Monday, November 06, 2006

A Friend In Need

I had a friend who threw me for a loop a couple of years back, when I was in college. He was a good friend. I'll call him Adam, because, well, that was his name. If he should read this, don't think you're gonna get off easy, and it's not like you're going to run for office.

We hung out together quite a bit. We both liked weird movies, and he introduced me to the wonderful world of Richard Laymon, who writes the most sick and vile bloodporn in the world (and I love it.). Two geeks with similar passions. I mean, we could go into a used bookstore and literally stay until I got woozy from screwed up blood sugar. That was when I started packing Powerbars and the like, just so I could go all day. There were times I would get all excited about spending a whole Saturday with him because I knew that the whole day would be an adventure of treasure-hunting, yard sales and pounds of junk food.

So, as would sometimes happen, I'd let him stay in my dorm room because he hated his roommate. I did, too. Total beer-swilling turd who took as many opportunities to flash his dick at me as he could. (It was pretty, but attached to a worthless person.) Anyway, one Sunday morning, I wanted to take a shower, so I left Adam in the room and went down to clean up. (No, we didn't have sex. Thought about it, but never did.) I got halfway through and realized I needed my pumice file (Okay, so I get dead skin built up on my heels. Bite me.), so I dried off a bit, threw on my jammies and headed back to my room.

I opened the door and called out, "Ah-ha!! Caught you!!" I was joking around. But I had caught him. He had a pair of my undies up to his nose and one of my sleepshirts draped over his dick. All he did was flinch. No words. I think he started to cry, to be honest. I was confused. I mean, I knew what he was doing, but this was my buddy, my friend, the guy I dumped on and who dumped on me. The guy I smoked incredible dope with and then freaked out with when we played Grand Theft Auto while stoned. The guy whose arms I'd fallen asleep in when I need to be held or was just cold. And here he was, sniffing my dirty clothes and whacking off into my best slinky sleepshirt.

The only thing I could think to say was, "Please put that stuff down." He did, and pulled up his pants. He wouldn't even look at me, which I can understand. Not sure I wanted him to look at me.

"Have you done this with my stuff before?" He moved his head, but I couldn't tell what he was doing. He opened his mouth a couple of times, but said nothing. And then this whole sense of betrayal just vomited out of my mouth, and I practically screamed at him, "Don't lie to me, god damn it." I wanted to hit him, just kick and punch and claw him.

And it wasn't my stuff or so much that he dug through my dirty clothes that made me so mad. We told each other everything. Icky shit about each other. Stuff that I won't even think about putting in here, despite the blog's title. I thought I knew him. And this was, while not troublesome in and of itself, something alien. I mean, if he'd told me, I would have bought stuff for him, kept it for him, washed it for him. I would have loaned him my stuff (well, he could have kept it after he...well, you know) if it meant something to him. But he hid this from me. That pissed me off. It hurt.

He started crying then. Crying is never pretty. You cry because of pain most often, and pain isn't meant to be pleasant. And I think he knew he'd broken us. It wasn't just getting caught. He knew from the sound of my voice that everything was different. He just nodded.

I grabbed my pumice file and walked out. I scrubbed one heel to the point that it hurt to walk for a day or two. When I came back, Adam was gone.

We didn't talk to each other for nearly a month. There was no avoidance, just no communication. I saw him. He saw me. I actually wanted him to talk to me after a couple of weeks, just to explain himself, but he must have mistaken my stares for dislike or anger, and he would leave wherever I might be if I hung out for a while. At the end of a month, I took all the stuff he'd loaned me back to his dorm room. All he could say was "I'm sorry, Row. I'm so sorry."

It was my turn to cry. I just said, "I know. And it's okay. It's just never going to happen again." And I kissed him. It surprised him so much that he didn't even kiss back. I just wanted to take one last thing to make sure I was making the right choice. I figured I was. So I handed him the box, and said, "Bye."

I had a dream about him the other night. All I remember was him looking happy and telling me he had to go. I have no idea where.

I just had to get this out of my system.

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