There was once a friend who told me he loved me. He said it very matter-of-fact, though there was some unease within his person about it. We sat there, on the bleachers at high school, blowing-off P.E. class one slightly overcast day, and we were talking, just shooting the breeze. There was a lot of subtext to our conversation, though I wasn't really analyzing it at the time. I was expending a lot of energy talking bitterly about being friendless, and how I didn't really fit in anywhere. There was a nasty undercurrent to my words that I wasn't aware of.
That's when he said it, the peer sitting next to me. He sat there, clasping his hands together, his head turned down a bit, though cocked slightly in my direction. I remember his eyes squinting when he said it, so slowly that his voice almost creaked, "Yeah, it's tough sometimes. But I love you." He fixed his gaze on me, still squinting. It may have been possible that I stopped breathing at that moment, though just for the moment. My mind certainly froze, then quickly thawed and a whole lot of negativity took over, some of it societal, some of it, well, just me.
A stream of derision spewed forth from me then, and I am ashamed of it to this day. I don't remember everything I said, but one of the things was definitely an incredulous, "Are you gay?" It was said almost as an accusation. I was not out yet at this time, and in fact was still struggling with inner feelings of disgust at my own burgeoning sexuality that was becoming more difficult to ignore. Regardless, I do think my lip curved into a snarl, and I made it clear -- in no uncertain terms -- that he shouldn't have said what he did.
I was reminded of this occurrence while reading a piece in the New York Times by Ricardo Jaramillo about how, even today, it isn't easy, or even acceptable, for men to say, 'I love you,' to each other. Certainly not unrelated men. For family, it can sometimes be alright to say it, but outside of such blood boundaries, it becomes more rare and less welcomed. And, if such words are uttered, they are often (as Jaramillo points out) followed with a "bro" or "man."
My classmate back in high school offered no such addendum to his statement. Looking back, he said it because I was obviously wounded by people, by life, and felt unloved by many. And, one assumes, because he meant it. It obviously wasn't easy for him to say. He was fighting against a lot of societal norms to eek it out, though he obviously thought it needed to be said at that moment.
To my accusatory, "Are you gay?" question, his response was in the negative and, from the little I know of his life during the intervening quarter-century, that would appear to have been truthful. He'd simply decided to be honest in the moment with a fellow human being -- who happened to be another male -- and his olive branch of platonic love had been met with ridicule by yours truly.
He never spoke to me again during high school.
It's funny, I hadn't though of that occasion for many, many years, not until reading Jaramillo's piece last night. And, over the years, I've navigated the choppy waters of male/male friendships as best I can (hopefully with more maturity than in high school). Indeed, even as a gay man -- or, perhaps more so as a gay man -- saying those three words to another man has been difficult and infrequent, at best. It has been felt much more often, of course. If we're to be honest, men love their male friends to varying degrees, some just skimming the surface, others at a deep, abiding level, and everything in between.
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