Last year a friend came to stay with me for a night, when he was between apartments. A long time ago we had dated, more like had an affair, and it had ended neither badly nor well, just ended, neither of us talking for a few months and then slowly finding our way back to each other as friends. Because we had never discussed what happened between us (I think once he apologized for being a jerk, that was about it), it made it easier to forget that our affair had even happened, but it also left behind a layer of weird, unresolved sexual tension.
Now I enjoy weird, unresolved sexual tension as much as the next person who makes a living writing about sex and relationships, but sometimes it was just not fun and frankly inappropriate. He’s kind of an inappropriate guy in general which is sort of his charm. He’s a funny, witty, outrageous soul. Still there were moments I needed him to be simply my friend, and there was never a time when I saw him when I did not get the feeling that he was thinking, “I fucked that girl once.” Not in a dreamy, sensual way, but in a proprietary way. And there is nothing I like less than the feeling of being owned.
But I valued our friendship. We shared a lot. I had been working so hard on my friendships with men last year. It felt important to have guys in my life I could trust. He knew a lot about what was going on with me, and had been as encouraging as one could be via instant message conversations. And he was open about his life with me, too. He was in love with a woman who lived in another town. They had been dating for a while now, the longest he had ever been with someone. I was proud of him for working on his relationship with her as hard as he had.
When he came to stay with me he told me almost immediately that they had recently decided to open their relationship to having sex with other people. The long-distance thing had been wearing them down. I said, “That sounds like a terrible idea.” He said, “No, it’s going to be totally cool. Because we just won’t tell each other about it when we do.” I said, “Oh, that makes it better?” Then I just stopped talking about it because it was clear nothing I said would change his mind.
(But really, this is a terrible idea, right? You’re in love with someone, but then you decide to hide an entire portion of your life from that person, and they do the same. Now there’s two layer of secrets working against one relationship. This is doom.)
After we chatted for a while, he went to a party. I stayed home and went to bed early. Around 1 AM, he returned. I had taken a Tylenol PM, so I barely heard him come in the apartment. He came up the stairs to the loft and got into bed with me. I didn’t care that he got into bed with me. I trusted him, and we had slept in the same bed in the past, even after we had stopped dating. He flopped his arm on top of me, and moved closer to me. He’s a big guy. He was clearly drunk. And then, he started talking.
He told me how much he loved me. (He had never once told me he loved me before and we have known each other a long time.) He said how much he admired my work, how I was his favorite writer. How I had so much talent. He whispered all of this urgently and repeatedly in my ear.
These things he was saying, maybe they were true, but maybe they were just things he thought I would want to hear. They were said in a way that felt dishonest to me. As if he were trying to convince me (or himself) of something, and if he just kept barraging me with words I would believe him.
“I’m such a fan of your work,” he said to me, drunk, in my bed, with his arm crushed on top of me.
I told him all that was great, but that he was making me feel uncomfortable. I told him to stop. I told him to take his arm off me. I said all this repeatedly and he did not listen to me. I pulled away further, and he pulled closer.
I was half-awake as all of this was going on because of the Tylenol PM. (When I was telling this story to a friend later, she said, “You roofied yourself.”) So I was not at my best, my toughest, my most New-Yorkiest. Plus I was feeling all the things you feel in that kind of situation: that he was my friend and I did not want to yell at my friend because maybe he was just being friendly, even if he was being full of shit; that there was a large man in my bed who was not backing off and that was kind of scary; and that I was unsure much could I yell at him without making him angry, and I did not want to deal with him angry.
After about a half hour, he passed out, his giant arm still on top of me.
In the morning I was wary of him, but he acted as if nothing had happened. I felt confused about the whole thing, mortified for myself strangely (I guess it’s not that strange), and mortified for him. I walked with him to the train station. I talked nervously the entire time. I told him about a woman I had just met, an actress, who I wasn’t sure if I liked or not yet. It was a long and involved story and there was no room for interruption.
When we got to the train station, we stopped on the corner. He looked me deeply in the eyes and said, “I love you.” And then he left.
A few hours later he emailed me to tell me he had googled the actress I had been telling him about on our walk.
“I’d fuck her,” he said.
He and I are no longer friends.
