My friend P came to visit for a few days just before Christmas. I pulled out a spare mattress for him, but we still wound up sleeping a few feet away from each other in my one room studio. He arrived on a weeknight and we went out for dinner and then had drinks at a bar with some other friends. We got home close to 2AM and spent another half hour talking in the darkness. I felt a little distracted by the specter of getting up early for work the next day, but it was nice to finally talk to another man outside of the jocular strictures that seem to guide how many men talk to one another.
I've known P for years. We went to high school together, but we actively disliked one another during those years. We ran into each other again our junior year in college and had an awkward catch-up conversation out of obligation, exchanged numbers, and made a vague date to hang out sometime. P called a few days later and we wound up going out with my roommates and actually had a good time together. We both have stone dry senses of irony and a sardonic view on socializing.
That was eleven years ago, and in the interim P has become as close a friend as I have. There isn't anything about me I haven't told him. He's seen me at my lowest and highest. We complement each other well. P is more socially adept than I am, and I find it much easier to be my truer, unfiltered self when he's in the room to buffer the immature acid undertone. P also has a tendency to be self-serious and I think my ego-centric immaturity brings out his ebullient side.
P's also fantastically successful and a good ballast to my impulsive idealism. Life is hard at every step of the way. There are no easy years, but this year has been one filled with some new challenges that I haven't had any frame of reference for dealing with. I've made some relatively big life choices over the summer and it was nice to talk with P about that, in the dark, without any distractions or need for posturing.
People tend to want answers, direct conclusions that they can walk away from. It's something you can see frequently in comments here when I've written about an experience using inconclusory language. People want there to be a reason for things to be the way they are. There has to be some invisible algebra guiding our collective subconscious and seeing an experience written about without the socially normative terms is cause for troubleshooting. If your date went like that, it must be because of this.
This is especially true for men. We are not encouraged to be honest with one another. Men maintain, we compete, and we reassure each other that everything is fine. The idea of two grown men lying in darkness, speaking to each other in intimate terms is alarmingly vulnerable. I get a lot of guff from many of more manly friends for the way I write here, the endless self-analysis and the indemnifying confessions of imperfect form and thought. I write like a puff. It's disgusting. Men aren't supposed to be weak and uncertain of where the next step lies, they're supposed to be cheerful oafs, easily satisfied with beer, pussy, and the white noise of a scoreboard.
Men hold hands with each other in China. The tendency of same sex friends to be physically affectionate isn't only unique to China, but it's the first place I encountered it. I was surprised and uncomfortable the first time one of my male students instinctively grabbed my hand as we were walking to row of street vendors on campus for lunch. My hands sweat terribly. They used to sweat puddles in high school and I developed a huge complex about it. My stomach would drop when someone held their hand out for me to shake, and the thought of holding a woman's hand was nauseating. It would have pointed to an irrefutably physical proof of my imperfection, my weakness.
I don't think I've never told P I loved him. I do, but those aren't terms we use. I've told him everything else. What good is it telling another man you love him? What's the use lying in the dark with another body, wrestling with all the uncertainties in your life, confessing, indemnifying yourself?
Previous Posts:
Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays
Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date
Sex Machine: Sex with Older Women, or How I Would Make Love to Gloria Swanson
Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap
Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction
Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex
Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux
Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog
Date Machine: Rate My Politics
High School Machine: Ten-Year Reunion Fantasies
Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends
Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings Redux
Love Machine: Making Love to ESPN
Date Machine: 5 Things I'm Thankful For
Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings
Love Machine: What Work Is
Sex Machine: Sleeping Naked
Love Machine: Breaking Up in a Text Message
Date Night: The F U Date
Sex Machine: Shave My Bush
Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating
Date Machine: The Celebrity You Most Resemble
Sex Machine: I Kissed A Boy
Crying In Public: Some Corner in Brooklyn