he been fuckin'; he ain't givin' me nothin'; no matter the cool ass friend I know him to be). I ain't gon' lie, I think he still wants another crack at relationship status with me, but for me it's not a go and sex-buddies doesn't help the situation.
To conclude, it's great that you and your friends are clear on your friendship. I had to clear mines up with my friend and now we've gone back to not being in contact for a while (not my decision). He said he was cool when I cleared things up, but he hasn't replied to my instanr messages since.